The Beijing Auto Show is currently taking place in China, offering those of us behind the Trump tariffs a glimpse into what is rapidly being dubbed the world’s most advanced car market. We’re told Chinese EVs leave everyone else in the dust, with infotainment that makes your smartphone look like a StarTech, range numbers that would make a turbodiesel Audi cry, and charging that can be faster than filling up with gas, depending on the size of your tank.
As an American, I mostly have to take someone else’s word for it. If there’s one thing Democratic politicians can still agree on with Republicans, it’s that they don’t want cars from Chinese automakers on American roads. At the end of his administration, President Joe Biden imposed 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs. Under the Biden and then Trump administrations, Congress passed a law restricting the sale of Chinese-linked connected car software in the US. President Trump has imposed even more tariffs on Chinese imports, making their cars even less competitive here. And just this week, more than 70 Democratic representatives called for maintaining barriers to Chinese cars for both national security and economic reasons.
This leaves those elected officials increasingly out of touch with popular sentiment on the Internet (I’m using ARS comments and the social media platform Bluesky as my bellwethers). As far as I can see, there’s a strong appetite for those sweet, cheap Chinese electric vehicles. A headline like Reuters’ claims “[f]Or the average price of a car in the US, you can buy 5 new Chinese EVs” only reinforces that sentiment.
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