In successfully putting pressure on pressuring China to impose quotas on apparel clothing and textiles exports to Europe, the European Commission Union Trade Commission has achieved the trade policy equivalent of injecting Novocaine into a compound fracture. It killed the pain without curing the real problem. That is malpractice.

Yes, quotas – or the currency revaluations pushed by the Bush administration and the US Congress – will temporarily dull the economic aches western companies feel from their low-cost ­Chinese competition. But there is nothing healing or strategic about them. They are likely to make that fracture worse.