China-EU trade tensions rise as Beijing levies anti-dumping tariffs on European brandy
Announcement comes as Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in Europe trying to resolve trade disputes, and one analyst says Beijing is ‘clearly disappointed by the EU playing hardball’
“There is dumping of related imported brandy from the EU, the domestic brandy industry faces a material threat of injury, and there is a causal relationship between the dumping and the material injury threat. The determined dumping margins range from 27.7 per cent to 34.9 per cent,” China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
The tariffs will take effect from Saturday, and there will be no retroactive imposition of anti-dumping duties on imports of the relevant brandy originating from the EU from October 11 up to and including Friday.
“Beijing has been holding back from actually levying duties in the hope of a softer EU stance on China,” said Xu Tianchen, senior China economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Now it’s clearly disappointed by the EU playing hardball despite the Chinese overture.”
China’s foreign minister was set to visit Paris on his tour, and the tariff announcement came a day before the July 5 deadline when China’s anti-dumping investigation was supposed to conclude. Wang’s trip has also been seen as preparation for the China-EU summit later this month.
The EU-China relations are not going well before the summit
“The tensions are clear, phase three investigations are open, and there are also ones on pork and dairy,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist at French investment bank Natixis. “Every time the EU commission says, ‘we’re done, no high economic dialogue’, which is what has happened, China will come with one investigation, let alone export control. They have a lot of leverage.