China Cozies Up to EU as Trade Spat With U.S. Escalates

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BEIJING—China courted the European Union as an ally in its trade conflict with the U.S., offering to improve access for foreign companies and work with the EU on reforming the World Trade Organization.

At an annual summit on Monday, China gave EU leaders much of what they were looking for. Both sides committed to setting up a working group to look at a WTO revamp, made headway in reaching an investment treaty and pledged to cooperate on enforcing the Paris accord on climate change.

Read: China files complaint to WTO over U.S. tariffs: report

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang along with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker vowed their support for the global trading system at a joint press briefing. The two sides later released a statement enumerating their points of agreement, the first time in three years they were able to do so.


‘The architecture of the world is changing before our very eyes. I am calling on our Chinese hosts, but also on Presidents Trump and Putin to jointly start this process for a reform of the WTO.’


European Council President Donald Tusk


China and the EU are both battling the U.S. over tariffs the Trump administration said are needed to compensate for unfair trade policies. Monday’s summit came a day after President Donald Trump, in a CBS interview, named the EU as the U.S.’s biggest foe globally because of “what they do to us on trade.”

Even so, EU leaders are mindful that the bloc shares many of Washington’s criticisms of China’s policies they see as discriminating against foreign companies. Tusk, who on Sunday fired back at Trump saying on Twitter that “America and the EU are best friends,” on Monday cited a common responsibility to improve, not tear down the world order.

Tusk specifically called for new WTO rules to deal with government subsidies, protection of intellectual property and forced technology transfer—all issues that the EU and the U.S. have criticized China over.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com:

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Source : MTV