"Amid growing Sino-American competition, we would expect the US and China to deploy ‘binding' and ‘wedging' strategies to encourage Europe to align with it against the other. As this article shows, however, in the realm of trade, their behaviour has been less strategic – and more haphazard, volatile and contradictory – than theories of great power competition would predict. Driven primarily by domestic political considerations, the US and China's actions on trade have alienated, antagonized and repelled Europe rather than encouraging it to align with either of them. Instead, external threats from the US and China have served to strengthen EU unity and resolve to maintain its strategic autonomy. Navigating threats from both sides, the EU has charted its own course, seeking to defend the rules-based multilateral trading system, while also developing new tools to better defend its interests, including ones specifically designed to promote internal binding and counter external wedging."

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