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Today's WorldView

By Bryan Pietsch

with Sammy Westfall

Chinese EVs are good for the world. Biden says they’re bad for America.

A BYD vehicle is displayed at Auto China in Beijing last week. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)

It was long thought that wealthy countries would lead the electric vehicle revolution. Oil-rich Norway was often, ironically, held up as a beacon of what the transition to EVs could look like. In the United States, Teslas and pricey electric BMWs have become a status symbol.

But in parts of the Global South, EV uptake is surging and, in some countries, keeping pace with that of the United States. The silver bullet: cheap, high-quality Chinese EVs.

“Up until a couple of years ago, there was this common narrative that electric vehicles were the kind of technology that was going to first do well in the Global North and then trickle down to the Global South,” said Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And the automakers believed this. Experts believed this. I certainly believed this as well.”

Chinese automakers, she said, “have completely upended this belief.”

The affordable vehicles — many of them made by Chinese auto giant BYD — can be seen on roads from Brazil to Colombia to Vietnam. In Thailand, 1 in 10 cars registered there last year was electric, on par with the share of EVs in the U.S. car market, according to a report last month by the International Energy Agency. “Chinese companies account for over half the sales to date, and they could become even more prominent” in Thailand, the report said, as BYD is set to begin operating production facilities in the country this year.

China’s EV prowess is on display this week at the Beijing Auto Show, where Chinese automakers like BYD, Nio and Xiaomi, more known for its smartphones, brought home the point that while the rest of the world may be planning for an electrified future, China is already there.

“If you come here, you should have no doubt about EVs anymore,” William Li, Nio’s founder and chief executive, told Reuters. “It is actually not the future but is what’s happening right now.”

The transition from combustion-engine vehicles to electric ones is a boon for middle-income countries, where air quality is often a concern. In turn, it’s a tool for battling climate change globally.

But the cheap climate-friendly cars have presented a paradox for President Biden. The Biden administration has made combating climate change a key policy priority. As my colleague Maxine Joselow reported in March, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is nudging the U.S. auto industry toward electrification: “The Environmental Protection Agency rule — President Biden’s most far-reaching climate regulation yet — will require automakers to ramp up sales of electric vehicles while slashing carbon emissions from gasoline-powered models, which account for about one-fifth of America’s contribution to global warming.”

And a new change in U.S. tax policy allows a hefty credit on certain electric vehicles to be taken off the car’s price upfront rather than during tax season. But the cars must undergo final assembly in North America — ruling out Chinese vehicles, which are subject to an additional 25 percent tariff on top of the 2.5 percent tariff on imported cars, a Trump-era imposition that the Biden administration maintained.

“These cheap electric vehicles would absolutely increase the uptake in electrification in the United States and elsewhere. That’s really where the dilemma lies,” Mazzocco said.

The average cost of an EV in China is about $30,000 — half the average cost in the United States, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News, which notes that BYD’s Seagull hatchback sells for less than $10,000.

“There are few things that would decarbonize the U.S. faster than $20,000 EVs,” David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Atlantic’s Rogé Karma. “But there is probably nothing that would kill the U.S. auto industry faster, either.”

The picture is already a bit bleak for EVs in America’s auto industry. Automakers including Ford and GM are scaling back on EVs, hoping that plug-in hybrids — a solution for Americans worried about electric-only range between charging stations — will help bridge the gap between a gas-powered present and an electrified future. Tesla, which sells only electric vehicles, has cut prices as it faces falling sales. Rivian, a California-based maker of electric SUVs, said in a letter to shareholders that it lost $43,000 on each vehicle it delivered last year.

Such is the predicament Biden finds himself in: electrify America’s roads faster with cheap Chinese EVs or safeguard the nation’s auto industry. For now, he has chosen the latter. Biden said in a February statement that “unfair” Chinese policies — Beijing is thought to stand up China’s auto industry with subsidies and injections of capital — “could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on our watch.”

The risks extend beyond the potential impacts on the U.S. auto industry, and in turn the U.S. economy, according to Biden. “Connected vehicles from China could collect sensitive data about our citizens and our infrastructure and send this data back to the People’s Republic of China. These vehicles could be remotely accessed or disabled,” he said in the statement.

In keeping Chinese EVs out of the United States, Biden finds himself on rare common ground with his opponent in this year’s presidential election, Donald Trump. The former president has warned of a “bloodbath” should Chinese EVs enter the U.S. market and has proposed a 100 percent tariff on the vehicles. As such, it appears that regardless of who wins in November, you probably won’t see swarms of Chinese EVs on American roads anytime soon. (One exception is Volvo, which has found a workaround to the steep tariffs on its Chinese-made EX30 model — one of the most affordable EVs on sale in the United States, starting at less than $35,000 — because it has manufacturing operations in the United States, Reuters has reported. Volvo, originally a Swedish brand, is now owned by Chinese company Geely.)

Even if the United States succeeds in keeping the Chinese vehicles out in a bid to protect its own industry, innovation among American automakers could suffer. In a market where affordable, forward-looking products are excluded, the U.S. auto industry risks becoming complacent. That could hurt consumers and cause U.S. automakers to fall behind competitors in markets abroad.

