EU sends envoy to Beijing as rising exports from China raise economic anxiety
The European Union (EU) is bracing for a confrontation with China as a trade deficit exceeding $1 billion a day heightens anxiety over potential job losses and pushes the bloc’s political leaders to take a more aggressive approach toward its second-largest trading partner.
The European Commission’s top trade envoy, Maros Sefcovic, will be in Beijing on Thursday for a two-day meeting with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao. The goal is narrowing the EU’s 360-billion-euro trade deficit with China. Earlier this year, he gave Beijing a deadline of October to provide meaningful results in doing so. Politicians and economists across the 27-nation bloc consider China’s massive subsidies and exports a major threat to core industrial sectors from steel foundries to car factories.
China diverted many of its exports to the EU and other markets after the US raised tariffs.
In a debate Tuesday in European Parliament in Strasbourg, lawmakers overwhelmingly expressed anxiety alongside defiance over trade with China. On Wednesday, they voted 454 to 86 on a resolution to toughen up on China that centred on a call for “economic reciprocity and a proportionate EU response if China does not open its markets.”
Ahead of the vote, Hilde Vautmans, the Belgian lawmaker who led the resolution, said that “Europe has economic power, it’s time we used it.” Despite the seeming European unity this week, it remains unclear what the EU can or is willing to do. It has already rolled out trade measures against Chinese steel imports and e-commerce small parcels.
France’s High Commission for Strategy and Planning in February called for swift action, like 30 per cent tariffs on many of China’s exports, and a devaluation of the euro against the Chinese currency. Sales of German autos are plummeting in China, but China is also poised to gobble up market share in Europe by undercutting European automakers on price thanks to heavy state subsidies. There have already been mass layoffs at major manufacturers like Volkswagen.
A letter by France and Germany, a copy of which was seen by The Associated Press, called for a sweeping rethink of the EU’s China policy. Among other actions, it proposed making it easier for the European Commission to use the bloc’s so-called “trade bazooka,” the Anti-Coercion Instrument.
This is a never-before-used raft of measures for blocking or restricting trade and investment from countries found to be putting undue pressure on EU member nations or corporations.
