In recent months, more than one Ford executive – including CEO Jim Farley himself – have expressed concerns about the possibility that cheap Chinese EVs may wind up making it to U.S. soil, flooding the market and making life quite difficult for domestic companies like The Blue Oval, which are a bit behind the proverbial eight ball in regards to making a competitive product of that type. While Ford continues to work on developing its own low-cost EV platform and consumers admit they’d be willing to buy Chinese EVs if they’re cheaper than American-made ones, many politicians are also calling for those vehicles to be banned from U.S. soil, and Mexico recently took steps to prevent that from happening, too. The Biden Administration has been mulling its options for months now, and according to a new report from Reuters, may announce new tariffs on Chinese EVs soon.
“We have to digest all the data and then figure out what action that we want to take,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, though she also stopped short of providing any additional details or a timeline for those actions. “We could take extreme action, which is to say no Chinese connected vehicles in the United States or look for mitigation” including actions such as safeguards, guardrails, or other requirements for Chinese EVs.
Previously, the Biden Administration noted that it was opening a probe into this same matter because it feels like connected Chinese EVs could potentially “collect large amounts of sensitive data on their drivers and passengers (and) regularly use their cameras and sensors to record detailed information on U.S. infrastructure.”
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation – a lobby group that counts Ford among its members – previously noted that domestic automakers can develop a framework capable of mitigating the risks associated with Chinese designed systems, but warned that these types of system, “including their hardware and software components, undergo extensive pre-production engineering, testing, and validation processes and, in general, cannot be easily swapped with systems or components from a different supplier.”
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Comments
If the Biden administration will apply import tariffs on Chinese autos, they should consider doing the same for all Asian autos, especially Japan and South Korean. Those nations apply heavy tariffs on U.S. autos imported on their territory, so we must even out this trade war to protect our domestic autos.
It would be hard to do when they have factories in the US. Are they considered Japanese or Korean cars when built by american workers.
To me they are.
The brand name defines the origin. Building imports here avoids tariffs. But the assembly cost is only a small part. The sales profits return to the brand nation. So every Asian auto built here sends money back to the Asians. They should pay tariffs.
We can’t compete because of the unions.
We can compete. Congress can app,y local tariffs to the imports and compensate for the higher domestics cost due to their union labor. If nothing is done, domestic auto production will end, and all future auto will be cheaper imports. Do you want this?
Note that the Biden Admin is concerned that these vehicles are rolling surveillance boxes. We should be concerned that ALL modern vehicles are data collecting monsters, not just the Chinese ones.
True. Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft know us.
If you are so afraid of data collection, ride a horse. At least you know it puts out real $hit!
If Biden is so concerned about Chinese collected our data, why did he allow a Chinese spy balloon to fly across our nation? Maybe “the big guy” is getting a cut of these tariffs. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit with this corrupt politician. Close the border, Biden is destroying our country.