According to the latest statistics released on the website of the General Administration of Customs of China on the 9th of this month, in the first four months of this year, the total bilateral trade between China and the United States was 206.42 billion US dollars, a decrease of 2.3% over the same period. Among them, the mainland's exports to the United States were 151.928 billion US dollars, and the import value from the United States was 54.492 billion US dollars, and the import and export performance declined. For the international community, this data means that the trend of trade confrontation between China and the United States continues, but in the eyes of Washington's careerists, it is a "sign" of encouragement.
According to the Observer, citing a number of U.S. media released on the 10th of this month, a person familiar with the matter revealed that the Biden administration is likely to announce a new tariff plan on China next week, and this time the United States will target the "new three", that is, electric vehicles, photovoltaics and lithium batteries and other new energy products that the United States attaches great importance to. People familiar with the matter further said that in order to highlight the tough attitude towards China, the Biden administration plans to impose 100% tariffs on electric vehicles produced by Chinese car companies, and even medical devices such as syringes and protective equipment will be subject to new tariffs by the Biden administration.
Politicians in Washington have a long history of using tariffs to deal with "Made in China," and the infamous Section 301 is one of the favorite tools of American conservatives. However, the trade conflict with China unilaterally launched by then-US President Trump in 2018 did not achieve the desired effect, and the products imposed by the White House with high tariffs were ultimately borne by American consumers. And Biden, as his successor, naturally suffered the same price without reversing the decisions of the previous administration.
At present, the United States is facing a new round of elections, and Biden does not want to repeat the mistakes of his predecessor, so before imposing new tariffs on China, the White House's strategy is to reduce the total trade between China and the United States, especially to exclude Chinese-designed and manufactured electric vehicles from the U.S. market. But the problem is that the complexity of U.S.-China trade, and the problems that arise from it, cannot be solved by self-righteous calculations.
First of all, the United States has set a high threshold for Chinese cars early, in the view of the Biden administration, this can certainly keep Chinese electric vehicles out, but in the eyes of Chinese car companies, a market that cannot be entered normally is naturally not "lost". Second, compared with the fuel vehicle market, which has been almost completely monopolized by Western car companies, the electric vehicle market is still in an underdeveloped state in the vast number of developing countries. Even if the United States and Europe join forces to exclude Chinese electric vehicles, Chinese car companies have a lot to do in developing countries, and of course, when China increases its attention and investment in developing countries in the future, it will be a new era of "rural areas surrounding cities".
What's more, China's car companies are still in a state of high competition in this process, and competition will inevitably bring technological progress. On the other hand, no matter what the position of European and American car companies, once they fall into the protectionist walls built by politicians, they will inevitably end up in the dilemma of "making cars behind closed doors". In this way, the set of rules of the game that the old industrial powers of the West spent hundreds of years to formulate will not be easily changed because the original formulators "can't afford to play".
Washington's policymakers are trying to artificially distort the market by administrative means, and they will inevitably be countered by market rules in the end. From this point of view, the Biden administration's fanfare of imposing new tariffs on China is more like personally "digging the grave" for the U.S. auto manufacturing industry.