Chairman of the Board of Mercedes Benz Ola Källenius injected some modest sanity into the latest ideological rant of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday. At a Nov. 16 event organized by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, von der Leyen pronounced: “The clear goal of the Chinese Communist Party is a systemic change in the international order—with China at the center,” obviously not meaning that as a positive development.)
Källenius countered with a plea for open markets and against higher tariffs for China. He defended Daimler’s economic involvement in China and their promotion of continued close cooperation. Then he flipped her buzzword “de-risking,” employed to mean pulling investments out of China, with the simple point that, for us, de-risking means more investments in China.
