Europe urged to ‘learn to fight for itself’ in case US-China truce collapses

With a trade truce in place between China and the United States, Beijing has hit pause on more rare earth restrictions.

Photo: Chinatopix via AP European governments breathed a sigh of relief in October when the US and China sealed a fragile trade truce that paused more sweeping Chinese rare earth restrictions and papered over a Sino-Dutch row over chipmaker Nexperia.

Now, however, the European Union is being urged to come up with a battle plan should the ceasefire fail or expire.

A spike in superpower tensions could expose the EU to Chinese export controls, potentially pulverising its military support for Ukraine, its own efforts to rearm, as well as its broad industrial upgrade, according to a new paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

To ready itself, Europe must “learn to fight for itself” by realising the economic weapons at its disposal, but also figure out when and how to use them. “This could expire in a few months – what happens when this deal is over?

If China comes back and reinstates export controls you’d better be prepared.

We should not wait until the next crisis hits, you have to build up your cards now,” said Tobias Gehrke, an expert in geoeconomics at ECFR and lead author of the report.

The report identifies a swathe of economic weaponry in the EU’s arsenal that it could use in its dealings with China.

These are bundled as restrictions on its exports to China, on its imports from China, on Beijing’s access to EU infrastructure and a “wild card” group of tools that do not fit neatly into any category.

In each case, the goal is for Brussels to “escalate to negotiate” – in other words, to punch first or punch harder in order to extract concessions from the world’s second-largest economy.

In this regard, the researchers want the bloc to learn from how Beijing handled its own dealings with Washington in 2025.

The report, published coincidentally three years since European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would “de-risk” its ties with China, found that “de-risking” had been too slow and defensive. “De-risking has utterly failed,” Gehrke told the South China Morning Post, warning that even if the pace was picked up, focusing on making Europe resilient would not allow it to quickly react to dynamic situations such as last year’s Nexperia crisis.

It also lands exactly three years since the bloc agreed to adopt its anti-coercion instrument, a trade tool allowing it to hit back against economic b

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