China’s goods prove hard to resist as US, EU maintain imports amid tariff bonanza

A think tank has found the US and EU have increased their dependence on Chinese goods – but for China’s imports, the opposite has happened

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The US and EU have maintained a level of dependency on goods from China despite a concerted effort to reduce trade in most sectors, think tank research has found. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 6:00am, 3 Oct 2024Updated: 10:01am, 3 Oct 2024

While China has reduced its reliance on goods from the United States and European Union, a German think tank said, use of the country’s products has increased “significantly” in the West over the past 20 years – even as trade restrictions against the East Asian powerhouse have steadily ramped up.

Though the EU and US need for imports from China can be seen most clearly in machinery and electronic equipment, some degree of dependence exists across a range of industries, the non-profit think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) said in an analysis released on Wednesday.

Textiles and furniture were deemed areas of “significant reliance” by authors of the report, which crunched numbers from as far back as 2000.

These findings come in the wake of increased US tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), EV batteries, solar cells and steel levied this year – the latest development in a six-year trade dispute which began after former US president Donald Trump imposed import duties on US$550 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Over the past year, the EU has stepped up anti-subsidy probes and raised tariffs on Chinese imports, mostly covering goods related to the lucrative EV industry.

The US relied “heavily” on imports from China in 532 of about 5,000 categories in 2022, the think tank said, nearly four times the figure recorded in 2000. The EU’s count for the same year was 421, about three times more than in 2004.