>But globally particle physics isn't the dominant actor budget wise: there was a fight in the US in the late 80's early 90's and they lost, which is why the Superconducting Super Colliders was cancelled. It's just not so obvious because applied fields usually don't need to build as big things as HEP and so don't need to concentrate the entire field in one experiment.

You're totally right about this. Especially at this point, a lot more money globally goes into other fields beyond fundamentals or particle physics, this might have really been localised to my alma mater.