The European Union rolled out two new trade measures Wednesday targeting its widening imbalance with China, hitting small e-commerce parcels with a new customs fee and tightening rules on steel imports.
The EU's trade deficit with China widened in 2025 to around 360 billion euros, or roughly 1 billion euros per day, and has continued to grow in 2026. China's annual global trade surplus reached a near-record $1.2 trillion last year, even after higher tariffs introduced by the Trump administration.
The first measure removes a customs duty exemption known as de minimis, which had allowed parcels valued at under 150 euros to enter the EU duty-free. Starting Wednesday, those packages are subject to a new 3 euro fee. Chinese e-commerce giants Temu and Shein control about 90% of this category of trade, according to the European Commission.
"Today's change is about restoring fairness for European businesses and better protecting our consumers," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in an online post. "The surge in low-value online imports has put our retailers at an unfair disadvantage. Too many of these products also fail to meet EU safety standards, putting consumers at risk."
The scale of small parcel imports has grown dramatically. The Commission said 5.9 billion small packages were imported into the EU in 2025, compared with about 1.4 billion in 2022. At roughly 16 million packages per day, they represent 97% of import traffic but only 2% of import value. A majority were said to have failed safety tests and raised environmental concerns over plastic overuse.
The second measure targets steel. New rules set tariff-free quotas at 18.3 million metric tons annually and impose an out-of-quota duty of 50% on 26 types of steel. The Commission said the rules are designed to protect EU plants and jobs from what it called the damaging impacts of global overcapacity in a strategically crucial industry. China's subsidies for steel production have drawn criticism from officials in Brussels, Germany's Ruhr valley, and as far as Kyushu Island in Japan.
Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament's trade committee, welcomed the package. "Europe finally shows teeth against flood of cheap package deals," he posted online.
Not everyone is convinced the e-commerce measure will change much. Gary Ng, a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, said the 3 euro tax might not affect the big picture, calling it minimal compared to the price gap between European and Chinese goods. He added that customers and platforms can still make group orders to work around restrictions on individual small purchases. The U.S. made a similar move on small parcel exemptions last year.
