Resilience by design : a new EU Foreign Economic Policy to counter global disorder

The pledge to develop a new foreign economic policy sits at the heart of the European Commission's Political Guidelines published in July 2024. This ambition has become even more pressing in light of US President Donald Trump's 'America First' trade policy, signalling a disruptive shift in global economic relations. The new Trump administration's stated aim is to bring back manufacturing jobs, rebuild the US industrial base, and onshore a broad range of critical value chains. At the core of this agenda is a single guiding principle: reindustrialisation. Trump 2.0's 'reciprocal tariffs' could lead even more EU companies to move production to the US. Another consequence could be a surge in highly subsidised Chinese exports flooding global markets.