Beijing must deliver “concrete results” by October or face “harsher measures”, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has warned in an exclusive interview with Euronews, as Brussels sets an October deadline to rein in China’s record trade surplus with the bloc.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
With talks already underway, Šefčovič said the stakes go well beyond trade, with the future of European industry at play. The next two weeks are set to be crucial, with a video call between the EU’s trade chief and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, planned for mid-September, as both sides work towards the October deadline.
“This is super political,” he told Euronews, stressing that European leaders want to see results by October. Earlier this week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a business forum in France that dialogue only works if it brings results.
If dialogue does not deliver results, the EU could resort to defensive instruments.
While Šefčovič did not go into detail about what retaliatory measures could look like, he said Brussels is looking to finalise a “diversification instrument” designed with China in mind. He also said the EU is now far more united in its objectives for the negotiations.
“They [EU27] want to see the direction of travel. They want to even have a concept for the solution of this issue, a pilot scheme,” Šefčovič said.
“I’m trying to do it through these negotiations, but they have to bring us very concrete results. Otherwise, of course, there will be a strong political movement to push for, I would say, harsher measures.”
Šefčovič will travel to China in October, ahead of an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels where the issue is expected to be high on the agenda.
All EU countries now run a trade deficit with China.
On the verge of a trade war
Brussels and Beijing have been on the verge of a trade war in recent months following the Commission’s introduction of several measures restricting Chinese companies’ access to the EU market and threats of retaliation from China.
A group of EU officials were in Beijing in recent days, as first reported by Euronews, to push forward the talks. They are expected to return to Europe on Thursday for a debrief.
Despite the sensitive discussions with Beijing, the Commission has already launched several probes into Chinese products over the summer over alleged unfair trade practices. Von der Leyen said the investigations were being stepped up “significantly”.
As pressure mounts ahead of the October deadline, Šefčovič said securing better access for European companies in China would not happen overnight, but stressed that the outline of a deal would be needed to move into a second phase of implementation talks.
“It’s an issue which would require clearly more time than until October,” Šefčovič said. “But what I think it’s very important for us to have by October [is] some kind of proof of concept.”
He added that EU leaders expect the Commission to bring solutions to rebalance the trade relationship, particularly in areas considered “sensitive”, such as “cars, medical devices, agri-food products”.
“We have now unprecedented intensity of our negotiations. I think we never talked to our Chinese counterparts as frequently, as intensely than right now.”
WASHINGTON — A year after the Trump administration kicked off its aggressive immigration enforcement tour with military-style raids across greater Los Angeles, federal officials have veered toward a less flashy but broader strategy: making immigrants’ lives harder so they will leave.
The changes range in scale and scope, from disqualifying immigrants from certain jobs to indefinitely pausing the processing of visa applications. They target those lawfully present as well as the undocumented.
Since President Trump’s second term began, the administration has used executive orders and federal regulations to chip away at services or benefits, such as work permits and small business loans, that immigrants could obtain in the past.
Now, immigrants are finding that freedoms — the ones that once made the U.S. a desirable place to start over — are disappearing. Many are retreating back into the shadows as they fear previously routine tasks, such as traveling across states, filing taxes and seeking medical care.
“The priority is to force people to leave the country or not come, regardless of legal status or really any other criteria,” said David Bier, immigration studies director at the Libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. “They’re taking a sledgehammer to the system.”
Trump won the White House in part on his promise to clamp down on illegal immigration, but recent polling shows support for his agenda has waned, especially after immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of immigrants with criminal records. The Department of Homeland Security said Trump also prioritizes immigration that strengthens the country financially, socially and culturally.
President Trump displays the signed “Secure America Act” during a ceremony in the Oval Office on Wednesday. The act provides $70 billion for immigration enforcement and border-security agencies.
(Aaron Schwartz / CNP, Bloomberg)
The number of arrests by ICE agents has declined. On average, ICE arrested about 1,000 immigrants per day in early March, down from a peak average of just under 1,400 in mid-January, agency data show. And there are fewer detained immigrants — facilities across the country held about 60,000 detainees in April, compared to more than 70,000 in late January.
The downturns prompted some Trump loyalists to say the administration is failing to fulfill his signature promise, which is an assertion the administration rejects.
“ICE is NOT slowing down,” said Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis. “Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens.”
At a border security conference last month, Tom Homan, who leads border policy for the White House, suggested immigration agents would return to more muscular enforcement tactics.
“You ain’t seen s— yet,” he told the audience.
But along with focusing on deportations, the administration is deploying other tactics to deter illegal — and legal —immigration.
ICE agents confront protesters on June 8 as they gather outside the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, where ICE is housing detained immigrants.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Curtailing visas
Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that “except in extraordinary circumstances,” immigrants seeking lawful permanent residency must leave the U.S. to complete the process. After a backlash, the administration defended the policy, saying it won’t prevent anyone who qualifies for a green card from getting one.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency in charge of processing immigration benefits, has upped security screening since Trump took office. The agency says that’s to root out fraud, but critics say all it does is unnecessarily slow down a system that already vets applicants vigorously.
The administration indefinitely banned people from 75 countries from receiving immigrant visas, which allow people to move permanently to the U.S.
In a similar move, the government halted the processing of immigration applications for people from 39 countries and who are already in the U.S. On June 5, a federal judge struck down the policy in a scathing ruling that said the administration “justifies its actions with pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments.”
Children of Guatemalan origin, from left, Areimy, Mariela and Enrique, arrive at Miami International Airport on Dec. 4, 2025, as they prepare to leave the United States to reunite with their recently deported parents in Guatemala.
(Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images)
The judge’s ruling may offer relief, but for many immigrants, the effects of the policy are devastating. Armin, a 42-year-old from Iran, said he has racked up more than $15,000 in debt since the pause took effect in December. Armin asked The Times not to fully identify for fear of jeopardizing his immigration case.
The nutritional scientist came to the U.S. in 2019 on a student visa and has a pending green card application under a provision that allows certain highly skilled immigrants to apply for permanent residency without needing an employer to sponsor them.
After receiving his PhD and completing a postdoctoral program, Armin was in between jobs when he received a research grant in November. But with the processing of his work authorization halted, the university that issued the grant said it couldn’t hire him as a research associate. In February, he was turned down for another job.
Armin said he is confused about why the administration won’t differentiate between legal immigrants and those who should be deported.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I’m doing research and my research has national interest benefits. You expect support from the government. Unfortunately they don’t differentiate. They don’t care about your resume.”
Bier said the visa policies affect half of all legal immigrants coming from abroad. He published a report in April about how Trump has cut legal immigration far more than illegal immigration, noting that the administration’s policies have led to big drops in visas for international students, high-skilled workers and refugees.
“The legal immigration system is being used as a means to carry out the mass deportation agenda,” he said.
Alessandro Negrete, who lived most of his life in the U.S. undocumented, crosses into Mexico after deciding to leave.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Encouraging self-deportation
More than 90,000 immigrants have been granted voluntary departure since the start of the Trump administration, according to federal immigration court data through April that was analyzed by TRAC, a data research organization. Voluntary departure avoids official deportation and can leave open the possibility of an immigrant returning to the U.S. legally.
Homan, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has said self-deportations were part of the administration’s immigration plan all along.
“We knew if we surged unlimited ICE resources in the interior, and we do these operations, that that will force those that are here illegally to leave on their own,” he recently told the Washington Examiner.
Halting work permits
In the past, asylum seekers and others with deportation protections have had the ability to seek permits to work legally in the U.S. But work is now an administration target.
One proposed regulation would prevent asylum seekers from working legally in the U.S. Another proposal, published Friday, would further restrict access to work permits for other immigrants.
Under a rule that took effect last month, asylum seekers pay an annual $102 fee within 30 days of receiving a notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If the deadline is missed, their applications will be rejected — with no opportunity to appeal — and they could be placed in deportation proceedings. Those who apply for asylum with the agency have entered the U.S. legally, such as on a visa, and are not undocumented.
Asylum seekers rest at a Tijuana migrant shelter a day after President Trump began his second term in the White House.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, said many asylum applicants have not received notice that the fee is due.
Cruz said she believes the Trump administration is using these changes as an excuse to dismiss people’s asylum claims. While the president has the power to decide whether to offer or rescind humanitarian programs, such as Temporary Protected Status, the right to seek asylum is enshrined in law.
“We’re worried this is a pretext for people to fall out of the asylum system and fall out of the workforce,” she said.
The processing of work permits has already been slowed, leaving many immigrants who still qualify for employment authorization unable to work.
During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to help him speed up the work permit renewals for two police officers who were recently fired by agencies in his district because their DACA status expired.
Mullin said he would help but that Congress ultimately must pass a permanent solution for DACA recipients.
“These are police officers on Main Street, sir,” Correa responded.
“Not all of them are,” Mullin said. “I’m not just going to wave a magic wand and fix them all.”
“You have that magic wand — that’s your job,” Correa said.
It wasn’t just Democrats complaining about slow processing. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) similarly asked Mullin for help because many of his constituents — “farm workers, youth ministers, nurses, grocery store business managers” — who have lived and worked in the U.S. legally for decades are now having trouble renewing their visas.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, left, and President Trump, center, walk to the motorcade after exiting Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on May 20.
(Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images)
Calls for mass deportations
Mullin, who took the reins in March after Trump fired his predecessor, Kristi Noem, rolled back some of Noem’s policies, including telling agents to stop entering homes without judicial warrants and canceling some contracts she had initiated.
But the changes and the downturn in arrests have drawn criticism from some fervent Trump supporters.
“Trump’s legacy is tied up in this,” said Mike Howell, a former DHS attorney who founded a group called the Mass Deportation Coalition. “It’s going to be hard to tell a younger voter to get excited to show up when one of their top issues is mass deportation and, a year and a half in, it doesn’t appear it’s going full-steam ahead.”
Howell said enforcement at work sites is critical to scaling up arrests and deportations. That more such operations haven’t happened, he said, is a political decision to appease wealthy donors and special interest groups who don’t want to see their workers deported.
The architect of Trump’s immigration agenda is Stephen Miller, a top White House aid who has called for a “moratorium on immigration from third-world countries,” demanded 3,000 arrests per day and said that immigrants and their descendants “recreate the conditions, and the terrors, of their broken homelands.”
Royce Bernstein Murray, a former Homeland Security official who worked on immigration policy under the Biden administration, said the winding down of flashy enforcement surges has given the administration more time to “focus on tearing down the legal immigration system.”
“This is Stephen Miller’s sweet spot,” she said. “He was never in enforcement — he’s a policy guy. This is really an opportunity for him to make good on all he has planned for years.”
While ICE has, in recent months, returned to its more conventional targeted enforcement tactics, Homan has sought to make clear that mass deportations are still a goal.
“For the people out there saying ‘President Trump’s getting weak on mass deportation,’ you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Homan said at the border expo.
On Monday, Homan told Fox News that he had just reviewed plans for an ICE operation that would surge agents to New York City.
