Économie internationale : la fin d’un monde ?
There were three articles that particularly caught our attention in spring edition of the Politique étrangère periodical, which celebrates its ninetieth anniversary this year.
The first on the list, which was authored by Sébastien Jean, lecturer at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), discusses the “major break in globalisation”, from Donald Trump to Xi Jinping (our translation throughout). The author, who goes as far as to talk of a “global seismic shock”, begins by highlighting that although “not including trade deals (…), the United States applied an average customs duty of 3.3% on their imports up until early 2025 – one of the lowest figures of the major economies – the equivalent figure was 5% for the European Union”, their average customs duty was assessed at 16.8% in November 2025, “higher than all the other major economies, including India (16.2%), with its reputation as the last bastion of protectionism, and, of course, China (7.5%)”.
This vertiginous average increase has been accompanied by upwards or downwards fluctuations, many of which have been described as erratic. “Uncertainty is not a drawback or even an inconvenience, but a deliberate structural characteristic of modern-day trade policy. It aims to maximise the negotiating power of the American administration over that of its partners and, at the same time, to increase the restrictive effects on imports”, Jean explains.
What is the degree of relevance of this strategy? “On reindustrialisation, high and unpredictable levels of commercial protection create a new incentive for industry to relocate to the United States, to serve the country. It is too early to analyse the results of this, particularly as the announcement itself can often have misleading effects”, the author writes, adding that “if the aim is to take the fight to China in the field of industry and technology, the picture is barely any more positive: with an industry employing just 13 million in 2024, compared to around 120 million in China, the United States cannot hope to invert the industrial power balance […]. Whatever the President and his advisers may say on the subject, these taxes are effectively paid by American taxpayers: these have been the greatest tax hikes for a very long time. It was more or less offset by tax cuts, but its regressive and ineffective nature remains, for the short term and the long”.
In 2019, China’s trade surplus stood at around 430 billion dollars for all products and at over 950 billion for manufactured products, the author points out, adding that “at November 2025, over 12 consecutive months, it reached 1185 billion dollars for all products and 1940 billion for manufactured products alone (not including armaments), or around 15% of the imports of the rest of the world for the entire latter category. The scale of the imbalance is therefore massive, with no equivalent since the post-war period and growing considerably worse. This surplus is a huge challenge for international coordination”. This is particularly the case as “in clean technologies, the dominance is enormous: Chinese production capacity is the highest in the world for every single one of the 18 technological niches identified by the International Energy Agency: they account for more than 60% of the total in ten of them”. China uses this to leverage its influence, as it does with critical minerals, particularly rare earths, in which field it is responsible for more than 90% of global processing. “Export controls have been in place on gallium and germanium since August 2022, on processing technologies for rare earths for the production of permanent magnets since December 2023, on seven medium and heavy rare earths since April 2025 and, finally, on five additional rare earths since October 2025, with measures also covering ‘components and assemblies’ containing them”, Jean stresses.
Under the blows hammering down from these two major players, a “less unilateral, more transactional; less jurisdictional, more geopolitical globalisation” is taking shape and these changes represent a challenge to the European Union: “this politicisation of economic relations does not […] comply with its intrinsic logic. Nor is it favourable to its interests, because the EU does not have the same political cohesion as a State and because its functioning is arranged as a ‘silo’, partitioning various areas, with a considerably higher degree of ‘communitarisation’ in the economic field”, the author observes.
“Against the backdrop of worsening transatlantic relations, dependence on the United States is a vulnerability: given the rise in competition from China, which is now threatening the heart of its industry, with almost exclusively Chinese supplies for a vast range of industrial inputs (particularly the critical minerals and the principal pharmaceutical active ingredients) is an increasingly unacceptable weakness. There is an urgent need to limit this vulnerability and bolster the EU’s strengths, in order to have more weight in the power balance”, Jean argues. He goes on to observe that “awareness of this exists, but decision-making is lagging far behind. The ‘Niinistö’, ‘Letta’ and ‘Draghi’ report showed a willingness to look at the root causes behind the diagnosis, questioning the adequacy of the EU’s internal organisation to face the new order. The implementation of these has so far been broadly considered disappointing. The challenge is first and foremost one of coordination: a considerable challenge relating not only to commercial relations, but also to the way the internal market is structured, to industrial policy, defence and foreign affairs”.
The author goes on to conclude that “the EU should [also] make every effort to resist the restructuring of its commercial environment. This will require a revision of its partnership policies, no longer with an eye to optimisation, but to insurance. The priority is no longer to obtain new access concessions to our partners’ markets, but to agree on terms and conditions for cooperation that aims to strengthen mutual trust. We must build a new framework, so that we are not simply subjected to a new era of international trade, but play an active part in shaping it”.
“From opening up to the whole world to the European preference, and from the protection of consumers alone to protecting industrial producers as well: it seems like an exaggeration, but it sums up the inflexibility currently hampering the European Union and the management of its economy. Although the EU is resilient (European GDP grew by 1.6% in 2025), it is under threat of a ‘slow and painful death’, to use the terrifying metaphor coined by Mario Draghi in his 2024 report on European correctness. This diagnosis is nothing new; indeed, it is even considered old news, given the rate at which problems are afflicting the industrial sector”, Sébastien Maillard (Institut Jacques Delors) argues in the introduction to the second article.
