Ursula von der Leyen keeps posting about it, so let me say the part she softens. European businesses pay about three to four times what American businesses pay for natural gas. That gap did not close after the 2022 crisis. It hardened into the new normal.

Here are the numbers. European gas prices sat around 30 to 40 euros per megawatt hour through 2025, while US Henry Hub prices ran closer to 10 to 12 dollars per unit of the same energy. That is not a rounding error. That is a permanent tax on anyone in Europe who heats an oven, runs a kiln, or melts glass.

So think about a bakery in Bavaria. Not a chip factory. A guy with three ovens who bakes bread at four in the morning. His energy bill is not a background cost. For a German bakery, energy can run 8 to 10 percent of total costs, and gas prices doubling means his margin, already thin, gets eaten alive. The German baking trade association reported thousands of bakeries closing in recent years. In 2008 Germany had around 15,000 baking businesses. By 2023 it was under 10,000. Energy is not the only reason. It is a big one.

Meanwhile a bakery in Texas pays a fraction for the same heat. Same recipe, same flour, wildly different survival odds. That is the whole story of European deindustrialization compressed into one loaf of bread.

The counterargument is real: Europe is building LNG import terminals and renewables fast, and prices have fallen from the panic highs of 2022. True. But building terminals to import expensive American gas does not fix the gap. It locks it in. You are still paying to ship gas across an ocean that Texas pumps out of the ground next door.

Here is what to take from von der Leyen’s posts. This is not an abstract trade statistic. It is a decision about which small businesses in Europe get to exist. The oven does not care about geopolitics. It just needs to stay hot, and right now that is getting harder to afford.