While the European Union has just introduced additional customs duties against Chinese electric cars, Beijing has decided to counterattack. The country’s authorities have filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization.
As you may know, we mentioned in our columns a few days ago the definitive adoption by the EU of new customs duties against Chinese electric cars.
Now, in addition to 10% already collected by the European Union on all imported vehicles, car manufacturers who manufacture their EVs in China will have to pay an additional compensatory tax.
Note that these financial sanctions vary in scale depending on the brand. The giant SAIC is the worst off for example, with a penalty of around 35%. For BYD, it will be almost 18% while we are approaching 19% for Geely subsidiaries such as Volvo or Smart. Tesla will also be impacted, with a more tolerable rate set at 7.8%. As a reminder, these additional customs duties were introduced by the EU after noting that Beijing was massively subsidizing Chinese auto manufacturers. This allowed them to maintain artificially low prices on the European continent.
China files complaint with WTO
In our article on the subject, we mentioned Beijing’s desire to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is now done as reported by our colleagues from the Bloomberg site.
This Monday, Chinese government officials filed a complaint with the WTO Dispute Resolution Divisionclaiming that they had done it to “safeguard development interests” of the electric vehicle industry as a whole. China’s Ministry of Commerce also called the tariffs “trade protectionism”, adding that the EU had no justification for violating international import/export rules.
Also read: Electric cars – Europe accuses China of illegal subsidies
“China believes that the EU’s final decision on anti-subsidy measures lacks factual and legal basis, violates WTO rules and constitutes an abuse of trade remedies,” said a ministry spokesperson. He continues: “We urge the EU to face up to its mistakes and immediately correct its illegal practices, as well as jointly maintain the stability of the global electric vehicle supply chain and EU-China economic and trade cooperation ”.
In a desire for appeasement, the Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic confirmed this week sending emissaries to Beijing to continue discussions in the hope of finding common ground.
