The European Union is moving toward passing legislation that would allow it to curb imports of heavily subsidized foreign products. The legislation doesn’t single out any particular nation; although, the Peoples’s Republic of China is infamous for such subsidies.
Those subsidies allow PRC businesses to sell their products at less than their cost of production in order to sell at lower prices than European businesses can due to their own, unsubsidized, costs of production. That allows the PRC to put those businesses out of business and to seize nearly all of the market share. In the aggregate, this cascades into steadily increasing PRC influence over European economies.
Naturally, the PRC wants to continue this domination, so it’s threatening countermeasures if Europe continues with the impudence of defending itself.
Chinese authorities could initiate anti-discrimination and supply-chain security investigations into the EU’s “overcapacity instrument,” a social media account run by China’s state broadcaster said Friday, citing unnamed sources.
If the EU advances the tool, China will take immediate action and deploy comprehensive countermeasures, it added.
Of course, that retaliation wouldn’t matter if Europe’s nations were doing no business with the PRC or with businesses domiciled there.
The PRC keeps providing reasons for discontinuing business with or within it. It’s time for the EU and for Europe’s nations individually to act on at least some of those reasons, for their own economic survival.