The European Union wants to work with Donald Trump to tackle China’s economic “non-market policies”, its trade chief said on Wednesday, in a rare public admission that the bloc wants to partner with the new US administration on issues tied to Beijing.
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At a hearing in the European Parliament, Maros Sefcovic, the trade and economic security commissioner, said the EU should be “ready to explore deeper EU-US cooperation on economic security, an area where both the EU and the US want to progress, including on how to deal with the joint challenges coming from China’s non-market policies and practices”.
In private, however, the coordination is something Brussels officials have been eyeing for months, as they put together a package of carrots and sticks designed to stave off the worst of the American president’s trade threats.
Sefcovic outlined a litany of Europeans’ issues with Beijing’s trade practices, referring to “the overcapacities driven by illegal state subsidies” and asserting “we would not accept the situation where Chinese jobs are protected at the expense of Europeans”.
He complained about Chinese, German and American car companies taking the European Commission to court last October over its imposition of anti-subsidy duties on Chinese-made electric vehicles.
BYD, Geely, SAIC Motor, Tesla, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have all taken legal action, according to filings made at the European Court of Justice over the last week.