China’s customs agency said Wednesday that exports jumped 36.3% in September from a year earlier, just as Brussels prepares to confront a trade deficit its own Commission president now calls unsustainable. The figure beat economists’ expectations and accelerated from 25% growth in August.
Imports climbed too, rising 31% year-on-year from August’s 28.2%. But the gap between what China sells and buys kept widening. Beijing’s trade surplus reached $133.5 billion last month, up from $119.1 billion in August. High-tech goods such as semiconductors and autos have helped fuel the rising shipments overseas.
The European Exposure
The numbers land hard in Europe. The EU’s goods deficit with China hit €360 billion ($402 billion) last year. In the first six months of 2026 alone, it had already reached €200 billion. The imbalance isn’t confined to one corner of the economy. Trade deficits exist in machinery, textiles, basic metals, chemicals and cars.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called such a deficit “unsustainable” and promised the EU would use every possible means to reduce it. That’s a notable shift in tone. According to the base reporting, the Commission’s focus has moved away from improving access for European companies to Chinese markets and towards letting China sell less into the bloc.
What Brussels Has Delivered So Far
The first concrete result came last week, when the EU and China struck a deal on hybrid car imports. European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic called it a “very good result” but cautioned that it was only a first step in the wider process of rebalancing. He met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026.
Dialogue alone won’t finish the job. A senior Commission official said on Monday that talks were unlikely to complete the rebalancing on their own, and that the Commission is likely to propose the first further measure in December. The official didn’t specify what form that measure would take.
The sequence is telling. A preliminary deal on one product category, concluded about one week ago, has already been followed by a surge in Chinese export data suggesting the underlying pressure hasn’t eased. Autos and semiconductors, the very categories driving China’s September growth, are sectors where European manufacturers compete directly.
The Policy Question
The Commission’s pivot raises a practical question for member states: how far should trade defence go, and who decides? Trade policy is an area where Brussels holds genuine competence, which makes the Commission’s December proposal the next test. National governments with large industrial bases will face different exposure than those with lighter manufacturing sectors, and the base reporting offers no detail yet on how the burden of any new measures would be shared.
Why This Matters:
A €200 billion deficit in six months puts real numbers on a concern European industry has raised for years: competitiveness can’t be rebuilt while the single market absorbs an ever-larger volume of subsidised or surplus goods. The Commission’s shift from market access to import reduction signals that Brussels now accepts this. The December proposal will show whether the EU can act with speed and discipline, or whether the process stalls between institutions and capitals. For taxpayers and workers in manufacturing regions, the outcome bears directly on jobs, investment and the fiscal base that funds everything from defence to public services. The stakes are economic. But the test is political: can Europe defend its industrial base without retreating into a spiral of retaliation?