Amb. Philip Reeker: With President Trump's long expected trip to China on the horizon, it's useful for us to take a look at how Europe is approaching China. Over the past 15 months, European thinking on China has been a mix of the pragmatic and the conditional, more willing to engage Beijing, where it helps cushion economic shocks from transatlantic turbulence, but also more determined to defend against China driven overcapacity, coercion risk and security spillovers. 

First, strategic hedging is back, but it's not a return to naivete. A striking feature of the last 15 months is the tempo of Western leaders traveling to China, often aimed at reopening channels, extracting economic wins and testing Beijing's willingness to address trade imbalances. With U.S. European frictions rising and policy swings in Washington harder to predict, many European capitals are retesting what strategic autonomy means in practice, especially on trade, industrial policy and supply chains. 

Second, Europe's de-risking line remains the leitmotif, but the policy toolkit is becoming more muscular. Europe is engaging, often with business delegations, but increasingly pairing that engagement with harder edged economic security policy at home. Defensive trade instruments, tighter screening and industrial policy designed to keep value chains in Europe. That's visible in steps like the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, Made in Europe, explicitly framed around reducing reliance on China. 

Third, geopolitics is back and is tightening the conditions of relations with China. Ukraine remains central to European threat perceptions. Across Europe, there's continued sensitivity to China's posture on Russia and the broader security environment, especially tech controls, dual use flows and resilience planning. 

The paradox for Europe is this, transatlantic tension can increase the temptation to engage China. But Europe's lived experience, coercion risks and supply chain exposures, subsidy driven competition and Russia's war against Ukraine means engagement is now more conditional and more defensive than it was in the previous era. If Trump's Beijing trip produces stability and predictability, Europe may welcome the reduced temperature. But if it produces volatility or a bargain that pushes China's overcapacity toward Europe, Brussels is likely to respond with even more de-risking tools, not fewer.