From The International Herald Tribune:
There’s nothing like an up-and-coming contender to bring out the worst in the world’s established economic heavyweights. For the United States and the European Union, China makes an easy target in uncertain times. They are hitting below the belt, and they may pay dearly for it.
China is not the only trading partner of the United States and Europe, but, listening to politicians in the past few weeks, you could be forgiven for thinking it was. In reality, China supplies about one-seventh of American imports and a tenth of European ones. Those shares are bigger than they were a decade ago, but they are hardly the sole determining factors in the American and European economic climates.
See also “EU Opposes Return of Quotas on China Textiles, Mandelson Says” from Bloomberg.