The Long Council
Who was selected, and why
Should the EU impose trade barriers against China to protect its economy?
The central tension
Economic protection versus openness — whether defensive trade barriers preserve strategic autonomy and industrial competitiveness, or whether they damage prosperity and escalate geopolitical competition.
The two poles
Protection
Helmut Schmidt
Mahathir MohamadOpenness
Milton Friedman
Friedrich HayekSelected members
Helmut Schmidt
Will argue: Trade barriers are justified when they protect European strategic autonomy and prevent dangerous dependencies, especially in critical technologies
Governed West Germany as a trade-dependent economy under great power competition with documented positions on energy security and economic sovereignty · His documented positions on economic sovereignty, energy dependency as vulnerability, and the need for Europe to build independent capacity are directly relevant (Menschen und Mächte; Die Zeit columns 1988-2011)
Milton Friedman
Will argue: Trade barriers harm European consumers and businesses more than they protect them, and will provoke Chinese retaliation that damages both economies
The leading advocate for free trade and opponent of protectionism, with systematic arguments about the costs of trade barriers · Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose, and consistent advocacy against trade protection as economically damaging (documented across his corpus 1962-2006)
Mahathir Mohamad
Will argue: Industrial policy and selective protection are necessary for Europe to maintain technological competitiveness against subsidised Chinese competition
Architect of Malaysian industrial policy and documented critic of Western economic orthodoxy, with direct experience confronting international pressure during the Asian Financial Crisis · His 1998 capital controls decision, Look East Policy, and sustained critique of premature trade liberalisation (documented speeches 1981-2020; Kaplan and Rodrik NBER study)
Friedrich Hayek
Will argue: Trade barriers distort price signals, protect inefficiency, and lead to retaliation cycles that harm European prosperity and global economic integration
Systematic theorist of spontaneous order and the limits of government intervention in markets, with documented positions on trade and economic nationalism · The Road to Serfdom, Constitution of Liberty, and documented skepticism of economic nationalism (documented across major works 1944-1988)
Considered but not selected
Lee Kuan Yew: Relevant for small state strategy but Europe is not a small state, and his framework doesn't directly address EU-China trade architecture
Deng Xiaoping: Would provide Chinese perspective but his framework is about Chinese development strategy, not European trade policy responses
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: His general will framework doesn't apply well to international trade policy between sovereign states