My Take | China’s green tech firms largely insulated from latest tariff war
With their reliance on the US market already limited, these battle-worn companies are better equipped to weather the coming decoupling storm
With US President Donald Trump levying extra 145 per cent tariffs on China this year, and Beijing responding nearly in kind, it would be easy to assume Chinese green technology companies would be facing a reckoning after losing the vital US export market.
After all, China is the world’s top producer of electric vehicles, photovoltaic cells for solar panels and lithium-ion batteries.
Indeed, China is the second-largest EV exporter after Germany, and the largest exporter of solar photovoltaic cells and lithium batteries in the world – all of which topped the list of complaints by the European Union and United States in recent years as evidence of the country’s manufacturing overcapacity and dumping.
Yet interestingly, Chinese EV and solar panel firms, and to a limited extent even the lithium battery makers, appear insulated from the fallout from the latest tariff war.
This is partly because they’ve been embroiled in a trade war with the United States for some time, and have already sought other markets to gird themselves for a lengthy conflict.
China ships few electric vehicles to the US. China customs data shows US exports made up less than 1 per cent of total EV exports in 2023, even before the Biden administration slapped 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs in 2024.