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Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. Everything the OP mentions as a reason to continue trading with the US is also a reason for Europe to trade more with China. Historically the argument for not doing that is "look at their very different values and how they bully and threaten their neighbours, and remember that if you do business there their government will happily crush you with its arbitrary power as soon as you step out of line and even at the import/export any trade deals they do make will be them openly trying to screw you" The US isn't exactly in a strong position to continue making those arguments about why the world's other superpower is different with a straight face.

The US doesn't need to be cut out of world trade altogether (it won't be obviously) to lose a lot at the margin, with the chief beneficiaries ironically being the country the current US administration most hate...

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More than what? Europe trades a tremendous amount with China in the status quo. The argument you mentioned is real, but the EU never subscribed to it in the first place; they've consistently stated (e.g. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEM...) that trade with China is very important and they have no interest in decoupling, although they'd like to lower the trade deficit.

Well yes, and so does the US. But Europe has certain significant restrictions on trade with China in sensitive areas, and levies its common external tariff on Chinese imports. China would love those restrictions to be removed and to get a broad trade deal. And other countries that consider themselves broadly aligned with the West have considerably less decision-making inertia than the EU

I don't think China would love to get a broad trade deal. Analysts in both Europe and the US generally agree that the Chinese government cultivates unbalanced trade as a matter of policy. (Indeed, one of the things that's supposed to happen as part of the US-EU "trade deal" is joint action on metals to counteract persistent Chinese overcapacity.)

A broad trade deal would be unbalanced in China's favour; they manufacture more and at lower cost. But the US isn't exactly selling the message of being the better partner right now.

Neither of them are acting like good partners right now, thus the trade disputes. Smart money has to be on the US getting a less crazy leader sooner than China stops pursuing its long-standing mercantilist ideas.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by a broad trade deal? As of 2023, a large majority of imports from the US and close to a majority of imports from China were tariff-free. (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...) The remainder are on goods that the EU doesn't want entirely free trade in for some reason or another. I could definitely imagine a scenario where China follows in Trump's footsteps and bullies the EU into pushing their tariff-free percentage higher, but I wouldn't call that broad and wouldn't expect it to produce radical shifts in the import-export activity of EU businesses.

Europe is not going to trade more with China, if anything, they want to trade less with China, if you look at the recent events.

- Europe signing trade deal with US

- China: We can’t afford for Russia to lose Ukraine war https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-cannot-lose-war-ukraine-09.... In other words, China is attacking Europe via Russia.

- China is in a great depression. Their only economic engine is export, and Europe is steadily putting up tariff walls.

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