Under the influence of core US concerns, the US is clearly working behind the scenes to strengthen ties with China. Companies like Apple see stable trade with China as a condition for greater innovation and higher revenue, says Paul Verhagen, an expert on the US and analyst at the Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS) at BNR’s Boekestijn and De Wijk.

The whole policy of the US government is to bring companies back from China. Restoration, nearby And friendship, An impasse appears to have been reached. This indicates that ending the era of neoliberalism as a theory is not so easy, says Verhagen. ‘Market forces ensure that factories are located where they belong: not where it is cheap and strategically useful.’

Europe was unfit for the coming war

Verhagen says that the EU as an institution more or less evolved from that neoliberal era and does not seem fit for the coming ‘struggle’. According to him, the EU is a pacifist free trade scheme where doing business with questionable regimes is not excluded. “That doesn’t work and being pacifist offers very little protection against Russian tanks. If those two pillars disappear, what about the EU? That’s the big question now.’

Europe seems no longer able to see the consequences of its own actions, while the Americans seem to have learned from their overly protectionist attitude. According to historian Arendt Jan Boggestig, Germany’s report last week speaks volumes in this regard. ‘I fell off my chair: 150 billion euros divestiture. Germany is destroyed in this way. We are de-industrializing and some of them are going to America.’

Also Read | Europe and America disagree on China’s economic independence

According to Verhagen, if you want to change the entire neoliberal system, the entire system of how organizations operate must be overhauled. ‘Then we have to think about the relationship between the companies and the government. This often means that companies must receive state support, similar to the European model. It’s a real shock that America is moving away from what they’ve been saying for 30 years: free trade, free trade, free trade.

Making money is important to big companies

The idea was that free trade would lead to a democratic China. But that turns out to be an illusion and it creates room for change for all parties, says Verhagen. ‘It’s very important for those big companies to make money. These are organizations with their own interests and political agendas and know how to lobby well. So that’s definitely a factor: they want to trade as much as possible because cut off It costs them money and innovation.’

Also Read | European Parliament debates uneasy relationship with China

This partly explains why there has been such a diplomatic spat between China and the US in recent weeks. “It’s really a series at this point,” notes HCSS’s Rob de Wijk. ‘Negotiations have been going on behind the scenes, most recently in Malta. Now the United Nations General Assembly is debating whether to organize a dialogue between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in November.

Mocking is progressing

This is how the European school traditionally succeeds making fun of There seems to be more and more turmoil in the US, especially now within the Chinese political leadership, says Arend Jan Boekestijn. ‘It’s like we’re exchanging pennies: Americans choose to scoff, and now the European Commission is going to impose tariffs on all those Chinese electric cars. Now Europe is in trouble with China, and the Americans have become wiser.’

Also Read | ‘We have to play well against China or we will have problems’