Can an alliance divided against itself compete with China?

On 20 January 2026, the U.S. Brookings Institute publishes an article entitled “Can an alliance divided against itself compete with China?” by Jonathan A. Czin, Fellow at the Institute’s Chair in Foreign Policy Studies. The article is published under the Institute’s Reimagining Europe’s Security project.

The article concludes that any attempts to appease China will be unavailing for both the USA and the EU. On the contrary, joint and coordinated pressure on Beijing is required.

The China policies of both the EU and the USA are stuck. They have gone too far down the path of competition with China to return to the earlier era of commerce and comity. Neither side of the transatlantic partnership seems able to chart a way forward for coping with the China challenge.

The Trump administration has climbed down from its trade war with Beijing and is trying to switch from competing with Beijing to mollifying it. In its 2025 National Security Strategy, the administration articulated more hostility toward the United States’ European allies than toward China.

On their part, a growing number of EU governments seem to be looking to China as a way to reduce the risks stemming from the United States.

There are at least three reasons why even aggressive EU measures will fail to change China’s behavior:

1. Demand for Chinese goods. Even after the EU imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in 2024, Chinese automobile firms like BYD increased their market share last year.

2. China has learned from its trade war with the USA. Beijing now knows that it can weather a de facto embargo and leverage its control of supply chains to get the United States and the EU to back down.

3. The European Union’s protectionism might make European companies even less internationally competitive with Chinese firms.

The EU is relatively isolated among other great powers. What today’s Russia, China, and the United States have in common is a conviction that a more coherent, unified Europe is not in their interest.

Even if the EU uses its Anti-Coercion Instrument against Beijing, those measures will hardly prompt China to change course.

Many analysts expected Beijing to start ‘charming’ Europe. Instead, China has preferred a tougher line on Europe, judging that it could subvert a unified European approach toward China.

The European and U.S. economic security tools will only have the desired impact on China if the United States and Europe, along with other major economies, act together.

The two most promising areas for transatlantic cooperation on China seem to be securing supply chains and enhancing the defense industrial base. The USA and the EU may find themselves jockeying over the same finite pool of resources, such as rare earth elements, that exist outside China.

The USA and the EU need to coordinate their efforts at dissuading China from enhancing its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Yet the prospects there seem limited. Those attempts have not survived contact with the reality of Moscow and Beijing’s deepening partnership.