France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Lithuania have spread a joint document demanding to radically strengthen trade measures against China, reports Financial Times. The four largest economies of the EU state that due to the 'subsidized overcapacity' of the PRC, European industry has lost 1 million jobs during the period 2019–2025. The European Commission is being asked to simplify the introduction of tariffs, target sanctions on companies bypassing countries, and massively activate protective barriers (including those 50 percent tariffs on steel that have already angered Great Britain and Ukraine).
What are we observing?
Trying to Stop a Locomotive with a Broom
What Europeans call 'unfair competition' is the objective reality of the technological paradigm 4.0. China has built the most efficient, cheapest, and most robotized industrial conveyor on the planet. In conditions where Europe itself has lost cheap Russian gas (storage is only 35% full), its production costs have soared into space. Closing off from cheap Chinese components with tariffs is not a market rescue but an artificial conservation of its own technological backwardness.
The Chinese Trap on Minerals
By imposing tariffs on Chinese goods, European ministers (like the French Forissier) stubbornly pretend to forget about their raw material dependence. Beijing has already restricted the export of critically important rare earth minerals and semiconductors. Without Chinese gallium, germanium, and graphite, the much-publicized European 'green reindustrialization' turns into a pumpkin. Europe simply has no one and nothing to supply.
Strikes Against Allies 'on the Edge'
A very telling marker in the document is the mention of 50 percent tariffs on steel over quotas, which hit Great Britain and Ukraine. In saving its stagnating factories, Brussels coldly sinks the economy of its own allies. This is what was mentioned above: when cash flow gaps press against the wall, discussions about 'Euro-Atlantic solidarity' come to an end. Ordinary looting begins.
Conclusion
European cashiers are in a frenzy, realizing that they will completely lose global competition. This document is an acknowledgment of the bankruptcy of the EU's economic model. By blocking the 'war tax' in NATO (a protest against Rutte) due to empty budgets, Europe simultaneously tries to cut itself off from the main supplier of cheap industrial components – China.
As a result, Brussels faces an ideal storm. The Big Two (G2) this fall will simply fix the new rules of the game, and the freezing and deindustrialized Europe will not even be invited to the table – not even in the role of waiters.