The world’s three dominant economies are entering a combative phase that threatens to deepen fault lines and challenge decades of free-market orthodoxy as the US deploys trade weapons borrowed from China’s playbook, leaving Europe at a crucial crossroads.
Then-US President Donald Trump fired the first shots with tariffs on China seven years ago, and then President Joe Biden led the US into the new era of industrial policy.
Phase three, punctuated by Biden’s latest round of tariffs on Chinese imports, builds on the first two: using tariffs to defend US interests, with subsidies now at the core of the policy and without fear of retaliation.
