Comment by joe_mamba

I get the same feeling. German car manufacturers had most of their growth in the past two or so decades from the Chinese market. But now they lost the EV race and CHinese customers prefer Chinese EVs to German ones(Porsche alone lost 99% operating profits!), so they are desperate to offload those cars to new markets any way they can, even at the expense of poor trade deals that might damage other sectors of the EU economy long term.

It's not a coincidence that EU suddenly signs trade deals left and right with the utmost urgency, see the recent Mercosur deal. The coffers are going dry and they need to bring in every euro they can no matter the future societal cost.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but personally I'm skeptical these trade deals will lead to an increase in purchasing power and QoL for the average EU working class citizen in many countries, who've seen a stagnation or even decrease in the last decade or so.