French international trade expert and president of export promotion think tank Alain Bentéjac published a signed column in Le Monde on Friday, calling for a “coalition of the willing” to defend the international trading system against the twin pressures of American unilateralism and Chinese dominance.
Bentéjac draws on Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s speech at Davos this year, where Carney proposed a coalition of middle powers as the only viable counterweight to great-power hegemony — an idea modeled on the coalition supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. Bentéjac argues that international trade urgently needs the same approach.
In his view, the current trade crisis stems from the fact that the two dominant players in the global system — the United States and China — have each, in their own way, stepped outside the multilateral framework. The U.S. has long undermined the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism, and under President Trump, tariffs have become a pure instrument of coercion, used to threaten allies who oppose his positions on Greenland or peace initiatives, and even Canada if it reaches any agreement with China. Bentéjac finds this strategically contradictory: if China is America’s chief systemic rival, why alienate potential allies like the EU rather than building a united front?
China, meanwhile, benefits from Western divisions. While publicly professing respect for WTO rules, Chinese exports continue to flood global markets. In 2025, China’s trade surplus hit a record $1.2 trillion. Its share of global exports has grown from 4 percent when it joined the WTO in 2001 to roughly 20 percent today. In 2024, China filed 1.8 million patent applications, compared to 501,000 for the United States and just 135,000 for Germany — a sign that China’s industrial rise now reflects genuine innovation, not merely subsidies and dumping.
Bentéjac concludes that conventional trade defense tools are no longer sufficient. The EU, as the world’s largest trading power, must take the lead in forming a coalition of countries still committed to shared rules, and work to rewrite the framework for a new era of globalization.
Source: Radio France International, February 21, 2026
https://rfi.my/CSkg