Generals losing a war examine the enemy, battlefield and their own forces. Brussels prefers a different sequence, ordering new weapons first and worrying about the diagnosis later. That instinct was on display at the recent European Council meeting.<\/p>\n
Faced with a trade deficit it cannot close and dependencies it cannot shake, the European Union agreed on a new label: \u201cglobal macroeconomic imbalances\u201d<\/a>. To solve them, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was reportedly directed to engage in dialogue with China with an emphasis on results \u2013 an admission that years of escalating pressure have produced none. Her other mandate was to develop more economic security tools. No euphemism has ever confessed \u201cwe don\u2019t know what to do\u201d this loudly.Europe\u2019s China debate has become detached from any assessment of outcomes. If \u201cde-risking\u201d, anti-subsidy investigations, tariffs, trade defence measures, the \u201ctrade bazooka\u201d<\/a> threat and procurement restrictions have all failed to cut dependence, narrow the deficit or restore competitiveness, why should another layer of instruments succeed?\u201cDe-risking\u201d became the flagship policy without ever becoming a measurable one. Three years after the policy\u2019s launch<\/a>, the European Commission still promotes it. Yet it has never produced a public accounting of which dependencies have been reduced, by how much and at what cost.<\/p>\n The search for the next instrument has become an alibi to avoid more uncomfortable conclusions. Europe keeps looking for a China solution to Europe\u2019s malaise. It treats a competitiveness problem as a trade problem, an industrial problem as a regulatory one, and a technology gap as an external threat. Every new mechanism promises leverage over Beijing while diverting attention from weaknesses born at home.<\/p>\n