The United States could end up having “missed the chance to push their companies to be more innovative in that process,” Mazzocco said, pointing to a “really bad track record” in the United States of protecting industries while trying to keep them competitive.

“We’re in a race against time on climate,” said Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Wilson Center. “If you want to go whole-in on the climate, we should open the doors for cheap electric vehicles. But that doesn’t help us in the long run economically.”

The key will be supporting innovation on next-generation electrification technologies — products and solutions beyond just electric vehicles — “the kinds of things you and I can’t even imagine,” Turner said. “We are an incredibly innovative and talented country, and there’s finally some money out there to make it happen.”

1,000 WORDS

(Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Our colleague Ruby Mellen interviewed Palestinian photojournalist Haitham Imad about the story behind this photograph: "It was the first time I had heard joyous chanting in a long time.

The children huddled together in the tent camp eagerly chatting away. There was a chill in the air to match their excitement, as nighttime fell on Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where most displaced people are now living.

With a click, the projector came on and a hush fell over the crowd.

Each night, Cinema Between the Tents — founded by Muhammad Al-Khudari, who fled from northern Gaza — screens children’s movies in a different part of the sprawling tent camp. On this Sunday evening, the films were “Cinderella” and “Tom and Jerry.”

It’s a way to distract the children from losing their homes and many of their belongings and coping with frequent power outages.

As a photographer who has documented so much destruction and horror, it was a good feeling to see children without fear, without the sounds of explosions and screams. I seek out these scenes, to show that children here want to be as safe as other children in the world."

TALKING POINTS

• The U.S. airman convicted in a sprawling leak of classified government secrets that revealed sensitive intelligence about America’s allies and adversaries will face military criminal proceedings later this month, Air Force officials said. Jack D. Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who in March pleaded guilty to a raft of federal crimes, could face additional time in confinement due to the Air Force’s disciplinary proceedings. He already faces more than 16 years in prison as part of his plea deal with the Justice Department, and he is expected to be sentenced in that case this fall.

• The Solomon Islands, the Pacific country most friendly to Beijing, looks set to deepen its strong ties with China following Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele’s elevation to prime minister on Thursday. The election has been closely watched by Washington and its allies as Beijing extends its reach into a region traditionally dominated by the United States and Australia, forging security agreements that could further its military aims across the Pacific.

• Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that his government will suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, its longtime defense ally, making Colombia the largest country to sever ties amid the war in Gaza. While many countries have withdrawn diplomats from Israel, few nations have gone so far as to suspend diplomatic relations.

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CLEAR DEFINITIONS

Two people display a flag amid a pro-Palestinian demonstration last week at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

House Republicans are seeking to unite their unruly majority around an evergreen conservative cause, devising a strict response to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that have roiled college campuses across the country in recent weeks.

GOP leaders this week announced plans for new oversight investigations of elite universities where — in the words of House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) — “pro-terrorist anti-Semites [are] taking over.” And on Wednesday, they passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which its advocates said would empower the federal government to crack down on anti-Israel protests on campuses by codifying a definition of antisemitism that encompasses not just threats against Jews, but also certain criticisms of Israel itself.

“We must give the Department of Education the tools to … hold college administrators accountable for refusing to address antisemitism on their campuses,” said Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), the bill’s lead sponsor.

The bill was approved by a vote of 320-91, with a majority of Democrats — 133 — joining Republicans.

Lawler’s bill — with 61 co-sponsors, including 15 Democrats — would create “a clear definition of antisemitism” in U.S. law that the Education Department could then use to cut off funding to academic institutions found to tolerate such behaviors. The definition, however, has drawn fierce opposition from First Amendment advocates, who say it veers sharply into the realm of restricting political views.

It’s unclear what the bill’s prospects are in the Democratic-controlled Senate or how the White House views it. Previous iterations failed to muster sufficient support in Congress, but both its supporters and opponents say the ongoing protests and a rise in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel have injected fresh momentum.

If it does become law, the federal definition of antisemitism, adopted from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, would include such speech as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”; “applying double standards” to Israel that are “not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

The idea is that student-held signs, for example, like those displayed at Columbia University in New York this week, calling for “revolution” or “intifada” — which means “uprising” — would amount to antisemitism under the law. The Education Department, in turn, could then revoke federal research grants and other funding to a university that fails to take punitive action toward students who express such views, the bill’s proponents say.

Several Republicans said opposing Zionism — the political movement to create, and now to preserve, a state for Jews in their biblical homeland — would qualify as antisemitism under the law. Some suggested that even holding a prolonged protest would constitute antisemitism. “The erection of encampments on college campuses isn’t an expression of speech,” Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said on the House floor Wednesday. “It is a direct threat to Jewish students on college campuses.”

But the “double standards” example and the notion that Nazi comparisons are off-limits in the case of Israel, among other aspects of the definition, are deeply problematic because they’re too broad and present “viewpoint discrimination,” said Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment advocacy organization.

“Nowhere else in First Amendment law does it say that you can criticize a certain country up to a certain limit, or else you might risk violating federal anti-discrimination law,” he said.

“The First Amendment allows individuals to criticize every country in the world, including our own” — and that includes comparing other governments to the Nazis, however disturbing many Americans may find that comparison to be, Coward said. – Abigail Hauslohner