In comparison with the squaring-off between Washington and Beijing, tensions over trade between the EU and China seem almost quaint. But when the two meet at a summit in Brussels on Tuesday, the mood will be tetchy and suspicious rather than harmonious.
For several years, while successive US administrations have fulminated against China’s effect on its economy, the EU has taken a more emollient approach. These days the talk in Brussels is of an end to such “naivety”.
The leaders of EU member states — critically Germany, which used to be reflexively sympathetic to China — increasingly regard trade and investment relations as lopsided. Rumblings among European companies of unfair competition have taken on a harder, more geopolitical edge.