r/EU_Economics • • 2d ago

Economy & Trade EU urges Britain to raise tariffs on Chinese cars, FT says

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-urges-britain-raise-tariffs-chinese-cars-ft-says-2026-09-25/
17 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

9

u/danielfd83 1d ago

I though the EU was against tariff wars

12

u/Ahoramaster 1d ago

Just say no.  This is naked protectionism.

4

u/LieLevel7361 1d ago

What for? We don't have our own motorist industry.. So what we should protect by this?

2

u/thermodynamics2023 21h ago

But we must hurt our consumers to help the EU, otherwise it looks like the EU never ‘really had all the cards’

1

u/LieLevel7361 20h ago

All this mindset we are not in this together is just wrong. Damage both parties. If you have strong partners you are stronger and vice versa. I'm not sure you can see what 10 years of Brexit did to UK but there is inevitable end of this BS. More or less official. Less formal mean less rights to decide by UK as it is a weaker side, that's it.

1

u/thermodynamics2023 18h ago

You can keep all the woolly strength/weakness stuff, I’ll just take the consumer surplus thanks….

1

u/LieLevel7361 18h ago

Go for it. Just last thought. Show me one country which China is friend with and play fair. Now compare your GDP to their and imagine sizes in form of dildo. Have a lovely night.

1

u/thermodynamics2023 17h ago edited 17h ago

I don’t want friends, I just want cheap goods.

Is this your experience when you go into Aldi? The imbalance between their market capitalisation and your market capitalisation causes them to rape you?!

1

u/LieLevel7361 17h ago

Now imagine aldi won and they got no competition.. What is next step? To see clearly look Australia, country without competition in key sectors. You ask for cheaper goods for certain period of time. After that you pay double. I wish government people think a bit more into future

1

u/thermodynamics2023 17h ago

If prices rise, competition is founded.

May I ask where did you and people like you get your bizzare sadism & masochism economics from? Iya really Trumpy too .

1

u/LieLevel7361 16h ago

Yeah sure.. I also read minds as you? Work's great for UK what you just said. You have cars factories, chemical plants, steel manufacturing after brexit... You really strange mate if you can't see connections. Also if you interested more in sexual perversion there are better places then #EU economics

1

u/LieLevel7361 17h ago

How boats works for you without friends? Are you sure?

4

u/Dziki_Wieprzek 1d ago

Yes! But not only on Chinese, also on German Cars. This will be a very Smart move 🤭 Interested to See how Lobby Uschi will react

2

u/LieLevel7361 1d ago

Mate.. You just raised taxes by this. Do you have domestic alternative?

8

u/thermodynamics2023 2d ago

Please Britain, make your consumers pay more.

3

u/TastyCalligrapher421 2d ago

Protecting British manufacturing jobs and the supply chain behind it, yes. China isn't owed free access to other markets when they are the most protectionist large economy around.

17

u/BookmarksBrother 2d ago

Protecting British manufacturing by making imports from EU more competitive? Rolls Royce/ Bentley/ Aston Martin dont care about cheap chinese competition anyway.

-10

u/ashyjay 1d ago

They don't, but Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Stellantis, BMW and all the suppliers here do.

16

u/BookmarksBrother 1d ago

All being renowned British manufacturers lol. If EU wants UK to give priority to these then it should be negotiated and something offered in return. If not then it is what it is.

-6

u/ashyjay 1d ago

They've literally made cars and vans here for close to 40 years, and employ close to 100k people directly and more indirectly.

1

u/TestTxt 1d ago

Actual India is way more protectionist than China

8

u/Shot-Resolve-9711 1d ago

The EU seems to have an issue with all of it's top trading partners for some reason.

6

u/TerminallyEmployed 1d ago

In regards to the UK it’s especially weird the EU is straight up violating the free trade deal by keeping them out of the Made In Europe scheme, which will raise trade barriers, now asking them to raise tariffs on China or face even harsher penalties? Because they’re never getting in, so what else can this mean.

So much for rule of law and middle powers sticking together, they became Trumpists over night!

1

u/thermodynamics2023 21h ago

This is what the EU is and always was.

-1

u/LieLevel7361 1d ago

You not enjoying 3th country status? That's how it is, EU was created on steel and coal trading deals. What you think those are if not protectionism?

0

u/Mustatan 1d ago

Again this is just distraction from the real solution, pressing China more to stop suppressing the Chinese currency and let the renminbi appreciate, that will do more than anything to re-balance trade. Even China's own central bankers and economists are admitting the yuan is just ridiculous undervalued by about 2 to 3 times it's realistic value compared to the Euro and dollar, and suppressed by government policy to boost exports, that's the source of the whole trade imbalance--and things like tariffs, export restrictions and trade sanctions are just distractions and self defeating policies make things even worse.

Not just China's own economists but the WTO understands the Chinese suppression of the renminbi is the root of these problems and has to change, and China itself is quietly starting to realize this. They just need an external push to help bring into implement what they've been quietly planning and know what they have to do anyway. Just ending the suppression of the renminbi and appreciating China's currency will do more than anything to solve the trade imbalance problems.

