Europe and Asia mobilize to strengthen global systems that Trump attacked

The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said that "the common duty of Europe and China, but also of America and Russia is not to destroy this order but to improve it ". , he said, "but courageously and responsibly reform the rules-based international order".

Tusk added, "There is still time to prevent conflict and chaos."

But the absence of American involvement has for the moment triggered a rush of alternative partners.

The EU-Japan Trade Agreement, for example, Accelerated last year when Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that President Barack Obama and the Japanese envisioned as a bulwark against China.

The European Union and China are not natural allies of trade. Europeans, unlike the Trump administration, continue to push China over human rights violations. And over the past two years, in the face of Chinese investment, Europeans have become much more critical of Chinese industrial espionage, its cavalier attitude towards intellectual property and its ambitions to exceed the Chinese. Western in advanced technologies.

Summit meetings with members of the European Union and candidate countries, particularly in Central Europe and the Balkans, to stimulate strategic investments in infrastructure – creating bonds and debts that could jeopardize block unit.

China, especially the rules regarding data retention and the presence of Communist Party units at workplaces.

The European Union and China have nevertheless benefited from the rules-based order that Mr. Trump disputed. So, curiously, he gave them reasons to fill their differences. China, in particular, is turning to Europe to help consolidate the World Trade Organization so that it can face a serious trade war with the United States.