De-risk, don’t decouple, from the Chinese economy — this was the economic philosophy for the EU articulated by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at Davos last month. As organising principles go, it’s not a bad one, certainly better than Brussels’ nebulous “strategic autonomy” or the US’s disingenuous “worker-centred trade policy”.The EU has for years been attempting to attain and hold a middle ground. On the one side is the official US predilection for using its federal powers to decouple its economy from China’s. (It should be noted that it’s unclear how far this will work: overall US-China goods trade probably hit an all-time record last year.) On the other is the EU’s history of mainly letting commerce with China flow. But despite EU member states increasingly turning against Beijing, Brussels is struggling to construct tools to reduce a perceived dangerous reliance on Chinese trade.

Europe’s ability to use policy is particularly weak in sensitive technologies with military and security applications. The EU has its own collective mechanisms for designing export controls. When there’s an obvious threat, the EU can act swiftly, with unity and in co-ordination with Washington: the two trading powers rapidly imposed a broad range of export controls on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, from semiconductors to submarine engines.

But when a policy is more contentious and particularly affects one member state, EU processes are generally pushed aside in favour of national competence. The details of the reported US-Netherlands-Japan agreement further restricting the sales of chips and chipmaking kit to China remain to be seen. But it was the Dutch, with their comparative lack of economic and diplomatic heft, in the negotiating room with the US, not the EU collectively. The process was confidential and ad hoc, exactly the kind of environment in which Washington is particularly able to throw its weight about.