Six months before the presidential election, Joe Biden announced that he was quadrupling customs duties on imports of Chinese electric vehicles. “I have just imposed a series of customs duties on products made in China: 25% on steel and aluminum, 50% on semiconductors, 100% on electric vehicles. And 50% on solar panels. China is determined to dominate these industries. I am determined to ensure that America leads the world in this area.”said the Democratic president, on X, Tuesday May 14.
Mr. Biden did not dress his remarks in considerations of national security, but of competition deemed unfair. “China has massively subsidized all of these products, pushing Chinese companies to produce far more than the rest of the world can absorb, putting other manufacturers around the world out of business.”, he accused. Under his mandate, the United States launched a massive subsidy program to relocate industry and finance the energy transition. The Biden administration does not want this (re)emerging industry to be destroyed by competition. The decision comes after the review of the measures decided against Beijing by Donald Trump, from 2018. The Biden administration does not remove any of these rights, and adds some.
To present his measures, in the Rose Garden of the White House, Joe Biden gave the floor to the boss of Century Aluminum – a lame duck in the sector, which has recorded financial losses for five years, and which had already obtained the establishment of tariffs. customs under Donald Trump – and to a representative of the steel union, whose stronghold, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will be decisive for the presidential election. Mr. Biden praised American steel, which he says consumes “half as much carbon as Chinese steel”and defended the unions again. “I am determined that the future of the electric car will be built in the United States by union workers. Point “he declared to applause, while the market leader, Tesla, is not unionized.
The decision is guided by internal considerations. Left behind, according to polls, in most swing states (States likely to fall into one camp or the other), criticized by young people over his management of the war in Gaza, unable to dry up the flow of migrants at the border, Mr. Biden has decided to adopt a martial tone towards China. He is under pressure from Donald Trump who, for months, has been repeating that the Chinese and the energy transition will kill the American automobile industry.
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