Unravelling the territorial weave of trade: Assessing EU’s vulnerability to US trade policy shifts towards China

In her political guidelines, President Von der Leyen emphasised the significance of “Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships” to en-hance competitiveness and decrease reliance on other world economic regions, while rein-forcing trade defence mechanisms. Within this policy context, this policy brief aims to help prioritising trade policy actions by un-ravelling the EU vulnerabilities and dependen-cies at three levels: EU, national and territorial, with a high industry detail. This brief is focused on the possibility of a change in US trade defence policy towards China in light of the forthcoming US elections, which may affect EU exports to the US with high Chinese value added content. At EU level, China accounted for around 18-27% of the foreign value added incorporated in the EU exports to US of motor vehicles, ma-chinery and equipment and computer and electronics. At national level, Germany and France alone cumulated more than half of the total Chinese value added content in the EU exports to US whereas other smaller Eastern European countries, such as Estonia or Hungary, showed high relative dependence levels. At regional level, Stuttgart and Upper Bavaria (Germany), Ile-de-France (France), North Bra-bant (Netherlands) and the Southern, and Eastern and Midland regions (Ireland) ac-counted for half of the total Chinese value added content in EU exports to US. Our findings can help informing EU trade de-fensive measures and prepare upcoming pref-erential trade agreements and investment partnerships to be more effective in the re-gions and industries that would be more im-pacted by US trade policy shifts towards pe-nalising the entrance of goods and services with high Chinese value added content.