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China’s Ambassador to the EU, Cai Run, on Thursday threatened to retaliate if the EU took unilateral measures against Chinese interests.
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The statement comes as the European Commission works on a new trade defense tool, dubbed a “kill-switch”, that could cut off China’s access to the EU market in the event of serious market disruption caused by its aggressive trade policies.
“China opposes the politicization of economic and trade issues, over-expanding the concept of security and resorting to unilateral or maximum pressure,” Cai said.
He added: “If the European side insists on adopting restrictive and discriminatory measures against China, China will have to take countermeasures to firmly safeguard its interests.” »
As the EU faces a record billion-euro-a-day trade deficit with China, Brussels is seeking to protect its market from low-cost Chinese imports, which have jumped 25% in the past year, according to Chinese customs.
Last October, EU leaders tasked the European Commission with developing an instrument that could be rapidly deployed against countries whose political or economic actions have serious repercussions on the European market.
Franco-German movement
European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told MEPs on Wednesday that the tool should be presented by the end of the year and would allow the EU “to react much more quickly, even by limiting exports to the European Union.” He added that it would target “countries that treat us (the EU) unfairly or harm European interests.”
Presented as independent of the country, the tool would nevertheless directly target Chinese interests, which depend heavily on the 450 million consumers in the EU to sell their production surpluses.
France and Germany pushed in early October, when all EU member states now face a trade deficit with Beijing, with Chinese imports threatening entire sectors of their industries.
This Franco-German decision comes as part of ongoing negotiations between Brussels and Beijing, which began last June with the aim of rebalancing trade relations. It also arrived just days before the Commission reached an agreement on October 9 to reduce Chinese imports of hybrid cars into the EU.
Since the automobile agreement, negotiations have resumed at a technical level between European and Chinese officials, with Brussels hoping to replicate such an agreement in other sectors. A new meeting between Šefčovič and Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao is planned for March 2027.
Given the urgency of the situation, EU leaders also called on the Commission to adopt measures, including quotas and tariffs, against Chinese imports of chemicals and machinery, as pressure on the European market has become unsustainable for European producers.
Šefčovič has repeatedly said that with thousands of jobs at stake in the EU, the EU-China trade issue has become a political issue in Europe, raising high expectations among European citizens.
Despite ongoing negotiations with China since June, the Commission has continued to impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports entering the EU following product-by-product investigations which found Chinese producers benefiting from unfair prices or subsidies from China.
This is not the first time that China has threatened the EU with countermeasures. He has already done so against a bill – the Industrial Acceleration Act – currently under discussion by EU co-legislators, aimed at limiting access to EU public markets and imposing strict conditions on investments in the European market, also targeting Beijing without explicitly naming it.
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