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Finbarr Bermingham

For over a year, Europe has become the world’s geopolitical punching bag, taking economic roundhouses from the east and geopolitical uppercuts from the west without ever swinging back.
From US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and covetous glances at Greenland to Beijing’s rare earth embargoes and lightning blockade of semiconductor shipments, Europe’s first response has been to freeze, not fight.
But now, it may be ready to counterpunch. After a fresh Trump tariff threat emerged last week, a flurry of reports, data and blueprints in Europe revealed a range of regulatory blows the EU could land – if it is finally ready to hit back.
“We see very strongly that the rhetoric is shifting in Europe,” said Jonathan Barth, co-author of a study of Europe’s choke points by Geostrategic Europe Taskforce.
“It’s much clearer about the necessity for deterrence.”
One option, researchers in Germany said, was for Europe to hold Trump’s “enormous” nuclear energy plans to ransom by weaponising its supply of low-enriched uranium.
European suppliers account for about 80 per cent of US imports of the nuclear fuel and the researchers from Berlin think tank Dezernat Zukunft said the United States would have to continue to rely heavily on those sources as the country aimed to quadruple its nuclear capacity.
The think tank also highlighted industrial giant Siemens Energy’s dominance of the production of gas turbines used in massive AI data centres. If the German company sold its turbines to European rather than American buyers, it could cost US tech firms €50 billion (US$59 billion) at a time – just as they are racing to outcompete Chinese rivals in artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, weaponising the European Union’s giant consumer market against US tech’s “Magnificent Seven” – Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla – could jeopardise an estimated 23 per cent of their revenue, sending shock waves through the US economy.
“Such a stock market correction would not be an abstract financial event. It would propagate through society at great speed thanks to a systemic accelerant … state pension funds would suffer as well,” the researchers wrote.


At Barth’s Geostrategic Europe Taskforce, researchers identified 67 products where Europe supplied more than 80 per cent of US imports. There were also 41 products – none of them easily substituted – that China sourced overwhelmingly from the EU.
While China’s dependency on Dutch company ASML’s semiconductor photolithography is well known, less is said about its near-total reliance on Europe for large steam turbines for power generation, or the European presses it needs to make the particle and fibreboard for the housing industry.
In addition, leveraging the EU’s virtual monopoly on insulin and derivatives could send China into a public health crisis overnight – even if it is unimaginable at present.
“Contrary to widespread perceptions, Europe does possess significant tools of power … these dependencies are not easily or quickly substitutable and therefore constitute deployable instruments of statecraft,” the authors wrote.
The paper made clear that EU leverage would be amplified if it pooled its choke points with aligned middle powers such as Canada and Japan.
A terrifying arsenal is one thing, but using it is another – and it is still unclear whether Europe is ready to start firing.
Throughout 2025, the evidence was to the contrary. Through several rounds of US tariffs and Chinese export controls, Brussels kept its powder dry.
A senior source said that 2026 would likely be a year of stocktaking, in which Brussels assessed which cards it had to make a deal or outplay the US and China.
“We need to assess the right weaponry or leverage to use if you want to transact. Right now, we are using neither,” the source said.
But behind the scenes, mapping and scenario-planning have taken place.
Last December’s economic security policy update launched a continent-wide operating system to manage its growing arsenal of trade and competition weapons.
A new EU intelligence centre will track economic threats in real time – monitoring if China or others are trying to sabotage Europe’s efforts to reduce dependencies, and maintaining a blacklist of risky companies that should be blocked from EU contracts and funding.


Its much-hyped anti-coercion instrument, adopted in 2023, would allow it to respond forcefully to economic bullying. Nicknamed the “trade bazooka”, it remains unfired after Trump threatened duties if the EU did not change its sweeping digital laws.
When the Dutch government effectively seized the European operations of the Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia in October, meanwhile, The Hague admitted it was blindsided by Beijing’s ruling that none of the company’s finished semiconductors could leave its Guangdong plants, sending the European car industry into a tailspin.
“An assessment was made of possible counterreactions; this wasn’t the most likely reaction from China,” said Vincent Karremans, then the Dutch economy minister. The admission suggested Europe was far from prepared for this new era of weaponised interdependencies.
“Europe has a self-confidence problem. It has many key economic hubs that it could use in a weaponised relationship,” Abe Newman, an American political scientist who has pioneered research into the trend, said in an earlier interview with the South China Morning Post.
“Europe often does not see itself as this type of actor in the world, but it has all the tools. And my advice is that Europe needs to build both self-confidence and capabilities to manage these tools.”
A senior official familiar with the discussions said if Trump had not backed down from his threat to seize the Danish territory of Greenland in January, the anti-coercion instrument (ACI) “would certainly have been triggered”.
The triggering of the instrument could ultimately lead to bans on technology and services firms, quotas or tariffs, and exclusions from lucrative procurement markets.
Thus far, the 27 member states have been unable to align on its use, but, Barth said, it would be a Rubicon moment that would give birth to a more assertive and proactive Europe, less willing to be pushed around.
“The question is one of political will and Europe is undergoing a change in that, we saw with Greenland – discussions about the use of ACI was on the table quite quickly,” Barth said.
“The discussion will surface again and ultimately it’s a question of when we apply it for the first time. Once we cross this threshold, it’s a different kind of discussion.”


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China in the crosshairs as EU launches sweeping plans to save its industrial future

EU strips AI, chips and quantum from industrial plan aimed at countering China

Trump’s tariff wars reshaped US-China trade – at what cost to American firms?

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Is Europe, the world’s geopolitical punching bag, ready to hit back at the US and China?

Europe might have trade punches it can land on the US and China but is it prepared to use them? Photo: Reuters

Merz’s China tightrope: warm words, but hard questions for Beijing

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday. Photo: AP

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul cancelled a visit to Beijing late last year. Photo: EPA

EU too slow to act as China rewrites global trade rules, trade chief Sefcovic warns

Maros Sefcovic said Brussels is reviewing trade defence tools and monitoring imports of Chinese plug-in hybrid vehicles. Photo: AFP

Farewell to the ‘unipolar moment’: Europe scrambles for footing between US and China

Meeting in Munich on Friday are (from left) China’s Wang Yi, Germany’s Johann Wadephul and France’s Jean-Noel Barrot. Photo: DPA

‘China shock’ hangs over German leader Friedrich Merz’s first visit to Beijing

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to depart for his first official trip to China, with scheduled stops in Beijing and Hangzhou. Photo: AP

Friedrich Merz greets Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during the Munich Security Conference on February 14. Photo: EPA

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China

Diplomacy

The EU could land a range of economic blows if it wants to be more than a lightweight, researchers say


The EU could land a range of economic blows if it wants to be more than a lightweight, researchers say.


Is Europe, the world’s geopolitical punching bag, ready to hit back at the US and China?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The EU could land a range of economic blows if it wants to be more than a lightweight, researchers say

The EU could land a range of economic blows if it wants to be more than a lightweight, researchers say