18 Business Spotlight 6/2019 GLOBAL BUSINESS
Foto: Zuma Press/action pressnot only of Europe, but also of Canada
and Japan. All these countries, and espe-
cially trade-reliant Germany, are heavily
invested in China, so the choice between
Washington and Beijing isn’t really East/
West or good/bad. Instead, it’s existential.Europe divided
If we look north, we can see how disunit-
ed Europe is on this issue. The Swedish
EU trade commissioner, Cecilia Malm-
ström, is fully committed to multilater-
alism. She sees China as an economic
rival, but not as a political enemy, and
she completely rejects Donald Trump’s
polices. “The EU is a community based
on the rule of law and, as such, treaties
and the international order are corre-
spondingly important to us,” she told
Der Spiegel. The Danish former NATO
secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmus-
sen, however, argues that the transat-
lantic alliance should work more closely
together to challenge Beijing, which he
sees as a political and military enemy.
In Brussels, the think tanks are busy re-
thinking the meaning of “economic sov-
ereignty” in the face of the global reali-
ties of power politics. The EU lacks clear
direction in this new world order and its
founding principles leave it poorly posi-
tioned to deal with China and the United
States as they try to gain geopolitical ad-
vantage by using their economic muscle.
That, by the way, is the view repre-
sented in a new joint paper written by
the economic think tank Bruegel and
the European Council on Foreign Rela-
tions. Prominent scholars, including Jean
Pisani-Ferry, Jeremy Shapiro and Gun-
tram Wolff, have put together a set of
recommendations for the next Europeancommitted: be ~ to sth.
[kE(mItId]
, sich für etw. engagieren
correspondingly
[)kQrE(spQndINli]
, (dem)entsprechend
muscle [(mVs&l]
, hier: Stärke
paper [(peIpE]
, hier: Publikationreliant
[ri(laIEnt]
, abhängig
scholar [(skQlE]
, Wissenschaftler(in)
sovereignty
[(sQvrEnti]
, Souveränität
treaty [(tri:ti]
, AbkommenThe hawk: Nazak Nikakhtar
hawk: 1. a type of large bird that catches small birds and
animals for food 2. a person who strongly supports the use
of force in political relationshipsNazak Nikakhtar, a 45-year-old lawyer and econo-
mist, is a hawk when it comes to Donald Trump’s
trade relationship with China. She’s the acting
head of the US Commerce Department’s Bureau
of Industry and Security at a time when it’s in the
news because of the president’s disputes with Bei-
jing. People familiar with her views say she would
prefer to untie the two economies rather than de-
velop closer links between them.
An idea of how Nikakhtar sees things was re-
vealed in a congressional testimony she gave in
2017, when she said that the American “commit-
ment to free and fair trade” was not always shared
by others. She added, “I watched US industry
struggle to stay alive ... our output was declining
and good hardworking Americans were losing
their jobs because our trading partners were not
competing fairly.”
Nikakhtar played an important role in writing a
report in February this year that defined automo-
tive imports as a threat to US national security.
This provided the legal basis for Washington to
propose tariffs on the EU, Japan and South Korea.
What makes Nazak Nikakhtar particularly inter-
esting is that her family fled Iran when she was six.
Her views on what’s happening these days in the
Middle East are not known, but it’s possible that
she shares them with another hawk, John Bolton,
the US national security adviser.Beijing [)beI(dZIN]
, Peking
Commerce
Department
[(kQm§:s
di)pA:tmEnt] US
, Handelsministerium
decline [di(klaIn]
, zurückgehen
hawk [hO:k]
, Falke; Hardliner in
der Politik
output [(aUtpUt]
, Produktion(s-
leistung)
tariff [(tÄrIf]
, Zoll(gebühr)
testimony
[(testImEni]
, Aussage
untie sth. [)Vn(taI]
, etw. (voneinander)
lösen, entflechtenTalking tough:
Nazak Nikakhtar