Exports of Chinese EV cars to the EU collapse. Concerns about the Commission’s investigation?
Chinese EV exports to the European Union slumped 19.6% in January and February 2024 compared to the same period last year, as the EU continues its investigation into whether Chinese subsidies are giving its automakers an unfair advantage over other EV makers.
In the first two months of 2024, China exported about 75,600 EVs to the EU, according to official Chinese customs data reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.
In October, the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into imports of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) from China to determine whether BEV value chains in China benefit from illegal subsidies and “whether these subsidies cause or threaten to cause economic harm to EU BEV producers”.
The results of the investigation, which is expected to be completed by autumn 2024, “will establish whether it is in the EU's interest to remedy the effects of the unfair trading practices found by imposing anti-subsidy duties on imports of battery electric vehicles from China”, declared the European Commission.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union address in September that “global markets are now flooded with cheaper Chinese electric cars. And their price is kept artificially low by huge state subsidies.”
“This is distorting our market,” von der Leyen added.
Earlier this month, the European Commission made imports of new battery electric vehicles from China subject to registration, “so that it can subsequently apply measures against such imports from the date of such registration”.
The EU's investigation into Chinese subsidies is ongoing and expected to conclude by November, but the bloc could impose tariffs as early as July.
Announcing the registration of electric vehicles of Chinese origin, the Commission also stated that, regarding subsidies, it “has sufficient evidence tending to demonstrate that imports of the product concerned from the PRC are subsidised”.
A superficial vision that ignores the fundamentals of the industrial economy
In reality , Von Der Leyen 's investigation will end with nothing, because it is unable to delve into the reasons that make Chinese competition successful. The contributions granted, varying from 500 to 8000 dollars per model, not much higher than what is granted by some European countries, do not consider the reason for the success of Chinese EV cars which we can summarize as:
- industrial economies of scale that give a basic advantage to Chinese brands. Their market, let's remember, is much larger than the European ones;
- greater integration of the value chain of the most expensive element of the euro EV, i.e. batteries, in which China dominates from raw materials, rare earths, to production plants;
- greater system work with local authorities which has made it possible to develop very efficient integrated systems linked to charging.
Ignoring these facts means having a more dirigiste vision of the economy than that of the Chinese Communist Party, typical of Brussels.
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The article Exports of Chinese EV cars to the EU collapse. Concerns about the Commission's investigation? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/crolla-lexport-di-auto-ev-cinesi-in-eu-timori-sulliindagine-della-commissione/ on Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:39:31 +0000.