{"id":83269,"date":"2026-05-15T13:55:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T13:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/83269\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T13:55:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T13:55:14","slug":"trump-in-china-trade-deals-leave-brussels-asking-if-europe-is-being-taken-seriously-by-beijing-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/83269\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump in China trade deals leave Brussels asking if Europe is being taken seriously by Beijing \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping\u00a0observed\u00a0the conventions of diplomatic nicety during the\u00a0two-day\u00a0state visit by the US president, but\u00a0Trump flew home on Friday (15 May) with\u00a0little of substance to show beyond a walk through Xi\u2019s rose garden<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the gathering, Trump and Xi discussed countless issues critical to EU interests, such as rare earths, Chinese electric vehicles, the war in Iran and global tariff policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump achieved deals for China to buy US oil, soybeans and 200 Boeing\u00a0aircraft, while\u00a0US trade representative Jamieson Greer told reporters\u00a0an agreement for billions of dollars in agriculture sales to China was expected\u00a0after the Beijing summit. <\/p>\n

Greer also hinted that a\u00a0one-year\u00a0trade truce with China agreed last October could\u00a0soon be extended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s certainly a willingness on both sides that \u2013 if this continues to work out well for each country \u2013 to continue that\u2026\u201d\u00a0said Greer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

China had imposed new restrictions on permits for exports of its rare earths last year, at the end of a tit-for-tat tariff war with the US that was kick-started by Trump\u2019s so-called \u2018Liberation Day\u2019 tariffs last April. <\/p>\n

But a truce was agreed with the US and extended to the EU.\u00a0<\/p>\n

EU: \u2018Take us seriously\u2019<\/p>\n

At the EU\u2019s own EU-China conference<\/a> on Friday,\u00a0just hours after Trump returned home,\u00a0the EU\u2019s ambassador to China, Jorge Toledo,\u00a0told delegates that\u00a0relations with China were \u201ccomplex\u201d and\u00a0characterised\u00a0by the EU executive as \u201cone of partnership, but also a one of competition, and systemic rivalry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that the EU\u2019s future relationship with China would depend on \u201cwhether European concerns are taken seriously: on market access, subsidies, industrial capacity, critical raw materials, security, human rights, and China\u2019s position on Russia\u2019s war of aggression against Ukraine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EU\u00a0has been embroiled in a multi-sector trade dispute with China for several years, with\u00a0EU\u00a0officials complaining about\u00a0China\u2019s subsidies for its electric vehicle industry,\u00a0as well as its restrictions on access to rare earths and on European firms hoping to obtain procurement contracts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cChina currently accounts for 30 percent of global production but just 13 percent of consumption. That is an imbalance that the world just cannot digest,\u201d Sabine Weyand, the EU\u2019s outgoing chief trade\u00a0negotiator\u00a0told MEPs on the international trade committee earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More broadly, commission president Ursula von der Leyen has accused China of deliberate overproduction to artificially lower prices for steel,\u00a0aluminium\u00a0and cars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s trade deficit with China increased to \u20ac360bn<\/a> in 2025 and was described as \u201cunbalanced\u201d and \u201cunsustainable\u201d,\u00a0by Spanish prime minister Pedro\u00a0Sanchez during his own state visit to Beijing in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For his part, during a similar visit in December,\u00a0French president Emmanuel Macron\u00a0threatened EU tariffs<\/a>\u00a0against China if it did not\u00a0take action to reduce\u00a0its trade surplus, which he said was a \u201cglobal\u00a0imbalance\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Three-way trade strains<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s own trade relations with the Trump administration are\u00a0arguably as\u00a0strained as its\u00a0ties\u00a0to China.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump and Xi Jinping\u00a0observed\u00a0the conventions of diplomatic nicety during the\u00a0two-day\u00a0state visit by the US president, but\u00a0Trump flew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[5754,211,210,44347,8570,44350,18519,44345,8568,18517,44348,44346,8569,18518,44349],"class_list":["post-83269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-identifier4044","tag-identifier4338","tag-identifier4399","tag-identifier4401","tag-nameanalysis","tag-namechina","tag-nameeu-and-the-world","tag-nameeu-trade","tag-termcodeanalysis","tag-termcodechina","tag-termcodeeu-and-the-world","tag-termcodeeu-trade"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116578938208054863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}