The most concrete challenge yet to China’s stranglehold on critical supply chains emerged this week not from a single capital but from the twin summits of Évian and Brussels. G7 leaders set an explicit target: by 2030, no more than 60 percent of imports of rare earths and permanent magnets should come from a single country, with a long-term ambition of 50 percent. The declaration carefully avoided naming China, yet the arithmetic left no doubt—Beijing currently controls over 90 percent of processing for some minerals. The Chinese foreign ministry swiftly condemned the formation of “exclusive economic blocs” and defended its export controls as lawful. Viewed from Brasília, the move was read less as a threat than as a geopolitical opening: Brazilian officials see a window to demand investment in local refining and technology transfer in exchange for access to the country’s own critical mineral reserves.

Almost simultaneously, EU leaders gathered in Brussels for a summit whose official agenda item—“global macroeconomic imbalances”—served as a diplomatic veil for the bloc’s rapidly deteriorating trade relationship with China. The figures are stark: the EU’s trade deficit with China rose 15 percent in 2025 to €360 billion, and the European Commission warns it could reach €500 billion by 2027. Luxembourg’s prime minister Luc Frieden called the imbalance an “existential threat” to European industry. A consensus has formed that the status quo is untenable, but the remedy remains contested. France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Denmark and Lithuania are pushing for new trade defence instruments modelled on America’s Section 301 investigations, which would allow the EU to impose tariffs in response to unfair foreign practices. Germany, Spain and Greece are far more cautious, acutely aware that their economies remain deeply entangled with Chinese supply chains and export markets.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz personifies this ambivalence. In Évian he assured business leaders that Berlin would not impose import quotas, wary of accusations of “planwirtschaft”—command economics—from German industry. Yet in Brussels he stuck to the script, avoiding China’s name even as he criticised currency manipulation that clearly pointed to the undervalued renminbi. The German position is under growing strain: the country’s chemicals, green-tech, machinery and automotive sectors are all reeling from what analysts in Frankfurt call “China shock 2.0”. Even so, Berlin’s instinct is to back new trade instruments only if they are “country-agnostic”, a formulation designed to avoid provoking Beijing. Belgian premier Bart De Wever, who days earlier had accused the EU of fearing China too much, struck a nuanced note after the summit, arguing that protectionism is not the answer but that Europe must urgently reduce its dependencies and respond to unfair subsidies.

The dual summits mark a rhetorical turning point, but the gap between ambition and execution remains wide. The G7’s 2030 timeline looks leisurely against China’s present-day acceleration in locking up mineral processing capacity. Inside the EU, the debate over who bears the cost of diversification—states, companies or consumers—has barely begun, and previous “de-risking” appeals from Brussels have largely gone unheeded by European boardrooms. Meanwhile, the geopolitical backdrop is darkening: several EU states are increasingly disturbed by China’s material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, adding a security dimension to economic grievances. The coming months will test whether the West can translate its newfound resolve into coordinated action before the window for shaping global supply chains narrows further.