LONDON, July 18 – The United Kingdom has no plans to follow the European Union’s lead and impose tariffs on imports of China-made electric vehicles, or EVs, the nation’s new business minister said.
UK’s Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds, who started overseeing the country’s trade policy after the Labour Party’s July 4 landslide election win, said at a meeting of G7 fellow ministers in Italy on Tuesday that he had discussed the EU’s planned tariffs with his European counterparts, and that the idea did not appeal to him.
“I am not ruling anything out but, if you have a very much export-orientated industry, the decision you take (must be) the right one for that sector,” the Financial Times quoted him as saying.
The EU announced in June plans to introduce tariffs of up to 37.6 percent on Chinese EVs, to counter what it said were unfair state subsidies in China.
But Reynolds said he is not interested in introducing similar tariffs in the UK, or in launching a formal investigation into Chinese EV imports.
The paper said the UK car sector has not called on the government’s Trade Remedies Authority to launch such an investigation, something that would be needed before tariffs could be contemplated.
Electric vehicles made in China have been popular with UK drivers, with EVs produced by Western companies, including Tesla and BMW, common on British roads alongside China-owned brands, such as MG.
