Product-specific tariffs can stop one flow, but not necessarily the wider export push behind it. China’s manufacturing system is present at many points of the same value chain.
That is why a narrow tariff can miss the wider problem. Electric cars and wind turbines are only the visible end of longer chains. Behind them sit lithium processing, battery materials, cells, generators, magnets and other inputs where Chinese suppliers remain central.
The examples differ, but the logic is the same. When one door closes, China’s manufacturing system can find another point of entry.
The steel case shows the risk. EU trade defence may close the finished-product route, only for another route to open one step earlier in the value chain.
That “one step earlier” is semi-finished steel. Finished hot-rolled flat steel is one of the product lines directly targeted by EU trade-defence measures. But before steel becomes a finished coil or sheet, it can enter as a semi-finished slab, a large block of steel that can later be rolled or processed inside the EU.
The sequence matters. In 2017, the EU imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese hot-rolled flat steel. China’s direct presence in one key finished product line, HS720838, collapsed almost immediately. Later, in 2019, the EU added a broader steel safeguard quota system for imports from outside the EU. That quota system was not China-only, but by then Chinese finished hot-rolled steel had already largely disappeared from this direct import line.
From 2022, China starts to reappear upstream. EU imports of Chinese semi-finished steel under HS720712 rise sharply, and the flow is overwhelmingly concentrated in Italy. Semi-finished steel was not included in the anti-dumping duties set back in 2017. So China is no longer very visible as a direct supplier of this finished steel product, but it becomes visible one step earlier, as an input entering the EU processing chain.
Put the two lines together and the pattern becomes clear. The 2017 anti-dumping duties appear to have pushed the direct finished-steel flow almost out of the EU market. But the value chain offered another route. Semi-finished steel, such as slabs, sits one step earlier than finished hot-rolled flat steel. That product line was not hit in the same way.
China does not reappear in the same finished product line. It reappears one step earlier in the supply chain.
The melt and pour traceability rule
The EU has politically agreed on a new steel import regime from 1 July 2026. It would sharply reduce the volume of steel that can enter under quota and raise the duty on imports above those quota volumes to 50%.
It also introduces a melt and pour information rule. In plain English, the EU does not only want to know where a steel product was last shipped from, or where it was finally processed. It wants to know where the steel was first made, meaning where it was melted and poured into its first solid form.
Why does that matter?
Because China’s steel overcapacity can move through the value chain. Chinese steel may be exported in one form to another country, processed there, and then re-exported to the EU in another form. Customs origin may show the last country of processing. But the steelmaking stage, where the steel was actually created, may still have happened in China.
That is the logic behind melt and pour. It is not only about the last stop before the EU border. It is about where the steel was born.
Indonesia and Turkey are among the top five destinations for Chinese slabs, a semi-finished steel product classified under HS720712. In turn, the EU imports significant volumes of finished flat-rolled steel, HS720838, from both countries: 24% from Indonesia and 16% from Turkey.
This does not prove that those EU-bound products were made from Chinese slabs. But it explains the traceability concern. Customs origin may show Indonesia or Turkey, while the steel itself may have been first melted and poured in China.
China has objected politically and says it is negotiating with the EU within the WTO framework. But the EU does not need a WTO green light before applying the measure. China can challenge or negotiate, but the absence of a WTO decision before 1 July does not by itself block the EU regime.
That is where the steel case returns to the broader point. A product-specific measure may work on the product it targets. But China’s manufacturing system is broad enough to move the pressure elsewhere in the value chain. For the EU, the question is no longer only how to tariff a product. It is how to follow the chain.
A few years ago, EU-China trade was still mostly a specialist topic. Today, it is a political story.
Global Times is a useful source to track this shift, not because it offers neutral coverage, but because it belongs to China’s Party-run media ecosystem and carries a built-in tone. That is why we are not measuring sentiment in the usual media sense. We asked a narrower question, how has Global Times’ EU-China trade narrative changed since 2020, relative to its own baseline?