Maillard stresses that the EU has set in place a number of defence instruments: filtration of foreign investment since 2020; the surveillance of foreign subsidies giving undue advantage in the acquisition of a European company since 2023; the anti-coercion instrument, which has never been activated, but was “threatened in January 2026 against American tariff pressure on eight European countries [in the context of the Greenland crisis] and [which] thus showed its political deterrent effect”. Additionally, there has been the application of anti-dumping duty, the application starting this year of customs duty of three euros on parcels worth less than 150 euros, “targeting billions of small packages flooding the European market from Chinese platforms” and the carbon border adjustment mechanism, which entered into force this year.
“Europe’s defensive arsenal will also very soon acquire legislation against cyber-attacks. It will eliminate components and equipment from foreign technology suppliers considered high-risk in certain European infrastructures, such as telecommunications networks, surveillance equipment and electricity and water supply systems”, Maillard writes, stressing that “removing behaviours, or even entire foreign operators, from the European market on geopolitical grounds, as discussed in the provision of satellite services, forces the EU to provide substitutions, it hopes to remain in the global race”.
“Europe’s attempts to make up competitive ground are thus offensive as well, with a restructuring of the European offering upstream. This will basically translate into several proactive economic initiatives to create the foundation of a European industrial policy – a concept that would not even have been entertained by many member states in the early 2000s”, starting with Germany. And “it is now the defence sector from which the industrial offensive will begin”, the author notes. This offensive is being sustained by the sharp increase in defence spending and a multitude of new community programmes and instruments (ASAP, EDIRPA, EDIP, SAFE), many of which were very hard won, and which have not yet put an end to the fragmentation of the defence market. As for the ‘European preference’, if, as Maillard writes, “its influence has already been felt in various recent initiatives”, it still comes up against strong resistance, particularly from the Nordic countries.
“The cornerstone of Made in Europe is expected from the Industrial Decarbonisation Act. This new regulation, proposed by the Commission, will introduce the principle of the European preference when awarding public procurement tenders, in community procurement and in the content used for production in certain key strategic sectors. The aim, which has not been uncontroversial among the Twenty-Seven, is for wind energy, green steel, robotics, nuclear, solar panels, small electric cars and their batteries, or other industrial products which will help to decarbonise the economy, but which have become overly concentrated in China, to be produced on European soil or include a minimum level of European components and inputs if they benefit from public aid”, the author writes, going on to point out that a revision of the competition policy will be necessary to allow the creation of ‘European champions’ who can take on global competition.
In another article, Marie-Claire Considère-Charon, honorary professor at the University of Franche-Comté, takes another look at Brexit. “Ten years after the referendum of June 2016, the United Kingdom is faced with a difficult economic and budgetary situation. Growth remains fragile, the public coffers are under strain and, before finalising the budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, struggled to find the leeway needed to pay for the modernisation of public services and support for investment”, she writes, before pointing out that in the second quarter of 2022, the United Kingdom’s gross domestic product was 5.2% lower than it would have been without Brexit. She adds that various studies show that the negative effects of Brexit on British growth are here to stay.
In addition to the economic effects, “Brexit was the catalyst for centrifugal forces in Scotland and Northern Ireland, putting the devolution model in place since the 1990s under serious pressure”, she relates, adding that “although support for Scottish independence rose in the year 2025, Scottish public opinion still seems divided on the matter: 49% of Scottish citizens are in favour of leaving the United Kingdom and 40% want a new referendum on independence in the next five years. The latter figure rises to 44% if the referendum was to take place in the next 10 years”.
“In the wake of Brexit, the United Kingdom found itself without the collective leverage provided by its status as an EU member state. This meant that the country was increasingly exposed to power relations at a global level and the risk of political isolation”, the author explains, adding that “the various strategies set in place, such as breathing new life into the Commonwealth, affirming Global Britain, pivoting towards the Indo-Pacific and maintaining a central role in the Euro-Atlantic space, reflects not so much a coherent and clearly-defined strategy as an attempt to offset the loss of its European anchorage. Trying to face many different directions at the same time lays bare the logistical problems and budgetary limitations of this international repositioning of the United Kingdom”. Additionally, the ‘reset’ of relations with the European Union undertaken by the government of Sir Keir Starmer is an overt admission of the failure of these offsetting efforts.
The fact remains that “British society is still divided on the question of leaving the EU and [that] 30% of respondents still think it was a good idea”. Considère-Charon goes on to conclude that “in the absence of consensus in favour of rejoining the EU, the political response quite rightly remains cautious. As for Reform UK, it is still a polarising factor and continues to bring pressure to bear on the government, despite the personal and media difficulties of its leader, Nigel Farage, which are undermining its credibility. Proposals for a pragmatic rapprochement with the EU, mooted for instance by David Lammy, are more about attenuating the negative effects of Brexit than any possible return to European integration”. (Olivier Jehin)
Politique étrangère. Économie internationale : la fin d’un monde ? (available in French only) Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI). Spring 2026. ISBN: 979-1-0373-1146-6. 242 pages. €23,00