Trump's Tariffs on Chinese Electric Cars Seen as Likely to Last
(Bloomberg) -- With China bent on dominating the future of electric vehicles, President Donald Trump is likely to erect trade barriers targeting that technology in the form of stiff new tariffs that will have staying power, according to an expert on country’s auto market.
“I expect that President Trump will keep tariffs on electric cars as high as he possibly can,” Michael Dunne, chief executive officer of consultancy ZoZo Go, said Monday in a speech to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit. “He can see all this capacity gathering in China, and they’re bound to want to export to the U.S., so ‘let’s not make that easy.’”
China’s government is pouring $100 billion into becoming the global leader in electric vehicles, Dunne said. Last year, Chinese consumers purchased 1.2 million battery-powered autos, compared with about 350,000 in the U.S. Trump’s tough tariff talk, which has unsettled the Chinese government as much as it has rattled markets, is aimed at protecting technological innovation in the U.S., Dunne said.
Trump “believes that by threatening tariffs, this really puts a scare into the Chinese, and it seems to have gotten their attention,” Dunne said. “The tariffs are almost a psychological tactic to undercut the confidence of the average Chinese businessman and consumer. But the real story remains technology. Tariffs are almost a decoy -- technology is what the trade negotiators are working on.”
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