Washington mounted a pressure campaign to ensure EU countries did not waver under a counter campaign from Beijing to vote down Brussels’ proposed tariffs.
Chinese officials were dangling the carrot of lucrative investments for those opposing the duties, as well as the stick of retaliatory investigations into goods like pork, brandy and dairy that would disproportionately affect those who voted in favour.
In the run-up to the vote, analysts created countless charts to predict where each capital would land in the EU’s complex voting system, weighing how susceptible they were to Beijing’s retaliation against whether they could benefit from the EV tariffs.
Barely half a year later, the unity is being tested again, but with a twist: Europe is turning some of the weapons it had trained on Beijing towards Washington for potential use in the erstwhile allies’ worsening trade war.
