In April, the gap between what the European Union imported from China and what it sold back reached €31.9 billion — equivalent to roughly €1 billion every single day. The figure, drawn from Eurostat's latest official data, is the largest such monthly deficit on record, and it arrived just as European heads of government were preparing to meet and discuss what, if anything, they intend to do about it. The number is striking not only for its scale but for its trajectory: Rafael Jimenez Buendía, a senior fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, has noted that Chinese customs data for goods still at sea suggests the deficit is unlikely to narrow when May and June figures are released in July and August.

The composition of the imbalance matters as much as its size. Chinese electric vehicles, manufactured by an industry that receives heavy state subsidies, are a visible part of the story, but so are the everyday industrial components flowing into European factories from Chinese suppliers. Alexander Julius, president of Eurometal — the trade body representing European steel product buyers — argues that this dependence carries strategic risks that go well beyond economics. "If you end up relying on China, China can dictate what parts will be made available to us that we are not producing any more, they will dictate the quantity and the price," Julius warned, adding that defence supply chains could prove especially vulnerable.

The anxiety inside Brussels echoes an older American trauma. Analysts have begun referring to a potential "China Shock 2.0" — a reference to the industrial hollowing-out that struck the United States after China joined the World Trade Organization more than twenty years ago, leaving behind what became known as the rust belt.