Trade war between China and the European Union, after tariffs on electric cars

The regulation to apply heavy additional tariffs to Chinese electric cars will become law this Wednesday in the European Union (EU) and China has already warned that it will respond with the imposition of new taxes on various products from the bloc.

China has made it clear that it will also respond to the European Union, once it has already decided that it is going to go ahead with the imposition of tariffs on its electric vehicles.

The day before, the EU adopted new regulations that allow additional tariffs to be applied to electric vehicles imported from China, seen as responsible for harming competition in the bloc.

These were already subject to customs duties of 10% and will now have tariffs that reach a maximum of 35.3% and vary depending on the companies, for a period of five years.

The regulation will become law after being published on Wednesday in the Official Journal of the European bloc.

Brussels has already taken the decision to the World Trade Organization because it considers that China abuses trade instruments.

Beijing also has 3 more investigations open: one into European dairy products, another into large displacement vehicles and also into pork.

The latter would particularly affect Spain, to the point that the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, asked Brussels to reconsider the tariffs on vehicles due to the impact that the measure could have on Spanish exports.

The European Union insists that it will continue negotiating, but there is fear that this is Beijing’s strategy: to divide European countries by applying measures until the pressure is such that Brussels is forced to scale back its offensive.

With additional information from AFP