Beijing says it will impose tariffs on Canadian agricultural and food products in retaliation for Ottawa’s levies on Chinese electric vehicles, stoking greater uncertainty over the North American country’s economy.
China’s commerce ministry on Saturday said it would impose 100 per cent tariffs on Canadian rapeseed oil and pea imports and a 25 per cent levy on pork and some seafood imports.
It said it was responding to “discriminatory” tariffs of 100 per cent on electric vehicles and 25 per cent on steel and aluminium that Ottawa announced in August, which followed similar actions by the US.
In response, Beijing filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization and launched an anti-dumping probe into Canadian imports of rapeseed products.
China is an important market for Canadian rapeseed, a crop also known as canola. China bought $3.5bn worth of Canadian canola products, including oil and seeds, making it the largest market behind the US, according to the Canola Council of Canada trade group.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused China of “not playing by the same rules” when he announced the tariffs on Chinese EVs and metals in August. Carmaking is one of Canada’s most important manufacturing sectors, with plants supplying the US market.
Archive link
Canada's levies on EVs we're put in place to back the US. I vote we get rid of the levies. To hell to America and their car industry, let's open up the Canadian market for Chinese EVs! The US isn't doing us any favours, why should we keep backing their play to keep Chinese EVs out of the North American market? Elbows up! 💪🏻🍁
My understanding is that we obligated Japanese & Korean auto makers to open some plants in Canada/NAFTA/USMCA in order to gain access to our market. I don't see why the requirements should be any different for Chinese automakers.
I think the tariffs we applied to BYD were different because China bad and it was done to placate the USA. I don't think we should single out China to placate America (especially if it doesn't work).
Especially when brands like BYD would have to actually put in effort to be worse than Tesla. ~1/4 of every Tesla sold 4y ago in Denmark is now an expensive paper weight requiring expensive repairs to be allowed on the road again.
@[email protected] once we see the canadian government keep the EV tariffs anyways despite the separate tariff war with america; it'll become clear how much of a spectacle this is since little of it impacts the ruling classes as much as it does ordinary people.
The safety argument doesn't hold when the alternative is US cars. Chinese cars often get 5/5 on EuroNCAP, while US trucks don't even qualify to get tested.
It's easy to say "fuck america! Let's bring in those chinese EVs!" And while we certainly put those tariffs in place in large part because of the States doing so, it's also important to remember that China really, really doesn't play fair on the global stage. It's easy to point to subsidies as the culprit, but as usual with Chinese manufacturing, that only tells part of the story. It's very likely that many parts of those vehicles are sold to these companies by CCP owned or partly-owned businesses, from the steel to the leather to the plastics, these cars are cheap for a reason.
When you buy a Chinese EV, the vast majority of that money goes to China. And if you're really a "rah rah Canada" kind of person, that's why those tariffs exist, because if they do flood the market with cheap vehicles, it's important that we're not wholly enriching a foreign nation (especially one that has shown it is happy to clandestinely meddle in Canadian affairs) at the expense of our own.
At this point I'd rather support China than the US.
It's one thing to bang on about totalitarian governments blah blah, it's another to see a democracy willfully and deliberately vote in that disgusting pig of a man.
You get electric vehicles, they get money. What's the problem?
I think it would be very tough for Canada to not support Canada though
Shouldn't you be off applauding SS members right now?
Does Canada even have EV manufacturing?
Not with that attitude!
J/K we were set to have a couple plants ready to go this year, but who knows now?
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/04/25/heres-a-list-of-recent-electric-vehicle-and-battery-plant-announcements-in-canada/
I think you raise a lot of important points and am a little annoyed at the downvotes when you're clearly participating on the level in this conversation.
I do want to add though that tarrifs in this situation are a bit of a bandaid on a bad wound that the western world allowed to fester for more than a decade now. China's been doing some questionable stuff to gain market dominance, yes, but the west should have been answering in kind all along instead of trying to play catchup with even more questionable economic tricks.
Not reallu sure what to suggest as an alternative though. Just really a shame it was allowed to come to this when anyone with a brain ten years ago could see how important EVs would be in the future.