The trade deal is a “direct function of Europe’s weakness on the security front, that it cannot provide for its own military security and that it failed to invest, for 20 years, in its own security,” said Thorsten Benner, director at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, who also pointed to failures to invest in “technological strength” and to deepen the single market.
Just like the Qing leadership, Europe also scorned the warning signs over many years.
“We are paying the price for the fact we ignored the wake-up call we got during the first Trump administration — and we went back to sleep. And I hope that this is not what we are doing now,” Sabine Weyand, director-general for trade at the European Commission, told a panel at the European Forum Alpbach on Monday. She was speaking before Trump’s latest broadside on tech rules.
It is clear that Trump’s volatile tariff game is far from over, and the 27-nation bloc is bound to face further political affronts and unequal negotiating outcomes this fall. To prevent the humiliation from becoming entrenched, the EU faces a huge task to reduce its dependence on the U.S. — in defense, technology and finance.
Stormy waters
The Treaty of Nanking, signed under duress in 1842 aboard the HMS Cornwallis, a British warship anchored in the Yangtze River, obliged the Chinese to cede the territory of Hong Kong to British colonizers, pay them an indemnity, and agree to a “fair and reasonable” tariff. British merchants were authorized to trade at five “treaty ports” — with whomever they wanted.
The Opium War began what China came to lament as its “century of humiliation.” The British forced the Chinese to open up to the devastating opium trade to help London claw back the yawning silver deficit with China. It’s an era that still haunts the country and drives its strategic policymaking both at home and internationally.