In 2025, 5.9 billion low-value articles entered the European Union, with over 90% coming from China. In Portugal, the value of these imports grew 227% between 2022 and 2025. Since July, the EU has charged a fixed customs duty of 3 euros per product category on orders up to 150 euros. The measure may be defensible for unsafe products and volumes that are difficult to monitor, but the article argues that consumer protection should not serve as a convenient explanation for the loss of European competitiveness.
The article questions the narrative that China is "squeezing" other economies. In the garment industry, Chinese wages are already five times those of Bangladesh and four times those of India, but China remains competitive because wages are only part of the total cost. Productivity, automation, infrastructure, logistics, digital platforms and rapid responses make up an ecosystem that cannot be easily reproduced. Furthermore, global supply chains are not merely substitutive, since Chinese fabrics, machines and components feed factories in other countries.
The article acknowledges that subsidies, product safety and reciprocity require rigor, but states that competitiveness cannot be reclassified as excess simply because a rival produces better. For decades, Europe transferred production, preserved consumption and tried to retain the power to set rules, discovering that regulating what others manufacture does not equate to possessing industrial capacity. The tariff may correct an asymmetry, but it does not produce cheap energy, train engineers or build suppliers.
The article concludes that the Chinese package is not the cause of European industrial fragility, but rather the receipt for past choices. The answer does not lie in automatic protectionism, but in competitive energy, productive financing, applied innovation, technical training, scale and speed of execution. No country has industrialized because a competitor was convinced to make room. Tariffs may delay the package, but they do not build factories or increase productivity. Europe does not need to ask China to produce less; it needs to regain the capacity to produce more.
