Last year, the European Union created a trade deficit of 359.9 billion euros with China, and this figure nicely reveals why the minister’s visit Wang Wentao this week in Brussels more than a protocol meeting, as the twenty-seven countries are seriously checking for the first time who is dependent on whom and how much room for maneuver they still have in the debate on the trade war. At the fore are not just cheap electric vehicles and “China shock 2.0”, but a wider picture of industrial policy in which rare earths, semiconductors and Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy are intertwined, while Beijing calmly replies that it is only a matter of technology and investment success.
The article reveals exactly where the EU is most vulnerable in relation to China, where it still has levers of power, what a possible tightening with tariffs and retaliatory measures means for the European economy, and how real is the threat of a trade war. The question of who will be the first to give in – and at what price – remains open.
