The EU is preparing to curb Chinese imports of chemicals and industrial machinery, following a successful deal with Beijing that capped hybrid car exports to the bloc.

The European Commission “showed openness” to proposing safeguards, referring to an emergency brake on imports that can cover entire sectors, an EU diplomat told EUobserver on Thursday (15 October).

And there was “broad support” for the idea among member states for the commission to proceed, the diplomat said.

Last week, trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič agreed with Beijing to cap imports of Chinese hybrid cars at 350,000 next year, which was less than half the amount expected this year.

He called the deal a “blueprint” for other sectors, a view which was publicly echoed by EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, also on Thursday. 

Under World Trade Organization (WTO) and EU rules, anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases require Brussels to prove that Chinese firms sell at unfairly low prices or receive subsidies.

Safeguards do not need evidence under WTO rules, which allows them to be used as an emergency measure.

And the commission only has to show that a surge in imports is seriously harming European producers. 

“We like the idea, chemicals, machinery where there’s still a lot of Chinese overproduction needs to be managed,” said another EU diplomat.

The instrument had its limits: Safeguards have to apply to all countries, not just China, and can last no more than eight years.

The EU rarely uses WTO safeguards, but did so on steel, also aimed at China, which expired in June, after reaching the eight-year limit, and which have since been replaced by a separate EU steel regime.

And the Centre for European Reform, a prominent think-tank in Brussels, previously suggested exempting the EU’s 76 free-trade partners from safeguards so that the measures fell mainly on China.

It was a legal moot point in the WTO if that was OK, but the EU has done something similar before. 

Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and 10 other countries were left out of the steel safeguard, but using this tool to address Chinese imports was still seen as a temporary solution.

Before the end of the year, the EU commission aims to present diversification tools to reduce reliance on Chinese goods, as well as a mechanism to compensate companies hit by Chinese countermeasures.

And the package would include an instrument to shut Chinese companies out of the EU market if need be, in a measure first proposed in a Franco-German paper last week.

When the oil supertanker Esteem Explorer sails from the United States to Japan in late November, loaded with about 2 million barrels of crude, the journey will cost $81 million. The same journey would have cost $9.1 million last year, on average.

President Donald Trump promised that his tariffs would usher in a "golden age" by prioritizing the interests of American workers.

Those workers, however, are now turning against Trump's tariffs.

Support for the Trump administration's tariff policies has fallen by 25 percentage points among blue-collar workers over the past year, according to new polling data from Echelon Insights and the Economic Innovation Group (EIG).

A poll conducted by the two groups in August 2025 found that blue-collar workers supported the tariffs by a narrow margin. Now, that same segment of the population has turned decisively against Trump's tariffs: 58 percent oppose them, compared to just 36 percent who support them.

Overall, support for the tariffs has declined from about 43 percent last year to only 34 percent. Opposition to the tariffs has grown from 50 percent to 59 percent. Elsewhere in the same survey, 68 percent of respondents said the tariffs have made the cost of living higher.

It's not hard to figure out why people have turned against the tariffs: They have contributed to rising prices across the economy.

The annualized inflation rate ticked upward to 3.7 percent in September, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). More BLS data released Thursday morning shows that the producer price index, which often operates as a precursor to inflation, is up 6.3 percent over the past year.

America's war with Iran has been a major factor in rising inflation, but the tariffs have played a significant role as well. In a study released last week, the New York Federal Reserve concluded that consumer prices would have declined slightly over the past year if not for the economic effects of the tariffs.

The tariffs have become so unpopular that not even partisanship can save them. "Among GOP-voting workers, only 3 percent select tariffs as their top priority," note Jordan McGillis and John Lettieri, policy experts from the EIG, in their write-up of the poll.

Other parts of Trump's economic agenda are not faring much better. The Trump administration has bought or seized shares of more than 30 private businesses over the past two years—ranging from major firms such as U.S. Steel to small mining companies with few customers. "The federal government's state corporatism is unprecedented," reports the Cato Institute in a new analysis of those deals.

Large majorities of workers across both major parties and all generations said they opposed the federal government taking equity stakes in American companies in the Echelon/EIG poll.

In short: This economic populism sure isn't very popular.

All of this is likely to be a major factor in next month's midterm elections. Regardless of how that shakes out, however, there are lessons to be drawn from this poll for both sides of the political divide.

For conservatives, these polling data should end the tariff experiment. It has proven economically damaging, and it is no longer a political winner (if it ever was).

