19 May 2026 – Forced Purchasing: The EU Commission in Brussels wants to dictate to companies in future from whom they are allowed to buy. What is being sold as a geopolitical resilience strategy is, in truth, central-planning thinking in new clothing. Steel protection endangers free trade agreements. Base metals in Asia, particularly nickel, aluminum, and copper, moved stably sideways today.
Base Metals with Sideways Movement
Base metals in Asia, particularly nickel, aluminum, and copper, moved stably sideways today. On the LME, the nickel price showed an increase of a good 1.5% in early trading to around USD 18,800 per tonne. The benchmark prices published yesterday in Indonesia had shown a 1.6% increase for nickel ores. The official Indonesian mineral reference price, HPM, for nickel most recently stood at around USD 18,850/dmt.
Forced Purchasing by EU Order: Brussels Wants to Dictate Supply Chains
The EU Commission wants to dictate to companies from whom they are allowed to buy. What is being sold as a geopolitical resilience strategy is, in truth, central-planning thinking in new clothing.
The Plan: Brussels is Once Again Relying on Quotas Instead of the Market
From May 29, the Commission is expected to present internal plans that would oblige European companies in key sectors such as chemicals and mechanical engineering to source no more than 30-40% of their components from a single supplier. The remainder would have to come from at least three providers in different countries.
The goal is to reduce dependence on China. The means chosen for this is now supposed to be bureaucratically enforced compulsory diversification. With a Trade Commissioner like Maroš Šefčovič, who apparently also wants to enforce this with further punitive tariffs against chemicals and machinery, and who began his political career in a communist party, this increasingly looks like a relapse into central planning.
What This Really Means
Companies did not optimize their supply chains out of naivety, but out of rational calculation. Chinese suppliers stand out with costs, scale, and industrial networks – advantages that European procurement teams have deliberately used for years.
Jian Junbo of Fudan University puts it plainly: the measure is discriminatory against Chinese suppliers and at the same time increases costs for European companies – in other words, a loss on both sides.
Anyone who restricts the free choice of suppliers inevitably increases procurement costs. These costs are not borne by the Commission – but by companies, and ultimately by customers. Another piece of evidence that the Commission is trying to create an artificial, non-market price level in the EU. In the extremely heterogeneous intra-European market, this comes particularly at the expense of the smaller economies and burdens incomes especially in the southern and eastern Member States.
De-Risking as a Fig Leaf for Industrial-Policy Patronizing
Brussels calls it “resilience.” In practice, it is industrial-policy patronizing, combined with new protectionism against supposedly cheap import competition, in the interests of established European producers.
That this intervention may be problematic under WTO law apparently bothers no one in Commission circles.
A free market means that companies decide for themselves from whom they buy. Brussels’ diversification quota is not a safety net – it is a regulatory corset that weakens European competitiveness in the name of defending it.
Thorsten Gerber, CEO of the Gerber Group, commented today: “This is what happens when you put socialist comrades in the wrong place. It should now be clear even to the last person who belongs to the innermost circle of the Brussels Central Committee.” He continued: “Instead of indulging in wet dreams about possible VAT increases, the German Chancellor should get on the plane provided to him by taxpayers, fly to Brussels immediately, and say there clearly and unequivocally: Enough is enough. But that would require one thing: courage and assertiveness.”
Steel Protection Endangers Free Trade Agreements
Britain’s new steel tariffs are endangering the implementation of the painstakingly negotiated FTA with India. A familiar pattern – with far-reaching consequences.
London Undermines Its Own Trade Deal
The ink is barely dry, and London is already undermining its own trade deal: steel protection measures from July 2026 are eating up the negotiated market-access advantages for Indian exporters.
Not an Isolated Case
The same logic systematically poisons EU trade negotiations. In the agreement with Australia, steel was recently explicitly carved out – the result of the same protectionist reflex in favour of domestic steel producers.
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