The exercise was deliberately narrow. We looked at Global Times items on EU-China trade and trade-related economic friction from 2020 Q1 to 2026 Q2, excluding pieces where trade was only incidental. Relevant items were grouped by quarter and coded on a simple five-point scale, from +2 very positive to -2 very negative.
The pattern is clear. Global Times’ EU-China trade narrative was relatively positive around the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) period in 2020 and early 2021. It weakened after the political break over the agreement, stabilised somewhat in 2022, and then deteriorated again from 2023 as de-risking, tariffs on e-cars and trade-defence disputes moved to the centre of the relationship. The sharpest negative phase came in 2024. A brief softening in 2025 and early 2026 did not last.
In Q2 2026, the tone has dropped back to a very confrontational level.
Compared with Global Times, Yuyuan Tantian, is less a newspaper voice than a state-media signalling channel: more embedded, more explanatory, and useful for reading how China wants a dispute framed.
The signal is clear. If the EU moves from sector-specific investigations to a broader general tariff against Chinese goods, China is using this outlet to suggest that retaliation will follow
China’s solar industry remains caught in overcapacity and fierce price competition at home. That pressure is still moving outward through exports, and the EU is taking a larger share.
In Jan-Apr 2026, China’s photovoltaic-panel exports rose 22% year on year by value worldwide. But the split is more revealing: exports to the EU increased by more than 30%, while exports to the rest of the world rose by 19%. The EU’s share of China’s solar-panel exports also climbed, from 34% in Jan-Apr 2025 to 37% in the same period of 2026.
The message is uncomfortable for Brussels. Even as the EU worries about Chinese solar overcapacity, it is absorbing a larger share of China’s solar export flow.
EU fines Temu over illegal-product risks
The Commission’s fine against Temu is not just about individual bad listings. It is about platform responsibility.
Brussels says Temu failed to properly assess the risk that illegal or unsafe products are reaching EU consumers through its marketplace. For the Commission, the issue is not only what is sold on Temu, but how the platform’s own design may help risky products circulate.
In the meantime, the CCCEU, a Chinese business lobby in Brussels, frames the case less as a product-safety issue than as a test of how the EU treats Chinese platforms under its digital rulebook.
In April 2026, the value of China’s hybrid car shipments to the EU more than tripled, rising 230% year on year. Electric car shipments also kept momentum, growing 80%.
Exports of electric cars to the EU stood at US$1.7bn, while hybrids almost reached US$1.2bn, about US$800mn more than in April 2025.
Overall, China’s electric and hybrid car exports to the EU increased 120% compared with the same month last year. In April, the EU accounted for about one-third of China’s worldwide electric and hybrid car exports by value.
China’s aviation-kerosene exports fell by roughly half in April. This is not a statistical blip. Beijing tightened control over refined-fuel exports, including jet fuel, to protect domestic supply during the Hormuz disruption.
Turkey and Morocco sit at opposite ends of the EU’s Mediterranean neighbourhood, but China’s trade pattern with both looks remarkably similar. Since 2020, Chinese exports have surged, and the surplus has widened almost in parallel.
For the EU, this matters beyond bilateral trade. China’s export-heavy footprint is growing not only inside the EU market, but also around its immediate Mediterranean perimeter.
The Jan-Apr supplier mix hides some movement inside the period. In April alone, Brazil rose to second place, accounting for 15% of China’s crude-import volume, while Russia’s share increased further to 24%.
China now has more people aged 65 and over than children aged 0-14. Including the 60-64 group, people aged 60 and above account for almost 23% of the population.
China’s PMI employment subindex remains below the 50 threshold. In May 2026 it stood at 48.6, better than the same month in 2023, 2024 and 2025, but still signalling contraction rather than expansion in factory employment. The PMI employment subindex tracks whether manufacturers are adding or reducing jobs. Below 50 means factory employment is still contracting.
