France calls for tariff barriers to protect against Chinese imports

French Finance Minister Eric Lombard believes that Europe should strengthen tariff barriers to counter Chinese imports that threaten the region’s industrial economy, Bloomberg reports.

Europe has already taken measures on steel and cars, but the rules need to be changed to allow for broader use of such measures, Lombard said at an economic conference in Aix-en-Provence late last week.

“In the world we are in today, we must protect our industry. We must do it on all industrial segments, otherwise the Chinese policy that consists of having a production capacity of more than 50% global market share in each sector will kill our industry,” the minister said.

Lombard’s appeal was supported by French Industry Minister Marc Ferracci. According to him, another worrying phenomenon is the redirection to Europe of Chinese flows that were previously directed to the US.

The ministers’ comments came amid growing tensions between the parties. Recent examples of this include Chinese anti-dumping duties on European brandy and EU duties on Chinese-made electric vehicles, as well as Beijing’s decision to shorten the two-day summit with EU leaders, scheduled for the end of July, to one day.

Paris is also concerned that US President Donald Trump’s tariff efforts could redistribute global trade flows, and there is a risk that this could hit Europe in several areas.

As GMK Center reported earlier, European Commission recently created a new monitoring tool to help protect the bloc from sudden and potentially destructive surges in imports. The system aims to prevent harmful trade diversion, which occurs when significant quantities of goods that cannot enter other markets due to high tariffs and other restrictions are redirected to the EU.