EU-China relations enter ‘do no harm’ phase as Trump’s shadow looms in World Economy News 06/02/2026 Last year, the EU and China flirted with a diplomatic reset, which collapsed after Beijing imposed broad restrictions on rare earth exports. That bruising experience has set the stage for a cautious engagement in 2026. If you are a Western leader who has been on the receiving end of United States President Donald Trump’s mercurial decision-making, chances are you are considering a trip to Beijing. The past two months have seen France’s Emmanuel Macron, Ireland’s Micheál Martin, Canada’s Mark Carney, Finland’s Petteri Orpo and Britain’s Keir Starmer make the journey to the Chinese capital. Germany’s Friederich Merz is expected to land later this month. The official visits, largely focused on securing greater access to the notoriously restrictive Chinese market, coincide with a steady rise in transatlantic tensions caused by Washington’s ever-expansive foreign policy, including, most recently, an extraordinary attempt to coerce Denmark into selling Greenland. The fracture in the alliance has not gone unnoticed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who, every time he welcomes a dignitary, takes the opportunity to implicitly chastise Trump and portray his country as a staunch defender of multilateralism. “The international order is under great strain. International law can be truly effective only when all countries abide by it,” Xi said during his meeting with Starmer, according to an official readout that also decried “unilateralism, protectionism and power politics”. Beijing does little effort to conceal its ultimate goal: to drive a wedge between the two sides of the Atlantic and further expand its geopolitical clout to America’s detriment. Western leaders have reacted positively yet cautiously to the overture, fearing an excessive display of enthusiasm might invite Trump’s wrath. “It’s very dangerous for them to do that,” the US president said, referring to Starmer and Carney’s visits. For the European Union, the balancing act is even more perilous. On the one hand, the 27-member bloc is desperate for new markets to compensate for the 15% duty agreed in a lopsided deal with Trump. China, as the world’s second-largest economy with a growing middle class, is on paper an enticing business partner. But on the other hand, the EU is struggling more than ever to contain a ballooning trade deficit with China, as the country turns to low-cost exports to offset a stubborn real estate crisis and sluggish consumer demand. Beijing ended 2025 with a surplus worth almost $1.2 trillion (€1 trillion), the largest ever recorded by a nation in modern history. The figure might have played a part in Macron’s defiant speech in Davos last month. Sporting an attention-grabbing pair of aviator sunglasses, the French president denounced China for its “underconsumption” of foreign goods and its “massive excess capacities and distortive practices”, which, he warned, “threaten to overwhelm entire industrial and commercial sectors”. “It’s not being protectionist, it’s just restoring this level playing field and protecting our industry,” Macron said, as he called for greater “rebalancing”. “Not an easy one” In a way, Macron’s grievances encapsulate the last five years of EU-China relations. Starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, a cataclysm that painfully exposed the bloc’s dependency on China-made basic supplies, European leaders began embracing, with varying degrees of con