The number Valdis Dombrovskis keeps returning to is a deficit. In Beijing in September 2023, the EU’s trade commissioner told his hosts the bloc faced a yearly imbalance with China of roughly 396 billion euros. In 2025, Reuters reported, the deficit with China reached approximately €1 billion daily.
Dombrovskis has spent those years as the European Commission’s most visible voice on the subject.
Beijing, 2023
He travelled to Beijing and Shanghai that September to co-chair the first in-person EU-China High Level Economic Dialogue since 2018, alongside Vice Premier He Lifeng. MERICS found little substance in the outcome. Talks covered market access, openness in the financial sector and data compliance, and the two sides agreed on a mechanism “to help EU firms comply with Chinese data laws” plus a working group on financial regulation. Beijing rejected the EU’s “de-risking” label, treating it as protectionism by another name.
In his public remarks, Dombrovskis was blunter. He warned that the EU and China faced “significant political and economic headwinds that could cause them to drift apart.” He raised Chinese subsidies in the electric vehicle market, and he called the ambiguity of recent Chinese laws a problem for investors: “Their ambiguity allows too much room for interpretation.” A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson replied that companies operating lawfully had nothing to fear.
He also tied trade to Ukraine, saying of China’s neutral stance that “Russia’s war is a blatant breach of this principle” of territorial integrity.
The 2026 follow-up
By October 14, 2026, Dombrovskis was speaking as European Economic Commissioner. The Martens Centre lists him as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People, and notes he was Latvia’s prime minister from 2009 to 2014.
Reuters reported that after a deal to halve Chinese hybrid car imports, he wanted the same treatment for other trade. “Those imbalances are not limited to the automotive trade,” he said. They go “across a broad range of sectors.” EU officials named chemicals, furniture, industrial machinery, steel and wind-turbine components as candidates for talks.
His message was that dialogue had run long enough. He said the EU would weigh additional measures if negotiations produced nothing. In Beijing, Vice Premier He Lifeng signalled, via Xinhua, that China was willing to work on stronger economic and trade ties with the EU.
Sources
- EU commissioner calls for more balanced trade with China, warns that Ukraine could endanger relations (PBS NewsHour / AP)
- Dombrovskis in China + Open criticism of China's economic direction + Tech de-risking (MERICS China Essentials)
- After hybrid car deal, EU needs to rebalance China trade in other sectors, Dombrovskis says (Reuters, via Yahoo Finance)
- Valdis Dombrovskis (Martens Centre)
