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Electric Vehicle Batteries from China Not on Trump’s Tariff List

Earlier this week, the Trump administration released a list of good and products from China that are to be subject to additional tariffs. The list is 45 pages long and includes everything from air combat ground flying simulators to lithium primary cells and primary batteries.
U.S. and China go head to head in trade war 1 photo
Photo: sampi.co
Seeing lithium batteries on the list made a lot of people wonder whether after taking aim at Amazon with angry tweets, the president is not also trying to ruin some other American businesses, this time in the automotive sector.

But, according to Bloomberg, citing specialist from the UBS Group, an investment bank and financial services company, the type of batteries that are on the list are not used in electric vehicles, but in consumer goods.

“Any impact on EV battery supply would be minimal to nil,” said UBS analyst Lachlan Shaw according to the source. “It is lithium-ion rechargeable cells that are the ones that largely go into EVs.”

Currently, China is one of the biggest producers of electric vehicle batteries in the world. A company producing lithium-ion batteries located there, called CATL, has become in March the largest in the world, supplying its products to several carmakers, including the Volkswagen Group or BMW.

By going through the list it is obvious that the U.S. is trying to target the high-tech industry, through which the Chinese plan to become an even more powerful economy. The U.S. justifies the measure on unreasonable or discriminatory practices from the Chinese when it comes to technology transfer and intellectual property.

The world now awaits the response of the Chinese government. According to various sources, the Chinese would retaliate with similar measures on soybeans, the largest export to China, but the list would also include automobiles and airplanes.

“If they do we will certainly take countermeasures of the same proportion and of the same scale, same intensity,”
Beijing’s ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai said, according to South China Morning Post.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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