Tesla Inc. will raise vehicle prices in China this week, reacting to the trade war that weighs on the country’s currency and threatens to once again lead to higher import tariffs.Price hikes that were originally planned for September will now take place this Friday, said a Tesla sales representative in Shanghai on Monday, without disclosing details. A spokesperson for the U.S.-based electric-car maker declined to comment.
Tesla is among automakers most affected by the U.S.-China trade tensions, because it has no local production yet and therefore gets directly hit by any increases in tariffs. China threatened last week to increase duties on U.S.-made cars to as high as 50% in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s latest planned levies on Chinese goods.
A decline in the yuan, meanwhile, reduces the value of the earnings that Tesla brings back from China and converts to dollars.
Tesla is constructing a plant in China, an increasingly important market for the loss-making company as incentives for EVs in the U.S. wane. Tesla plans to start producing cars at the factory near Shanghai by the end of 2019.