178
BREAKING NEWS: EU Commission announces preliminary tariffs up to 38% on Chinese EVs
(www.euractiv.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
178 points (98.9% liked)
World News
39099 readers
5013 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh thank goodness, the fossil fuel industry is preserved just a little while longer!
I think that there was just no good choice in this matter. I mean, look at how great it turned out for Europe to bond together with Russia over cheap gas. I know that cheap gas and electric cars are not the same thing, by far, but still, if we got dumped by electric cars in China, we'd be wide open for economic attacks like it happened just a few years ago.
That said, I'd love if we compensated for this by finally shifting subsidies from flights to rail, or by shifting from 100LL to 100UL in general aviation, or cracking down on ships using bunker fuel.
Or put the screws on BMW and VW to pull their heads out their asses and start being competitive.
If this tariff went along with a law saying that all European cars had to be electric by a certain date, I'd feel like this was anything but just preserving Europe's fossil fuel interests.
I mean there kind of is. As is stands, selling cars that emit CO2 will no longer be allowed after 2035. You could argue that that's far too late, and I would agree, but there is a date and since car manufacturers usually plan ahead (I hope), there probably won't be many fossil fuel-powered cars by then. It is, however, not strictly limited to electric cars. It just is not allowed to emit CO2.
Okay, fair. I was not aware of that.
In case you're interested:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20221019STO44572/eu-ban-on-sale-of-new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-from-2035-explained
Thank you!
Just adding: Wikipedia has a nice article including a map showing the current status of when countries plan to phase out fossil fuel vehicles. It also has a section on which manufacturers have pledged to do so.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles
Long term politics seem to be a really good strategy for this. Notice how USA is marked as green, even if its only some states who have agreed to do so, and some countries are just grey. However, this is fine, because the manufacturers will still need to make the switch long beforehand in order to keep selling vehicles worldwide.
Tariffs are the most straightforward way to deal with dumping. Hard to fault the EU for this approach.
"Dumped"?
The fuck do you think China is doing? Donating EVs to charity?
Selling EVs below the profitable rate to corner a market and destroy competition. You know, the economic term "dumping".
Below the profitable rate? Last I checked, Chinese EV manufacturers were either making money hand over fist or getting BTFO's of the market by those that could.
Good for them. The point is not that they are doing "bad things". "Dumping" is not a curse word, it's an economic strategy, one that's practised by a whole bunch of companies, and not just Chinese ones. When Auchan is selling watermelons at a rate where they barely make any money over a single sale - but make a ton of money on other stuff you get while shopping for watermelons, it destroys farmer's markets, for example.
All I'm saying is that the choice before the EU leadership was either letting Chinese EVs into the market and risk getting into a position where Chinese companies - and by extension the Chinese government - can pull the levers on the EU car market, in exchange for us getting to buy cheaper EVs right now.
The EU - and you can fill in the blank whether they did it because they wanted to protect EU carmakers' business, or they wanted to prevent another situation similar to the one with Russian gas - decided that the risk is not worth it. My guess is that some voted as they did because of the former, others because of the latter. That said, you can't really say that the EU would be "crooked" for either of these things, as fighting for the EU car industry against other countries' car industries is well within their mandate, as is protecting the EU's strategic political autonomy.
It's just how things are, like with the great firewall. If someone wants to sell software services to China, they have to conform to their standards. You can say it's good or bad, but that's just how things work. As a European, I don't care about this specific issue either way, we should be buying fewer cars, electric or otherwise. People who live in places in the EU where you need cars because there's no good public transport also tend to be living in places where you can't afford to buy new anyway, not even at BYD prices.
I agree, dumping is well-defined. Here's the problem, though:
Chinese EV manufacturers are selling their cars domestically for far less than they are in Europe. They're already price-gouging their European customers. Moreover, only something like 10% of Chinese car production is made for export, and much of that is by European/American brands that are only producing in China because of the cost advantage. This is compared to 70% or more in the case of Germany and Japan.
There's a far stronger case for overcapacity and dumping from Germany and Japan than there is for China. It's an absurd bending of WTO rules to align with, as you said, protecting EU carmakers.
It's protectionist policy, and that's fine, but it should be clear to everyone that dumping and overcapacity are bullshit justifications for it. I absolutely agree with you that it should be a part of the EU mandate to protect EU workers and EU businesses. I don't disagree with the tariff, I just don't like the justification being given for it.
Electric cars will not solve climate change, public transport even if it wasn't fully electric could...but nobody seems to give a shit about that :/
No one said it would solve it. Using ICE cars will make it worse.