US president Joe Biden has been told by the chair of the US Senate Banking Committee to ban outright all imports of new electric vehicles (EVs) from China, as figures from the aviation industry also call for drastic action over “anti-competitive policies of the Chinese government”.
‘An existential threat’
The BBC reports that Senator Sherrod Brown, who leads the Senate Banking Committee which oversees banks as well as export controls, has said that “Chinese electric vehicles are an existential threat to the American auto industry”.
Speaking on X, formerly known as Twitter, Brown said:
“I’m calling for a complete ban on Chinese EVs. I don’t care what kind of care you drive. All I want is that those cars those be made in America by American workers. We make the best cars in the world, we drive the best cars in the world.”
When China exports to the US, “so often they cheat”, Brown argued, adding that there was not a “level playing field” for domestic producers and that this had had a negative effect on the US economy.
The call for a total ban goes beyond the language used by President Biden earlier this year, when he said Chinese EVs “could flood our market” and that the process could pose national security risks by collecting “large amounts of sensitive data on their drivers and passengers”.
'Anti-competitive policies'
Brown is not the only figure urging stronger action on Chinese competition this week, after a combination of US airlines and unions issued a letter to the Department of Transportation over what it dubbed “anti-competitive policies” in China, according to Reuters.
It comes after the department approved an increase in the number of flights Chinese airlines could operate in the US in February.
Trade group Airlines for America - which includes American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines - signed the letter, which draws attention to the “advantage Chinese airlines receive by continuing to access Russian airspace, while US carriers stopped flying through Russian airspace at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022”.
US Representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, from the US House select committee on China, called for the government to refuse approval of any new Chinese-operated flights until the country abides “by its existing bilateral agreement, and passenger demand begins to recover”.
They added that Chinese airlines “operate air routes at an anticompetitive commercial advantage that must not be allowed to increase without reciprocal parity in the number of US carrier-operated routes”.