BRUSSELS — Europe's manufacturers could give up trying to compete with their Chinese counterparts by the end of the decade if current trends continue, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, Jens Eskelund, has warned, in an interview reported by The Guardian on Tuesday, November 10. Eskelund, who also serves as a managing director of shipping group Maersk's Chinese operations, was speaking in Brussels, where he has held back-to-back meetings with European Commission officials to pass on feedback from Beijing.

Source: The Guardian (Lisa O'Carroll), Nov 10 2026

€1.18 billion a daythe EU's record trade deficit with China — yaani about 118 crore euros every day
0.5%forecast cut to EU GDP by the end of the decade from Chinese exports — Goldman Sachs, cited by Eskelund
0.9%forecast cut to Germany's GDP over the same period — Goldman Sachs
2030the point by which Eskelund says manufacturers could stop competing head-on

His message was blunt: in a case of 'if you can't beat them, join them', European companies operating in China are now thinking that 'Made in China for China' could be replaced by a philosophy of 'Made in China for the world'. Eskelund said European manufacturers could find themselves at an existential crossroads by the end of the decade, asking themselves: 'What is the point of trading?'

Source: The Guardian (Lisa O'Carroll), Nov 10 2026

Join the supply chain, instead of fighting it

As the EU gets tougher with China — with the deficit running at a record £1 billion (€1.18 billion) a day and an increasingly protectionist mood in Brussels, Berlin and Paris — Eskelund said European countries might need to shift their policies to allow domestic manufacturers to become part of Chinese firms' supply chains, rather than treating those firms only as competitors. He said Europe is at an inflection point, The Guardian reported.

Source: The Guardian (Lisa O'Carroll), Nov 10 2026

The warning lands weeks after EU ministers vowed to tackle what analysts call 'China shock 2.0' with negotiated deals to curb surging Chinese imports — the defensive track Eskelund is now questioning. Read the earlier report: EU ministers vow to tackle 'China shock 2.0'

What is solid

  • Jens Eskelund, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, warned in Brussels that EU manufacturers could stop competing directly with Chinese rivals by 2030 if trends persist — The Guardian, Nov 10
  • The EU's trade deficit with China is running at a record €1.18 billion a day — The Guardian
  • China's trade surplus with the EU is still growing at around 30 per cent a year, and China's 2026-30 five-year plan doubles down on self-reliance — Centre for European Reform

What is only claimed

  • The Goldman Sachs figures Eskelund cited — Chinese exports lowering EU GDP by 0.5% and Germany's by up to 0.9% by the end of the decade — are a forecast reported by The Guardian, not an outcome; other estimates, cited by the CER, put the drag at 0.2-0.3 percentage points off German GDP growth each year through 2029
  • Whether governments will accept Eskelund's prescription: no EU institution has adopted his supply-chain proposal, and the bloc's current direction is toward more trade defences, not fewer

The 'China shock 2.0' behind the warning

The Centre for European Reform's recent analysis, which Eskelund's remarks echo, says China's export volumes grew at more than twice the pace of global trade in 2025 and gained further strength in early 2026, with first-quarter export volume growth of 15 per cent — while European exports underperformed. Analysts had estimated China would export 10 million cars a year only by the end of the decade; on the CER's figures, China's fourth-quarter 2025 car exports, annualised, already hit that mark. The CER urged Germany to stop 'admiring' Beijing and change its strategy.

Source: Centre for European Reform, 'China shock 2.0', 2026

For readers outside Europe, the stakes travel along the same supply chains: Maersk, Eskelund's own employer, moves a large share of the world's container trade, and any European decision to embed its factories inside Chinese supply chains — or to wall them off — will move prices and orders for manufacturers and exporters from Punjab's auto-parts and bicycle belt to ports on every continent.

Source: The Guardian (Lisa O'Carroll), Nov 10 2026

What happens next

Eskelund's Brussels round was feedback, not a decision: no policy change was announced on Tuesday. The test comes in the EU's next trade-defence and industrial-policy steps — whether Brussels follows its current path of product-by-product curbs on Chinese imports, or begins, as Eskelund urges, to redesign policy so European firms can plug into Chinese supply chains instead of only competing against them.