Arya News - Trump’s global trade rampage has left the European Union and China seeking improved trade and investment relations. But that’s not a realistic prospect, says veteran Hong Kong-based Italian financial analyst Angelo Giuliano.
Much of the bloc’s former and current top leadership (including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, France’s Emmanuel Macron and NATO chief Mark Rutte) are members of the Atlanticist club or have spoken at its meetings.Second, the EU doesn’t decide its own fate, a reality demonstrated by Washington’s success in decoupling the bloc from Russia’s cheap, plentiful energy resources, and forcing it to import much more costly US LNG, Giuliano said.This left the EU"s industrial output uncompetitive globally and triggered widespread deindustrialization as hundreds of companies downsized, stopped production and shifted production abroad, including to the US.Washington can and will do the same vis-à-vis Europe and China as it consolidates alliances against the emerging, BRICS-led multipolar world order, Giuliano believes.Other IssuesBesides US vassalage, closer EU-China ties are stymied by other factors, like:Ultimately, enhanced EU-China would be possible, and advantageous, Giuliano says, but only if Brussels "had a more neutral stance" in international affairs, "siding a little bit with BRICS and also the Belt and Road Initiative."In the US"s "grand geopolitical chessboard", the EU remains "one of the big, most important parts," Giuliano summed up.