Ongoing trade disputes and U.S. President Donald Trump's constant hectoring about Europe's failure to meet defense spending targets have ended up sealing the belief that the transatlantic community was in deep trouble, writes Dr Michael Ivanovitch.
U.S. President Donald Trump's hostile statements about the European Union and the Atlantic military and political alliance are among the many things he disowned — upon reflection, or under pressing advice from his horrified security experts.
People with short memory and idiosyncratic agenda take Italy's regal welcome to Xi during his visit Mar 21-23, and Rome's acceptance to participate in China's Belt and Road project, as a seminal event marking an irreparable breach of transatlantic union and solidarity.
All those examples are just fragments of a vast China-EU trade. According to the China Railway Corporation, freight trains, running along the Belt and Road itineraries, are now connecting 59 cities in China to 49 cities in 15 European countries. Last year, 6,363 freight train trips were made between China and Europe, a 73 percent increase from 2017.
China will continue to deal on trade and investments with individual EU countries, partly because it will take time to put in place the new leadership of the EU Commission. Apart from that, nobody knows what the Commission will look like after the parliamentary elections in late May, much less what its trade mandate will be.
That is also a world apart from Washington's position, where the Belt and Road is considered to be China's design of expanding its global economic and political influence to challenge America's world order. One can, therefore, easily dismiss the call for EU sovereignty, and the ambition to play on equal footing with the world's two largest economies. But one cannot ignore the view that the EU apparently no longer sees itself as an ally and partner in the transatlantic community.
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