Emmanuel Macron
In an interview with the Echos newspaper, Emmanuel Macron said that China’s trade surplus is unsustainable because the country imports very few European goods. He emphasized that he had already discussed the issue of retaliatory measures with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
“China is striking a blow to the European industrial and innovation market, historically based on machine tools and automobile manufacturing,” Macron said. As the publication notes, the situation has become critical for Europe amid the growth of Chinese exports to European markets and the high competitiveness of Chinese industry.
Macron also said that the U.S. protectionist policy aggravates the situation in Europe by redirecting Chinese trade flows to European markets. He said Europe was caught “in the middle,” a situation he described as a matter of “life or death” for European industry. “We have become an adaptation market, and this is the worst-case scenario,” he added.
Macron returned from a three-day state visit to China, where he pushed for more investment amid Paris’s drive to renegotiate relations with the world’s second-largest economy.
According to French Treasury data, the goods trade deficit between France and China was about €47 billion last year, while Chinese data showed China’s trade surplus with the EU rose to nearly $143 billion in the first half of 2025, a record for the half-year.
Note that tensions between Paris and Beijing escalated in 2024 after France supported the EU’s decision to impose duties on Chinese electric cars. In response, China set minimum prices for French cognac, which raised concerns among pork and dairy producers about similar measures.
