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Welcome back. De-risking rather than decoupling. This neat phrase to describe the EU’s way of dealing with China was first coined by Ursula von der Leyen in early 2023 before becoming official EU policy a few months later. The European commission president frequently recites it. But the formulation is looking a little threadbare. There has been too little de-risking in terms of trade and investment and now European governments and companies are under pressure to decouple from both China and the US.
I’m at ben.hall@ft.com.