Economic blockade of Chinese green technology reveals shallow US commitment to fight climate change.
Will more anti-China tariffs slow US shift away from fossil fuels ? Is talking to the two-faced Washington regime ‘a waste of oxygen’ ?
Only 5 days after seemingly cordial US-China climate talks, US Biden regime has announced it will increase US tariffs on Chinese solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries to run them (some up to 100%).
On May 8-9 2024 China’s top climate diplomat Liu Zhenmin travelled to Washington DC for two days of talks with his US counterpart John Podesta.
They discussed co-operation on climate issues, including plans for both sides to ramp up renewables, and vowed to “intensify technical and policy exchanges”.
But the day after, with Liu still in the country, the US State Department briefed journalists that Podesta had told Liu that China was producing too many solar panels and lithium-ion EV batteries.
Then on Tuesday, the White House increased tariffs on Chinese EVs, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, as part of the US regime’s dubious claims of the Chinese government’s “unfair, non-market practices” and “flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports”.
The Biden regime is currently weighing whether to impose tariffs on solar imports from four Southeast Asian countries over “concerns” that China is routing its panels through these nations.
The US actually imports relatively few electric vehicles from China, as it already has Trump-era tariffs on them. The US lags well behind China and Europe in adoption of electric vehicles, with China responsible for over half of global production.
The US does import lots of lithium-ion EV batteries despite existing 7.5% tariffs. China produces about three-quarters of all the world’s EV batteries, with the US producing less than a tenth.
It is clear that the American moaning about China’s green technology is not really about “over capacity”, but rather part of the sustained attempt by Washington to weaken China’s ability to out perform US business in emerging new technology sectors. In doing so, it has become abundantly clear that the US commitment to global action on decarbonisation is little more than a fig leaf to conceal its real anti-China agenda.
Source: This post draws on information from Climate Change News, (May 15, 2024) but conclusions and opinions are those of China Environment News https://www.climatechangenews.com/…/days-after-climate…/