Long Read: What to Do About the Influx of China’s Subsidized, Yet High Quality EVs

The country’s ability to produce competitive electric vehicles is due to both Beijing’s policy support and the country’s comparative advantages

The global war over electric vehicles (EV) has heated up in the past few weeks and threatens to get even hotter in the coming months. On June 12, the European Commission announced provisional penalty tariffs ranging from 17.4% to 38.1% against EVs imported from China. The European Union’s (EU) move to counter Chinese subsidies followed the Biden administration’s imposition of tariffs in mid-May against a range of high-tech products from China, including 100% tariffs on EVs and 25% on EV batteries.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. In our 2020 report, The Coming NEV War?, I speculated that the relative calm at that point — when China was exporting only a small number of cars which were mainly going to Bangladesh and India — could give way to greater tensions.