European Commission’s EV Tariff Policy Is Economic Nonsense
MKI Position Paper – Written by Philip Pilkington
When the European Commission announced that it would be exploring tariffs on Chinese electronic vehicles (EVs) in October 2023, it made clear that the reason for this was because they thought that the Chinese state was subsidizing its automotive companies. The policymakers that were working to formulate the tariffs saw them as necessary to level the competitive playing field. The idea was that the tariffs imposed on Chinese EVs would offset the subsidies that the Commission believed were being given to the Chinese car companies by the Chinese government. The Commission called such subsidization by the Chinese government “illegal.”