Tariffs imposed by the US have made exporting to the country “impossible” for Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers, an executive at major producer Xpeng has said during his visit to Hong Kong.
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But Yeqing Zheng said on Thursday that the Guangzhou-based Xpeng’s enhanced efforts to tap into other markets, which involved establishing assembly operations outside China and licensing technology, could ease the impact of the tariffs.
He explained that the sector was already subject to “an extremely high level of tariffs by the United States before this bout of the trade war”.
“So if I do my math correctly, currently, we [the EV industry] are subject to something more like 270 per cent … It remains impossible for any Chinese car manufacturer, especially electric vehicle manufacturers, to export directly to the United States,” the Xpeng vice-president, general counsel said.
US President Donald Trump has imposed cumulative tariffs of 145 per cent on all Chinese goods over a number of escalatory rounds, with the White House also revealing the figure to be as high as 245 per cent on some goods.
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The Xpeng executive was speaking on a panel at an American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong event in the city, with the discussion centring on challenges facing China’s technology sector amid the new measures.