It’s a scenario that terrifies America’s auto industry.
Chinese carmakers set up shop in Mexico to exploit North American trade rules. Once in place, they send ultra-low-priced electric vehicles streaming into the United States.
As the Chinese EVs go on sale across the country, America’s homegrown EVs — costing an average of $55,000, roughly double the price of their Chinese counterparts — struggle to compete. Factories close. Workers lose jobs across America’s industrial heartland.
“Competition is good until it threatens my business.”
This isnt about competition, its about safety standards and not having literal death traps on our roads. Like another comment said, look at how many chinese brands with word salad names there are on amazon, now imagine that but with cars. If people are buying these and importing them into the USA it could put many lives at risk since they wouldn’t be following our safety standards for vehicle manufacturing.
You can have well regulated competition or boot legged death traps. Not both. Instead of tariffs make them regulated, with strong safety rules and need for a network. It might just give you cheap, well built EVs. They might target small city cars with 200 miles range instead of humongous SUVs that everyone is running after.
This is already addressed by the fact that a vehicle has to comply with NHTSA safety standards in order to be imported into the US. Tariffs do nothing about this.