In Beijing, EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said on Thursday that the bloc’s trade deficit with China was “unsustainable,” as he opened two days of talks to avert a trade war.

Sefcovic wrote on X that the goal of day one was to begin rebalancing the bloc’s unsustainable trade deficit. According to European figures, last year China exported to the EU around €1 billion a day more in goods and services than went the other way.