The strategy that is paying fruits in China

After the exchange of Fulfilled, kisses and public hugs between Pedro Sánchez and Xi Jinping During the last days in Beijing there is more than diplomatic protocol. A calculated maneuver is at a critical moment. Spain, with a commercial deficit with China of almost 40,000 million (more than 70% of its total deficit), see in this commercial war a window of opportunity.

The strategy is direct: while Europe in internally debate what position to take Before Trump’s commercial war, Spain has chosen unilateral action. Take advantage that China needs European allies against isolation imposed by Washington for get commercial concessions that would be difficult in normal circumstances.

The Four signed protocols To unlock pigs of pigs, cherries, medications and cosmetics are the result of this approach.

And the interesting thing is that both parties They stage this friendship by finding exactly what they need:

• Jinping gets the photo that shows that it has not been diplomatically isolated.
• Sanchez achieves concrete commitments that can begin to correct the commercial imbalance.

When the Spanish president says that “Spain sees China as an EU partner” (softening the “competitor and systemic rival” of the European Official Dictionary) is using diplomatic capital to try to get economic advantages.

Thinking that this movement is risking a crisis with the United States is an incomplete thought. Spain is in that intermediate and gray space created by Trump when it paralyzed tariffs worldwide except China. This three -month parenthesis is an opportunity to make commercial advantages to China and have better cards when the truce ends and the tension returns.

For now Spain has achieved concrete agreements and not only statements of intentionsunlike Brussels, at the moment focused on funambulism between China and the United States.

Time will say whether this is enough or not to really advance in the rebalancing of the trade balance. Or if they are nothing more than small symbolic concessions by China. At the moment it seems clear that Spain has achieved something that Europe is still debating: Convert the tension between blocks into good opportunities for its exporters. In other words: fish in a scrambled river.

Spain has been able to strain through a narrow and perhaps temporary slit, but it can bear fruit when the world commercial situation stabilizes.

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