Final Thursday, the Biden administration introduced it might examine the safety dangers posed by Chinese language-made good automobiles, which might “accumulate delicate knowledge about our residents and our infrastructure and ship this knowledge again to the Folks’s Republic of China,” the assertion from White Home claims.

Whereas many different applied sciences from China have been scrutinized due to safety issues, EVs have largely averted that type of consideration till now. In any case, they signify a know-how that can vastly assist the world transition to scrub and renewable power, and folks have greeted its speedy development in China with reward.

However US-China relations have been at a low level because the Trump years and the pandemic, and it looks as if solely a matter of time earlier than any commerce or interplay between the 2 international locations falls below safety scrutiny. Now it’s EVs’ flip.

The White Home has made clear that there are two motivations behind the investigation: the economic system and safety.

Although the assertion didn’t explicitly point out EVs, it’s plain that they’re the one motive Chinese language automakers have now turn out to be severe challengers to their American friends. Chinese language corporations like BYD make high quality EVs at reasonably priced costs, making them more and more aggressive in worldwide markets. A latest report by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, an trade group, even describes EV competitors as “China’s existential menace to America’s auto trade.”

“The problem of Chinese language EV imports actually hits on so many main political elements all on the identical time,” says Kyle Chan, a sociology researcher at Princeton College who research industrial insurance policies and China. “Not simply the auto crops in swing states like Michigan and Ohio, however the broader auto manufacturing sector unfold over many vital states.”

If the US auto trade fails to stay aggressive, it would threaten the job safety of hundreds of thousands of People, and numerous different components of the US economic system will likely be affected. So it’s no shock Chinese language EVs are seen as a significant financial menace that must be addressed. 

In actual fact, it’s one of many few points everybody appears to agree on on this election cycle. Earlier than the Biden investigation, Trump drew folks’s consideration to Chinese language EVs throughout marketing campaign speeches, vowing to slap a 60% tariff on Chinese language imported items. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator and a longtime China hawk, proposed a invoice final Tuesday for a whopping 125% tariff on Chinese language automobiles, together with Chinese language-branded automobiles made in different international locations like Mexico.