Remember, the idea to hike tariffs and start trade wars with all of America's biggest trading partners was not some grand plan backed by careful study and thoughtful analysis. It sprung, half-baked, from the head of one man. Yes, there have been various attempts to support, in a post hoc way, Trump's desire for tariffs. All of that can, and should, be easily discarded. There is no reason to allow a lame duck president to continue to set such a politically and economically destructive path for the country.

Undoing the tariffs might also put a meaningful dent in rising prices. That should be a no-brainer after the midterms, no matter which party controls Congress.

On the left, this poll should be a reminder that Americans do not look favorably on the mixing of government and business. Democrats should promise to unwind the "equity stakes" that the federal government has taken under Trump's watch. Heading toward the 2028 presidential cycle, Democrats might want to borrow some old Republican talking points about how government shouldn't be picking winners and losers—they may find that message is still quite popular.

Yes, it's probably right to be skeptical that those things will happen. Trump's efforts to centralize economic power in the executive branch are likely to outlive his presidency—that's how these things always seem to go.

But there is a glimmer of hope here. Americans are soundly rejecting the Trump administration's big government policies.

The post Even Blue-Collar Workers Have Turned Against Trump's Unpopular Tariffs appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Europe’s trade deficit with China reached a record $34.8bn [€31bn] in September, as EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday (15 October) to discuss Europe’s competitiveness agenda and what they call “macroeconomic imbalances” — a euphemism to avoid mentioning China by name.

EU heads of state and government are expected to give a mandate to the EU Commission to propose a set of trade defence measures and tools to reduce the EU’s reliance on Chinese industry, based on a new Franco-German blueprint, as a united front spreads across the bloc. 

There was a move towards a “surprising unitary position” on Beijing among member states, said an EU diplomat, ahead of a two-day summit in Brussels which began on Thursday (15 October).

A joint letter and policy paper submitted by French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz to commission president Ursula von der Leyen last week was viewed by many EU diplomats as marking a decisive shift towards a more consolidated EU stance on trade relations with China. 

“For a long time, there were significant differences between these two countries on how to deal with China, how to address the economic situation,” parliament president Roberta Metsola told reporters on Thursday. 

The diplomat added that the commission’s trade diversification package, designed to reduce the bloc’s reliance on Chinese industrial inputs and curb Chinese exports, will be presented by the end of the year and will be based on the Franco-German paper. 

But the commission, for its part, has downplayed the prospect of rapid progress to EU-Chinese trade statistics. “It’s an issue which is not going to be solved in a couple of months,” said one official. 

‘Be ready for escalation’ but do nothing

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

When a president starts with a predetermined policy and then goes looking for a statutory pretext to justify it, he is building on shaky ground. President Donald Trump illustrated that point once again in July, when he announced a third round of broad tariffs after his first two attempts ran into legal trouble.

Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump claimed to have discovered a previously unnoticed delegation of extensive tariff authority in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention import taxes and had never been used to impose them. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it.

Last February, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all. But Trump had a backup plan: Hours after that decision, he announced another sweeping set of tariffs, this time relying on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974.

That provision allows tariffs in response to "fundamental international payments problems" caused by "serious United States balance-of-payments deficits." In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that the new tariffs were illegal because Trump had failed to "identify balance-of-payments deficits within the meaning of Section 122."

Although that decision was stayed pending appeal, Trump's Section 122 tariffs, which were subject to a 150-day statutory limit, expired on July 24. Trump then switched to Plan C, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act, which authorizes tariffs in response to a foreign "act, policy, or practice" that is "unreasonable or discriminatory" and "burdens or restricts" U.S. commerce.

Trump's Section 301 tariffs supposedly targeted countries that had failed to "impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor." The alleged offenders included 86 economies that accounted for nearly all U.S. imports.

In separate complaints, the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) and the law firm Akin Gump, which had played leading roles in challenging Trump's prior tariffs, immediately asked the CIT to block the new import taxes. By and large, they noted, the government had failed to explain how the targeted countries had fallen short, how their alleged failures burdened U.S. commerce, or why the new tariffs could be expected to ameliorate the problem they were supposed to address.

The LJC argued that the forced-labor issue was "simply a pretext" for reinstating Trump's "invalidated global tariff regime." It added that Trump's reading of Section 301, like his interpretation of IEEPA, would violate the "major questions" doctrine, which requires clear congressional authorization for policies of "vast economic and political significance."

This was Trump's "third attempt" to "impose essentially the same set of sweeping global tariffs," Akin Gump's lawyers wrote. "The third time's not the charm."

The post Trump Keeps Coming Up With Legally Dubious Tariff Justifications appeared first on Reason Magazine.