Chinese trade officials recently held intensive meetings with Chinese companies operating in European countries, including Spain, Portugal and Greece, calling on China and the EU to address the legitimate concerns of both sides and to avoid an uncontrolled escalation of trade disputes through negotiations, as the European Commission (EC) is expected to disclose planned tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) this week.
According to several observers, economic and trade relations between China and the EU risk deteriorating if the EU decides to impose additional customs duties on Chinese EVs. The effects of customs duties and the “decoupling” that this could cause on bilateral relations would be catastrophic for Europe, they warn.
Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said accusations of “unfair competition” against China are groundless, fair competition is the consensus of all countries and the cornerstone of international trade, and it could not be defined by a handful of countries.
“China is open to healthy competition and opposes any form of vicious competition intended to stifle growth,” he stressed last week during a roundtable with Chinese companies in Lisbon, Portugal. .
Less than a month after the United States imposed additional tariffs on Chinese EVs, the EU is expected to disclose this week the tariffs it also plans to impose, the EU reported on Monday. Reuters news agency.
The EU is more divided than ever on the issue of additional customs duties on Chinese electric vehicles. Last Saturday, during an event marking the 125th anniversary of the Opel factory in Rüsselsheim, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Germany did not believe in closing its markets to foreign competition.
Protectionism and trade barriers in violation of trade rules “simply make everything more expensive and each of us poorer,” he said.
“Within the EU, there has been growing opposition to the imposition of additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, and it is therefore unlikely that the EC will impose duties as high as the 100% imposed by the United States,” said Sun Yanhong, an expert on European affairs based in Beijing.
According to her, the EU could impose tariffs of around 10-20% on Chinese EVs, but China will propose countermeasures to respond to such a move. “In the long term, the growing economic and commercial cooperation between China and the EU will pay the price and the EU will have to assume responsibility,” she underlines.
“The goal seems to be to move us away from China, [mais] the effects of this “decoupling” and punitive customs duties are catastrophic for Europe,” warns Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
“On the one hand, China is the world leader in technology for the car of the future. On the other hand, it is the largest automobile market in the world and the largest market for luxury cars. Without China, you can forget about the German auto industry. If you are not in the Chinese market, you are not in the automobile sector,” he emphasizes.
According to a report released May 31 by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, if the EU imposes 20% tariffs on imports of Chinese electric cars, as had been speculated, this will have a notable impact on bilateral trade and production in Europe.
For consumers, this is expected to lead to higher prices for electric vehicles, as production in the EU is significantly more expensive than in China due to rising energy and material prices and, above all, significantly higher labor costs.
