With long odds for re-election in November, President Joe Biden is being urged by influential lawmakers on Capitol Hill to permanently close the door to the American marketplace for electric vehicle manufacturers from China.
Citing a flood of electrical vehicles being exported to Europe, where one in five cars comes from China, Ohio’s senior senator warned Thursday of a “existential threat to the American auto industry” in a single (n open letter he posted on the White House.
“The tariffs are not enough to stop their attack on American industry,” wrote Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown. “This is why the United States must ban Chinese-made electric vehicles as soon as possible. This is an economic and national security issue.”
What Brown didn’t say is that Tesla is one in every of the predominant culprits within the flood of Chinese electric vehicles into Europe.
Without the 25 percent tariffs that the US imposes on cars from China, it’s entirely conceivable that Elon Musk would import at the very least a few of his cars Model 3 and Model Y cars from his factory in Shanghai to America, identical to him in the intervening time does for Canada.
As the November election approaches, a political debate rages internally about whether the U.S. is steadily turning away from its free-market roots or whether Americans are starting to imagine that China is a free rider exploiting the rules-based order.
Brown, for his part, is a fixture within the protectionist wing of the Democratic Party and proudly points to his track record fighting what he calls unfair trade deals that hurt employees.
As a freshman representative for Ohio in 1993, he voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) within the House of Representatives and only Five years ago Has he declared that he has finally reached a trade deal that he can support?
Importantly, it’s one in every of the 34 Senate seats up for grabs in November.
Brown will run for a fourth term fiercely contested Battleground of Ohio, a part of the Rust Belt industrial heartland and a state governed by Trump in each 2016 and 2020.
Every job at an automaker helps support nearly a dozen elsewhere
The automobile industry is a barometer of the general health of a rustic’s manufacturing sector.
As a top consumer, the corporate is on the forefront of a wide selection of sub-suppliers operating within the steel, rubber, plastics, chemicals and electronics industries.
With its vast factories employing 1000’s of employees, it has also traditionally played a vital role in constructing a thriving middle class, the backbone of most advanced economies.
Problems at an organization like GM, Ford or Stellantis can due to this fact impact the larger picture.
“Every auto job in the United States supports 11 other jobs,” Brown added, citing a figure from the lobbying group Alliance for American Manufacturing.
China is threatening to do to electric vehicles what it did to the solar panel industry about 15 years ago.
At the time, Germany was a world leader in solar cell manufacturing and was a part of early efforts to decarbonize its coal-heavy power grid.
Recognizing the industry as strategic, Beijing mobilized the country’s resources to quickly achieve greater economies of scale and crush cost competition.
Both Musk and Trump have warned concerning the specter of a world-leading Chinese electric vehicle industry.
Critics argue that the country’s vast pool of low-cost labor, ability to stifle dissent, and near-total disregard for industrial pollution and environmental standards allow the country to undercut Western competitors and beat them in their very own free-market game to defeat.
“Ohio knows all too well how China illegally subsidizes its companies, puts our workers out of work and undermines entire industries, from steel to solar,” Brown argued.
“We cannot allow China to perpetrate its government-sponsored fraud on the American auto industry.”
Assets has reached out to the White House and the Chinese Embassy for comment.
