News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
This week’s international think tanks’ focus: the trade implications from the European Union’s elections, reducing EU reliance on Chinese supply chains, the realities of United States’s industrial policy, ASEAN’s digital trade agenda – and streamlining EU action on critical raw materials.
Think tanks in Europe this week have been busy scrutinising the EU’s recently very active subsidy-industrial policy nexus.
The fourth meeting of the EU-US mega-talk shop called the Trade and Technology Council in Sweden has, in the eyes of most observers, been the most productive of them all so far. Although it hasn’t delivered on some big-ticket items, a slew of small deals and initiatives start revealing its …
Emergency Europe, a term forged during the eurozone crisis reached the EU’s trade policy during the pandemic. There are now-established patterns for many areas of trade policy affected by global and regional turmoil. Let’s brace for a more unpredictable EU.
Think tanks are busy churning out content and context on EU and US green tech industrial policies.
The European Commission released today a long-announced critical raw materials communication and a flanking Critical Raw Materials Act. The document spells out how the EU is planning to reduce its vulnerability to disruptions to critical raw materials supplies as demand for these products is inexorably rising as it rolls out …
The European Commission obtained very little from Washington in terms of concessions on the Inflation Reduction Act this week. There is in fact, little the EU can do to see the United States change course. In many ways the whole diplomatic episode around US clean tech subsidies that began in …
The EU is getting serious in securing its future supply chains as it eyes a few net-zero deadlines in 2030 and 2050 as well the phase-out of the combustion engine for automobiles in only thirteen years. This is heavily impacting its industrial, trade and investment policy – and that includes …
Those in the trade policy world who are looking for some big bang announcement from the European Commission as part of its ‘response’ to the United States Inflation Reduction Act will be disappointed – or relieved, depending on their point of view. The Green Deal Industrial Plan, a leaked version …
A bit of sarcasm can’t do any harm, right?
