When Donald Trump announced the introduction of massive tariffs on April 2, 2025, Xi Jinping began a standoff. China, having had the traumatic experience of a trade war under Donald Trump's first presidency, has prepared for a resumption of hostilities after his re-election. Initially, the Chinese president decided not to negotiate with the United States, leading to a trade escalation that culminated in tariffs reaching a staggering 145%. This level amounts to a virtual paralysis of trade, which was unsustainable in the long term for both the United States and China, given the current intertwining of the two economies. The two parties returned to the negotiating table and reached an agreement. Very skilful in its communication, China also revealed on this occasion the extent to which it had strengthened its arsenal to use in the context of a trade war. An arsenal that it has deployed against the United States, but also against the European Union.
The trade war is an economic issue but also a political one. Following the US announcements of April 2nd, 2025, the Chinese government and Xi Jinping demonstrated great skill in terms of communication. China's goal was to present a very tough stance against American blackmail to the Chinese public, while at the same time creating an image for itself as a respectable and responsible power internationally.
On April 4th, at a press conference, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson indicated that, whatever the nature of the trade war desired by the United States, China would "fight to the end," in other words, it was not prepared to make concessions, much less give in to American pressure. As is customary in China, officials chose their words to convey a different tone inside and outside China's borders. The objective? Appearing firm towards the United States to their fellow citizens, without international opinion perceiving the degree of virulence employed. For example, the sentence " 中国从来不吃这一套 ! " used vehemently by the Chinese foreign affairs spokesperson on April 4 roughly translates to "China has never stooped that low". The character "套", in Mandarin, refers to all the tricks used by the Americans to carry out their blackmail... but also the ready-to-go menus of American fast food chains, which are considered in China to be representative of Western food. The spokesperson's attack is therefore actually more contemptuous in Chinese than in its English translation. It reduces the American model to its fast-food chains and implicitly presents China as culturally superior to its adversary. Of course, these subtleties can escape translation: Western media have presented this sentence in its attenuated version: "China will not give in to American blackmail." Initially innocuous, this sentence nevertheless went viral on Chinese social networks in the weeks that followed. Many "goodies" (mugs, t-shirts, etc.) using it are still available on the country's e-commerce sites such as Taobao.
This discursive strategy, far from being a novelty, allows China to satisfy its population, while appearing, especially in contrast to Trumpian verbiage, respectful of its interlocutors. In this case, in parallel with this coded sentence, China continued to seek dialogue and negotiation with the US side without anyone seeing any major inconsistency, even winning the case in Geneva. On May 12th 2025, the United States and China published a joint statement, a starting point for a solution negotiated between the two actors.
Scalded by the United States' tariff policy during Trump's first term, the Chinese government anticipated the resumption of hostilities with the American power. Since 2020, Beijing has been preparing for a new confrontation and has put in place a set of tools and levers to be activated in the short and long term to avoid being subjected to American diktat.
In 2018, the first episode of the trade war between the United States and China was poorly anticipated on the Chinese side. In order to put in place tariff barriers against Chinese imports, the United States had to break its commitments made to the international community, particularly to the World Trade Organization. This withdrawal seemed very unlikely at the time. Indeed, the WTO, a pillar of international trade law, was until then supported by the United States. The first trade war thus ended with a "Phase 1 agreement" by which, tied hand and foot by a tariff escalation that was still unique in its kind, China committed to importing more than 200 billion dollars in American products. It should also be noted that it ultimately did not honour this agreement.
Despite the Democrats' return to power in 2020, the Biden administration did not let up on the offensive. Not only were the measures put in place during the first Trump presidency maintained, but others were added, including controls on the export of semiconductors. Strengthening this policy was also the subject of one of the last measures taken by President Biden before leaving the White House last January.
Meanwhile, China has strengthened its economic arsenal. It has implemented public policies aimed at freeing itself from its dependence on Western markets. This is the case of the dual traffic policy (2021), which consists of penetrating foreign markets while limiting imports and dependence. The fruits of this policy are reflected in Chinese import data, which show a decline in the share of products from the European Union and the United States in favour of products purchased in Asia.
As early as 2020, China also laid the legal basis for using export controls. In 2023, it attempted to use this new development in Chinese diplomatic practice to support its industry and influence the negotiations in which it was engaged. Chinese export controls operate like a tap: they can be opened to varying degrees and affect some players more than others. It relies on licenses obtained from Chinese provinces. In this way, one American company may obtain the right to import a component while another is denied the license. An American company that has a license may have it denied upon renewal or may be arbitrarily denied following a directive from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
Three other tools have been added:
By early 2025, China had added new US entities to the Unreliable Entities List and added US companies to the Export Controls List (including Boeing) before (temporarily) releasing the pressure on some of them once tariff negotiations with the United States had begun.
Moreover, a few days before Liberation Day, the Chinese government published the working mechanism of the anti-sanctions law, including means of "punishing" on national territory any actor (persons and organisations) imposing international sanctions on China, as well as any "initiator" of these operations (article 3). We naturally think of the European automotive sector, and particularly the French one.
In just a few years, China has equipped itself with a veritable arsenal of economic and commercial tools giving it the means to reduce its dependence on Western countries. In the short term, it can adopt very targeted and destabilising policies against these adversaries – in a style ultimately very similar to that of Donald Trump.
This new Chinese arsenal, used at the beginning of this year in response to American tariffs, could have very real-world consequences for the European Union and its member states. Chinese export controls on raw materials such as rare earths are much more flexible and agile than European anti-economic coercion tools. Unlike the latter, Chinese systems do not bother with the constraints imposed by international trade law. The European Commission based its decision on a year-long investigation following a complaint from European manufacturers, establishing that China had largely subsidised its automobile export sector, before sanctioning electronic vehicles from China. Conversely, Chinese "lists" can target EU member countries or some of their companies overnight, without any motivation. At the beginning of June, a press release from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association warned of the impact of recent Chinese export control measures on rare earths and magnets on European production lines. In the case of the automotive sector, therefore, the EU risks finding itself in a particularly uncomfortable situation when facing China, which wants the European sanctions on Chinese electric vehicles to be lifted, as it has the ability to prevent European car manufacturers from producing new vehicles due to a lack of raw materials, through export controls.
The various tools of economic coercion recently put in place by Beijing are not only intended to serve the context of the struggle between great powers that it is engaged in with the United States. They can also be used to put pressure on a company or organisation that implements a policy unfavourable to Beijing. Last March, China added 10 US companies on the list of unreliable entities due to their technological cooperation with Taiwan. Similarly, China added the American textile group PVH to the list of unreliable entities, indicating that it pursued a discriminatory policy towards cotton sectors from the Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The EU is not in a secure position. Whether it is the lifting of sanctions on Chinese electric vehicles, the reopening of the European medical device market to Chinese companies, or pushing the EU to ratify the Sino-European investment agreement, negotiated since 2012 but buried in 2016, there are many reasons for Beijing to maintain the uncertainty and volatility that have particularly characterised international trade since the beginning of the year.
China is better prepared for a trade war than it was five years ago. In step with the United States, it applies the law of the strongest, after having strengthened its means of response. This weakens the image of a responsible great power that Beijing wants to project abroad. But given the economic stakes, and its competition with the United States, it is unlikely that China will refrain from using its new weapons. A conscientious follower of rules, Europe is today very alone in its defence of the regulations governing world trade. The fact that the United States and China are now quite openly breaking away from them risks significantly worsening global instability, both politically and commercially.