Governments across the developed world have vowed to decarbonise their economies in the next few decades. Yet many are also moving to limit imports of Chinese-made green tech, without which decarbonisation will take more time and money — if it can be achieved at all. At some point, western leaders will have to choose between their climate goals and their protectionism — and it would be better for everyone if it is protectionism that has to give.
The contradiction is most glaring for electric vehicles. The EU has committed to phasing out the sale of conventional cars by 2035. The US is throwing billions of taxpayer dollars on boosting domestic EV and battery manufacturing. But even as EV adoption is faltering — and slowing sales are hurting the wider supply chain, such as battery makers — leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have been raising their hackles against a supposed threat to their domestic industries from ultra-competitive Chinese imports.
In the US, that threat is entirely imagined. The US imports hardly any Chinese EVs. Joe Biden’s recent 100 per cent tariff on Chinese-made EVs will keep things that way. In Europe, the accelerating inflow is real. Last year close to one in five electric vehicles sold across the EU, or 300,000 units, were made in China (some by western marques). But that remains a tiny fraction of the 10.5mn cars sold in the EU in 2023 — all of which are soon supposed to be zero-emissions ones.