Emmanuel Macron has just put a very sharp edge on Europe’s China debate, warning that the EU may have to move toward US-style “decoupling” and tariffs if Beijing doesn’t address what he calls an unsustainable trade imbalance. Fresh from a three-day state visit to China, the French president told that China’s ballooning surplus with Europe is “killing its own clients” because it imports “hardly anything” from the EU anymore.

If Beijing doesn’t change course, he said, “in the coming months we Europeans will be obliged to take strong measures and decouple, like the US, like for example tariffs on Chinese products”, a threat he says he has already discussed with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Europe’s car stocks sold off because Brussels just proposed turning a temporary steel “safeguard” into a tougher, quasi-permanent shield. The European Commission wants to halve the volume of steel that can enter tariff-free to roughly 18.3 million tons a year and to double the duty on excess imports to 50%.

For automakers that already buy about 90% of their steel in the EU, the issue is less about access than about price: cordoning off imports at tighter quotas typically lifts domestic benchmarks, narrows choice of grades, adds paperwork, and nudges contract premia higher. That is why ACEA warned of inflationary pressure even as it acknowledged the steel industry’s need for some protection.

China’s oil refiners are adopting a cautious stance in global crude markets as a mix of geopolitical uncertainty and weakening domestic demand erodes their profitability and dulls appetite for spot purchases.

Traditionally active in securing discounted barrels from sanctioned producers like Iran and Russia, Chinese buyers—especially the smaller independent refiners known as “teapots”—have notably scaled back their activity in recent weeks. Teapots are pulling back from the spot market due to squeezed refining margins, heightened volatility in international oil prices, and sluggish domestic fuel consumption.