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Opinion | Can Europe rebuild its strength to trade with China without fear?

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2026年1月13日
2 min read
America First Beijing Berlin BMW Brussels Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism China clean energy clean tech Comprehensive Agreement on Investment electric vehicles Emmanuel Macron EU Europe European Parliament european union fear Gotion Hungary Mario Draghi Morocco Opinion raw materials rebuild Serbia strength tariffs trade Ukraine war Volkswagen

Opinion | Can Europe rebuild its strength to trade with China without fear?插图

China and the European Union began 2026 with another trade clash. As the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered its definitive phase, Brussels tightened compliance and Beijing warned of countermeasures. However, this week, the two sides signalled progress on defusing the electric vehicle dispute; the EU issued guidance to Chinese EV exporters on submitting minimum price plans.

The juxtaposition underlines the point: even when one high-profile area shifts from escalation to technical negotiation, the relationship remains a structural trap in which interdependence repeatedly turns standards, subsidies and imbalances into flashpoints.

As relations have deepened, so have tensions. Bilateral trade is enormous – worth about €730 billion (US$852 billion) in 2024 – but, in Brussels’ words, “critically unbalanced” with the EU deficit at €305.8 billion that year.

Beijing retaliated with probes into brandy and pork, followed by provisional duties of up to 42.7 per cent on certain EU dairy products as 2025 drew to a close. The institutional ceiling is low: the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment remains politically frozen.

China’s courtship of Europe in the late 2010s – casting itself as a fellow defender of free trade against “America first” – failed because three collisions blocked diplomacy. The first was a values collision: sanctions politics overrode economic logic. Second, a model collision: Brussels increasingly treats China’s industrial policy and overcapacity as “systemic distortions” while Beijing reads EU investigations as politicised protectionism.

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