At a European Parliament meeting last week, a European Commission official provided an update on the status of the first case under the EU's International Procurement Instrument (IPI), which addressed barriers in the Chinese medical devices market.

In two recent WTO meetings, for which the minutes were recently circulated, China raised concerns with a range of EU measures: EU steel tariffs, an Italian decree on renewable energy sources, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the Industrial Accelerator Act.

Last week, political leaders in the EU debated taking stronger action to address trade imbalances with China, but ultimately put off deciding on a specific action until later in the year.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) downplayed fears of a "full-blown" trade war with the European Union on Thursday, stating that trade communications remain "smooth" and that Brussels has explicitly indicated a trade war is not its goal.

The EU is moving forward with new rules on steel to protect the EU market from "global overcapacity," a move likely to exacerbate trade tensions with China in the process.

Last week, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič discussed a number of aspects of current EU-China trade tensions, which have become a bit more heated in recent weeks as the EU discusses a potential new instrument to address imbalances in its bilateral trade with China.

A new academic paper examines how China uses anti-dumping investigations as a retaliatory response to anti-dumping/countervailing duty investigations it faces in other countries, focusing on the example of China's pork investigation in flipping Spain's vote in the EU electric vehicle case.