Germany has apparently lost the fight against EU punitive tariffs on Chinese electric cars – at the expense of the domestic industry. One reason for this may be that the federal government is once again not speaking with one voice.
Olaf Scholz deliberately left the harsh choice of words to others, but the Chancellor didn’t like to object, on the contrary. The EU Commission’s idea of examining the imposition of protective tariffs on the import of Chinese electric cars in the fight against possible state dumping is a decidedly “stupid one,” complained Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at a recent meeting with Scholz. The guest from Berlin expressed himself in a more nuanced manner, but made it clear that he certainly shared his counterpart’s brief analysis.