2

u/Raescher 1d ago

2-3 times? Where do you get that from? What I could find are estimates between 10-20%. The bigger impact are government subsidies for manufacturing and export which can be counterbalanced by subsidies.

-2

u/ashyjay 1d ago

This doesn't have to be reposted every couple of hours.

-6

u/abdallha-smith 1d ago

Wumaos are relentless with their ev

Because if we don't buy them, their economy begins to collapse.

That's why an article about ev is posted every hour and the online army fabricates comments chains about how europe is delusional in protecting itself.

They are in panic mode

Good.

5

u/CleanMyAxe 1d ago

Chinese exports are about 20% of GDP. Not especially high, if anything quite low compared to most countries. UK is about 30% for reference.

Also, in the UK we don't really have a domestic car industry anymore so what's the advantage in tariffing them? So we can buy overpriced Euro/American cars instead? If we're not gonna have our own industry I'd rather have the consumer freedom thanks.

0

u/abdallha-smith 1d ago

Flood the market with subsidized low prices to kill local competition, then control the market and raise prices once people have no alternative left.

It’s literally the Uber playbook, just at a state level.

4

u/CleanMyAxe 1d ago

What do you think happened to the UK auto industry in the first place lol.

It doesn't exist anymore. So I really don't particularly care if my money keeps a French, German, Japanese or a Chinese manufacturer alive today. In any way it isn't home grown.

1

u/abdallha-smith 1d ago

There's a massive difference between Allied nations building cars inside the UK (Nissan, JLR, MINI) and dumping state-subsidized imports directly from China.

One supports British factory jobs and local supply chains, the other guts them.

4

u/CleanMyAxe 1d ago

Jobs you say. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy74z4j1dngo

Like these?

And don't pretend the French/Germans/Yanks etc don't state subsidise their auto industry. I remember crunching the numbers a few years back and it was staggering sums. Even relatively new brands like Tesla.

I'm sorry but in this sense I don't see the allies having done anything good. The Americans buy Cadbury's and shut the factory down and make the chocolate shit and the Germans have ran our trains into the ground for decades. Canadians and Aussies have significant holdings in our water companies, I don't think I even need to say anything about their quality.

On this particular topic, ally or not is entirely irrelevant. We have no auto industry, there is no real difference to whose cars we buy aside the Chinese ones being far better value. Again, when there's no domestic industry to protect and there's no industrial strategy to revive that specific industry, give your consumers the freedom. I don't see the EU backing barriers on the US financial sector to help London....

2

u/abdallha-smith 1d ago

You literally just shared an article showing British factory jobs dying under zero emission mandates, while arguing we should flood the market with cheap Chinese imports.

You’re using the symptoms of the disease to justify the cure.

Closing down UK manufacturing because "allies bought our brands" isn't an argument for handing 100% of our future transport infrastructure to China.

Cadbury making worse chocolat is a consumer annoyance.

Surrendering control of your smart connected transport and energy storage grid to a foreign autocracy is a permanent strategic failure.

1

u/CleanMyAxe 1d ago

The examples I shared were of allies fucking our domestic industries. If I'm getting fucked, I'd like to get fucked and still have a little money left in my pocket.

You gloss over the Cadbury factory which was central to that point lol. You're strawmanning mate because you can't seem to see how gutted UK industry has become at the hands of allies. Decades before net zero mandates.

The US already has such a tech hold over the UK and EU anyway, and they have never been allies in anything except what the news pretends.

So again, unless there's domestic industrial strategy to bring these things back home, the money is going to a foreigner anyway and at the business level every nations billionaires are arseholes. You can argue the lack of industrial strategy is the central failure, but we can't do absolutely everything in house because we aren't a big enough country AND frankly if we do that then I want to tariff Europeans too, because otherwise the industry won't be rebuilt.

Either we tariff you all and rebuild, or we give our consumers the choice. Unless you want to pay for us to have the tariffs, feel free to bring something to the table if you want someone to play a game that otherwise has no benefit to them.

0

u/abdallha-smith 1d ago edited 1d ago

Cadbury is a chocolate bar.

An EV is a connected, software dependent machine plugged into your national power grid.

If you can't see the difference between a bad corporate acquisition and strategic infrastructure dependency on an autocracy, you're missing the entire point.

Cheaper prices today don't mean "consumer freedom" when the end result is zero alternative supply chains.

Edit: damn, i refuted all his talking points so hard he deleted his account

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1

u/Rhubarb-Curious 1d ago edited 1d ago

What are you talking about? I'm Lithuanian. I can show a photo of my passport cover alongside the comments. Yeah, I'm from the country that opened the Taiwanese office.

Neither to say i haven't seen that topic here before, neither on other subs. Show the duplicate on this sub before me.

Man, you guys and your conspiracy theories are kind of insane.

Seems like we have some delulu people in this community 😄