The EU and Beijing are struggling to avert tariffs on Chinese electric cars. One option is particularly promising. Commission head Ursula von der Leyen is currently seeking dialogue with industry.
How quickly tariffs can have an impact even though they haven’t been imposed yet. There has recently been a gap on the BMW website. The fully electric iX3 SUV, which the company builds in China and ships from there around the world, has disappeared and can no longer be ordered at the moment. The company explains that the model will only be built until spring 2025 and is already sold out. But the temporal context also allows for a different interpretation: a week ago on Friday, the EU countries paved the way for the European Commission to impose countervailing duties on electric cars from China. If these were actually imposed at the end of the month, BMW would have to pay an additional 20.7 percent tariff for each iX3. This throws the calculation for the model out of the window.