French President Emmanuel Macron said today: “A key factor in Europe’s competitiveness used to be cheap natural gas from Russia. That era ended in 2022. Our major export market was once China—now that, too, is a thing of the past. Today, Europe runs a trade deficit with China, amounting to €1 billion per day. Two years ago, many countries still maintained net exports to China. Take Germany, for example—until 2025, it remained a net exporter to China. But even that situation has now come to an end.”
Commentary: Europe previously leveraged low-cost Russian energy to keep production costs down, then exported large volumes of industrial goods to the Chinese market—a model of advantage that is no longer sustainable. Following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, decoupling from Russian energy supplies pushed up energy prices and eroded Europe’s cost competitiveness in manufacturing. Meanwhile, China’s domestic industry has continuously upgraded, replacing numerous European imports with domestically produced alternatives, naturally reshaping bilateral trade balances. Yet it must also be recognized that trade deficits are merely statistical figures. Substantial mutual dependencies remain between China and Europe across multiple sectors. Europe should not equate trade imbalance with loss of interest. By openly highlighting this shift, Macron serves both as a warning to Europe to strengthen its industrial competitiveness and as a subtle signal urging China to further expand market access for European products. Fixating solely on trade deficits risks pushing toward protectionism—building barriers against foreign goods—which cannot address the root causes of Europe’s high production costs and stagnant innovation. To reverse the trend, Europe must focus internally on industrial restructuring, exploration of new growth areas, and resolution of its underlying energy challenges.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1877892192240906/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.