Keeping Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) out of the U.S. has been a major goal of President Joe Biden’s administration. However, during a speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, former President Donald Trump said he would take a different approach, indicating his willingness to allow Chinese EV makers to establish operations in the U.S., provided that the production plants are constructed and staffed by American workers.
“They’re building some of the largest auto plants anywhere in the world,” Trump said. “We’re going to bring it back. We’re going to make them. We don’t mind that happening. But those plants are going to be built in the United States, and our people are going to man those plants.”
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Trump’s proposal is aimed at preventing Chinese companies from building plants in Mexico to avoid the tariffs recently increased by the Biden administration and to capitalize on the federal government’s EV tax credit offerings.
“Large factories just started are being built across the border in Mexico,” Trump said. “So with all the other things happening at our border, and they’re being built by China to make cars and to sell them into our country.”
The former president said that if elected again, he plans to put forth policies to deter Beijing-backed companies from building out their facilities in Mexico. Trump claimed he would consider imposing substantial tariffs on these Chinese EVs manufactured in south of the U.S. border.
“If they don’t agree with us, we’ll put a tariff of approximately 100 to 200% on each car, and they will be unsellable in the United States,” Trump said.
In his speech, Trump also criticized the United Auto Workers (UAW), a union representing over 400,000 automotive industry employees, which endorsed Biden earlier this year, over China’s use of Mexico as a potential way to get its EVs into the United States. He said the UAW should be “ashamed for allowing this to happen,” and suggested that the union’s president, Shawn Fain, should be “fired immediately.”
