{"id":1008774,"date":"2026-06-06T08:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T08:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1008774\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T08:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T08:18:18","slug":"sefcovics-challenge-getting-china-to-blink-on-trade-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1008774\/","title":{"rendered":"\u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d\u2019s challenge: getting China to blink on trade \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A\u00a0week of shadow boxing between\u00a0EU and Chinese trade officials\u00a0will now be followed by\u00a0a series of set-piece meetings and summits in Europe before the end of June.\u00a0But there\u2019s no guarantee of a breakthrough at the end of them.<\/p>\n<p>This month will conclude\u00a0with meetings\u00a0in Brussels\u00a0on 29-30 June between EU trade commissioner Maro\u0161\u00a0\u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d and\u00a0China\u2019s\u00a0commerce minister Wang Wentao.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Officials are expected to travel between Europe and China in preparation for the officials to have meaningful discussions with \u201cconcrete outcomes\u201d,\u00a0\u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d\u00a0told reporters\u00a0in Paris, after meeting with Chinese trade envoy Li Chenggang\u00a0on the margins of an OECD meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope that we will have very detailed discussion on how to address this growing deficit, how to make sure that also EU exports to China will grow, because China is a huge economy, but we export to China less than we export to Switzerland,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/euobserver.com\/220319\/china-warns-against-protectionism-as-eu-homegrown-tech-drive-squeezes-foreign-suppliers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/10fc55ec-9186-4077-9a3f-3ef9d050148d-41150a7f-1f72-429f-a107-ca625da6bd92-eed94ca9-c48a-4590-bda7-cb.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Those remarks make the EU\u2019s intentions clear: it wants to reduce\u00a0China\u2019s\u00a0ever-growing trade surplus with the EU-27, which hit \u20ac360bn last year\u00a0and has already widened in the first three months of this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They are also a recognition that tariffs have not worked. <\/p>\n<p>In autumn 2024, the EU Commission imposed\u00a0additional\u00a0tariffs of between 17 and 37 percent on Chinese electric vehicles after accusing Beijing of unfairly\u00a0subsidising\u00a0its car industry. Yet Chinese car exports\u00a0to Europe\u00a0still\u00a0rose\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.atlanticcouncil.org\/dispatches\/europe-has-had-enough-of-chinas-export-surge\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">by\u00a026 percent<\/a> between 2024 and 2025, to almost 1.2 million vehicles.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EU\u2019s\u00a0arguments\u00a0were bolstered by a helpful report by the OECD, a group of 38\u00a0predominantly European\u00a0and North American countries, published on Tuesday\u00a0(2 June), which accused Chinese firms of receiving <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oecd.org\/en\/about\/news\/press-releases\/2026\/06\/industrial-subsidies-reach-highest-levels-since-the-global-financial-crisis-says-oecd.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">between three and\u00a0eight times<\/a> more government subsidies than their competitors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For its part,\u00a0China retorted by dismissing the report as \u201cone-sided and arbitrary\u201d,\u00a0insisting that its state aid is in line with WTO rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And\u00a0China is still trying to play down the scale of the dispute\u00a0with the EU.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A\u00a0week of shadow boxing between\u00a0EU and Chinese trade officials\u00a0will now be followed by\u00a0a series of set-piece meetings and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1008775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,217086,219220,273573,217084,219218,273571,217085,219219,273572],"class_list":["post-1008774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-identifier4044","tag-identifier4338","tag-identifier4399","tag-nameanalysis","tag-namechina","tag-nameeu-trade","tag-termcodeanalysis","tag-termcodechina","tag-termcodeeu-trade"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116702184214235708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1008775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}