Watching China in Europe—March 2025

Welcome to Watching China in Europe, a monthly update from GMF’s Indo-Pacific Program. Now more than ever, the transatlantic partners need clarity and cohesion when it comes to China policy. In this monthly newsletter, Noah Barkin—a senior visiting fellow at GMF and senior advisor at Rhodium Group—provides his personal observations and analysis on the most pressing China-related developments and activities throughout Europe.

No Resistance

In Donald Trump’s first administration, members of his national security team used to joke that relations with other countries were shaped by an alternating good cop-bad cop dynamic. When it came to traditional US allies, in Europe or Canada, Trump played the bad cop, forcing his foreign policy team to swing into good cop mode to limit the fallout from his threats and provocations. The roles were reversed with US foes. Trump played the good cop with countries such as Russia or North Korea, while his advisers assumed the role of bad cops, working behind the scenes to ensure his fondness for dictators did not leave the United States exposed to its biggest adversaries.
 
Under Trump 2.0, the biggest change is that there are no such checks on the president. When he attacks longtime allies, his team doubles down instead of pushing back. And when he cozies up to autocrats, they cheer him on with sadistic glee. “I’ve never been more proud of President Trump,” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the erstwhile Russia hawk, gushed after Trump and Vice President JD Vance pounded beleaguered Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy into submission in the Oval Office. Over the past weeks we have seen 80 years of US foreign policy turned on its head by one man, without any resistance from his advisers, Congress, or the American people, who seem too shocked, apathetic, or scared (or perhaps a combination of all three) to take to the streets.

All at Once

If there is a silver lining for US allies nearly two months into the second Trump administration, it is the speed with which it has clarified US policy intentions on a number of fronts. Trump sees Russian President Vladimir Putin as a trusted ally. Trump doesn’t care about the fate of Ukraine and is plotting to oust its wartime president. Trump is determined to expand the territory of the United States. Trump is intent on destroying the EU. Trump cannot be counted on to respect the mutual defense clause that is at the heart of NATO. Trump is hitting US trading partners with tariffs no matter what they do to appease him.
 
The signs may have been there, but no one in Berlin, Brussels, Kyiv, London, Ottawa, Taipei, or Tokyo expected Trump to unleash a geopolitical earthquake of these proportions. As one European Commission official told me: “We prepared for different scenarios. We did not expect all of the most negative scenarios to hit us all at once.” The crumbling of relations with the Trump administration is forcing policymakers to reassess their most fundamental assumptions and principles.
 
German chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz, a zealous fiscal hawk only a few weeks ago, has now hatched a plan to bypass Germany’s debt brake and invest hundreds of billions of euros in the country’s underfunded military and infrastructure. There is talk of extending the French and British nuclear umbrellas across Europe. And the term “de-risking” is now being used as frequently in connection with the United States as it is with China. Meanwhile, European, Canadian, British, and Japanese officials have begun quietly discussing what G6 coordination, excluding the United States, might look like. Some are convinced that G7 and NATO summits planned for June are already doomed to fail and might be better off cancelled.

Weak in the Knees

On a recent trip to Brussels, it was also clear that the rapid deterioration in transatlantic relations has begun infecting the European debate on China. I was told that in recent weeks the European Parliament loosened years-old guidelines for its members (MEPs) that placed restrictions on meetings with Chinese counterparts due to the sanctions Beijing imposed on MEPs back in 2021. Some are interpreting the move as a possible first step toward reviving discussions on the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), which collapsed four years ago because of the sanctions.
 
Some European member states are also going weak in the knees. Spain and Italy, I was told, joined Hungary and Slovakia in recent weeks in opposing an EU statement that would have condemned Chinese cyberattacks across Europe, arguing that it was not the right time for needless provocations of Beijing. “We’ve lost the Spanish. And the Italians are hedging their bets,” one EU official said. Another described European unity on China as being at its “most fragile in years”, with southern European countries desperate to attract Chinese investments.

Positive Agenda

The Dutch, who haven’t flinched in the face of massive pressure from China related to their export controls on ASML chipmaking machines, have been urging other member states to stick together on China. France is holding firm in the face of Chinese tariffs on cognac, and there is hope that a new German government led by Merz will adopt a tougher line, bringing Berlin closer to The Hague and Paris. “Which way Germany breaks will be really important,” one European diplomat said.
 
But the split among member states is also evident within the Commission ahead of a late-March tripto China by Trade and Economic Security Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič. Some officials see the visit as an opportunity to reestablish a positive agenda between the EU and China. Others feel this is the worst possible time to go hat in hand to Beijing. Six weeks of Trumpian madness, they say, should not be allowed to torpedo the leverage that the EU has built up painstakingly with Beijing over years. This may mean a period of high tension with both Beijing and Washington, but ultimately the EU will come out better if it sticks to its guns. “It’s not as if we can stop defending our industry from China because the US is no longer an ally,” one Commission official said.

Blood, Sweat, and Tear

What is clear is that Europe will need to develop its own approach to China, distinct from that of the Trump administration. My expectation is that some ideas that came out of the Biden administration, such as outbound investment screening, will die a slow death. Europe will become more aggressive in defending and promoting its own industry, as China and the United States have done, even if World Trade Organization rules are stretched to the breaking point. Two new strategies published by the Commission in recent weeks, the Clean Industrial Deal and the Industrial Action Plan for the automotive sector, make this clear. But the dream of a “like-minded” group of liberal democracies that work in tandem to develop a common market and compete with China is over. Europe will increasingly be on its own. “We are in a Churchillian world. It will be blood, toil, tears, and sweat for a while,” a senior EU diplomat said.