Brussels is increasingly determined to ensure core industries survive if confrontation with Beijing proves unavoidable
5-MIN READ5-MIN1 ListenFinbarr Berminghamin BrusselsPublished: 10:00pm, 20 Jul 2026As trade tensions with China reach boiling point, EU officials are ramping up engagement with Beijing in search of an off-ramp.Quietly behind the scenes, though, Europe is preparing for a trade war. In Brussels, a steely determination has set in to ensure the bloc’s manufacturing heartlands are not deindustrialised by the “China Shock 2.0”.With some industries already haemorrhaging jobs, the EU’s resilience-building and de-risking plans are now laced with deterrents as Brussels looks to acquire leverage and credible retaliatory tools that would allow it to respond if China uses trade coercively.
But a question that is increasingly being asked is: could Europe actually win?
Few in Brussels share the hubris of US President Donald Trump, who in March 2018 said “trade wars are good, and easy to win”.
