Why Europe should put up trade barriers against Chinese goods

There are benefits far beyond protectionism.

Why Europe should put up trade barriers against Chinese goods There are benefits far beyond protectionism. Noah Smith Jun 06, 2026 352 37 42 Share Photo by Rohan Dixit on Unsplash As regular readers of this blog know, I’m pretty ambivalent about trade barriers as an economic policy. On one hand I think targeted tariffs and other trade barriers can be used to protect strategic industries from surges in underpriced import competition, especially by geopolitical rivals. On the other hand, broad tariffs like the ones Trump has used are generally bad — they hurt domestic manufacturing by making int

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