Over the past five years, EU-China linkages continued to grow as US-China ones shrank.
Despite efforts by the Biden administration to convince the European Union to wean itself off Chinese imports, the opposite is happening. Europe has grown more dependent on China in recent years as the United States has become less so. This increasing divergence in US and European economic interests may make it harder for them to agree in the future on national security and technology policies involving Chinese imports. Washington and Brussels encountered such difficulties previously over the US push to block sales of Huawei products and Chinese 5G systems in Europe on national security grounds. Similar clashes could lie ahead if recent import concentration trends continue.