Prospect of low-priced Chinese EVs reaching US from Mexico poses threat to automakers

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s a scenario that terrifies America’s auto industry.

Chinese carmakers set up shop in Mexico to exploit North American trade rules. Once in place, they send ultra-low-priced electric vehicles streaming into the United States.

As the Chinese EVs go on sale across the country, America’s homegrown EVs — costing an average of $55,000, roughly double the price of their Chinese counterparts — struggle to compete. Factories close. Workers lose jobs across America’s industrial heartland.

Ultimately, it could all become a painful replay of how government-subsidized Chinese competition devastated American industries from steel to solar equipment over the past quarter-century. This time, it would be electric vehicles, which America’s automakers envision as the core of their business in the coming decades.

“Time and again, we have seen the Chinese government dump highly subsidized goods into markets for the purpose of undermining domestic manufacturing,’’ Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, wrote in an April letter to President Joe Biden that called for an outright ban on Chinese electric vehicles in the U.S. “We cannot let the same occur when it comes to EVs.’’

Low-priced Chinese EVs pose a potentially “extinction-level event’’ for America’s auto industry, the Alliance for American Manufacturing has warned.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«RELATED COVERAGE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> RELATED COVERAGE </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Tesla ordered to stop releasing toxic emissions from San Francisco Bay Area plant </bsp-custom-headline>