Unfair competition?
The European Union is scrutinizing Chinese car manufacturers to see whether there is fair competition. An EU chief is now arguing that car manufacturers from outside China that do produce there, including Tesla and Volvo, should also be investigated for this.
The European Commission announced earlier this month that it will investigate how Chinese car manufacturers can operate so competitively in the EU. The Chinese government is said to keep production costs low through subsidies and this is an important sore point for the EU. Now the Euro Trade Commissioner, Valdis Dombrovkis, says that it should also be investigated to what extent Tesla and European automakers receive subsidies in China. He says this to the British business newspaper Financial Times. “Strictly speaking, it is not just about electric cars from Chinese brands,” says Dombrovskis. He responded to the question of whether Tesla or Geely, major shareholder of Swedish Volvo, may also be subject to the investigation.
Dombrovskis also says that the EU is ‘now probably the largest market open to Chinese producers’, but he believes that competition must be fair. Bloomberg reports, based on anonymous sources, that Tesla has probably benefited from Chinese subsidies. This would appear from the evidence collected in the run-up to the announcement of the investigation by the European Commission. Tesla started exporting its Model 3 from a factory in Shanghai in late 2020. In the summer of 2021, Tesla already called that factory ‘its primary export hub’.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl