Skip navigation
EU Trade Policy Amid the China–US Clash
Report

EU Trade Policy Amid the China–US Clash

Caught in the Cross-Fire?

Bruegel, 2019

auto-generated audio
auto-generated audio

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Overview
  • For Experts

Recommendation

The World Trade Organization has established a global framework that seeks fair competition, greater prosperity and economic stability. But upheavals in US–China trade relations are overturning that order. According to economists Anabel González and Nicolas Véron in this incisive report for policy analysts, the European Union, with one-third of its trade split between the two countries, needs to chart its own course in the maelstrom or risk losing its leadership and damaging its commercial interests.

Summary

The confluence of China’s rapid economic ascent and the United States’ sudden turn to protectionism poses significant challenges to European Union trade policies.

China’s powerhouse state-capitalist machine is one factor, along with technology advances and political shifts, that is taxing the current World Trade Organization’s rules-based system. The Chinese domestic economy is a mix of subsidized state-owned enterprises and markets fenced off from outsiders. The nation curtails competition while enjoying unfettered access to markets in developed countries. The asymmetries are ...

About the Authors

Anabel González and Nicolas Véron are senior fellows at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; Nicolas Véron also is a senior fellow at Bruegel.


Comment on this summary