Mexico City. A group of Democratic legislators urged President Joe Biden’s administration to take additional measures “in the face of the imminent danger posed by the expansion of Chinese automotive exports,” which seek to enter the United States. They emphasized that, beyond economic considerations, this is an issue of national security, given that the initiatives to support the electric vehicle sector implemented by the Chinese government “aim to achieve global market dominance.”
Through a letter sent to the United States Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, and the trade ambassador, Katherine Tai, the congressmen ask to increase tariffs on Chinese automobiles and strengthen compliance with existing trade agreements, such as the T-MEC, so that Asian products do not obtain benefits. “The recent efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) raise economic and national security concerns that will have consequences for American jobs and manufacturing,” she emphasizes in the letter.
Democrats warned that despite U.S. trade barriers, “the aggressive expansion of Chinese manufacturers, fueled by CCP subsidies, threatens to undermine the competitiveness of our domestic manufacturers and endanger the livelihoods of millions of American workers.” ”. This “overabundance” of Chinese exports and the search for new markets generates concern above all about possible dumping – the practice of selling below the normal price to eliminate competitors – which makes it “imperative that measures be taken to prevent this from materializing.” ”.
The letter signed by congressmen Debbie Dingell, Marcy Kaptur, Haley M. Stevens, Terri A. Sewell, Frank J. Mrvan, Elissa Slotkin, Shri Thanedar, Daniel T. Kildee and André Carson calls for “increasing tariffs on Chinese cars, “Accelerate the review of existing Section 301 tariffs on Chinese products and continue to strengthen enforcement of our trade agreements to ensure that cars and parts produced by Chinese manufacturers do not reap the benefits.”
The Biden administration has taken as its banner the promotion of the US electric vehicle industry, through subsidies and investment in technology, but currently, the company that sells the most in this sector globally, BYD, is Chinese and surpasses Tesla.
The tone of the nine Democratic legislators who sign the letter coincides with that of former President Donald Trump, who seeks to compete for office again. In a proselytizing event, the Republican said that if elected, a 100 percent quota will be imposed on imports of Chinese vehicles. He assured that manufacturers from the Asian country seek to enter the United States through Mexico, by locating plants in the latter, and thus avoid the taxes that correspond to them.
In February, the Chinese BYD, which is the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the world, announced that it plans to build a plant in Mexico. Immediately, in the United States it began to be considered that it was a strategy to flood its market without the taxes paid on cars imported directly from China, using the North American trade agreement, T-MEC.
Vehicles imported into the United States directly from China pay a tariff of 27.5 percent, while a maximum of 2.5 percent is applied to those from Mexico; and if they comply 100 percent with regional content standards they pay nothing. American electric vehicle manufacturers assume that their Chinese counterparts can produce at lower prices because they dominate the energy supply chain for these types of cars, including processing the necessary minerals.
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– 2024-04-20 12:22:16
