Four months after the Biden Administration announced plans for the Office of the United States Trade Representative to quadruple tariffs on certain Chinese imports, including EVs, to 100%, the White House has confirmed the action, which will go into effect in two weeks. China has threatened retaliation as the trade war continues to intensify.
The saga of the looming trade wars between some of the planet’s largest markets continues as a tariff on Chinese-built EVs is about to go into effect in the US. This brouhaha essentially started in the EU a couple of years ago, when Chinese EV automakers like BYD, NIO, XPeng, and ZEEKR began importing their models into the region, which ruffled the feathers of several local legacy automakers – many of which are currently delivering inferior EV technology.
That fear of market share loss concerned the European Union Commission, which began a probe into the Chinese automakers last October and eventually determined that they had been “unfairly” subsidized as exports into the region. As a result, Europe has threatened tariffs on imports of vehicles built in China.
The US, on the other hand, wasted no time with threats and immediately proposed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs entering the country, quadrupling the previous duties. Today, the Biden Administration made good on its promise, and those inflated tariffs on EVs and other adjacent technologies will start going into effect two weeks from now.