EU 'Tariff Bomb' Implementation... China’s Electric Vehicle Exports Drop 42% in November

The European Union (EU)'s imposition of high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) has led to a sharp decline in China's EV export value last month.

Reuters Yonhap News

According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China on the 24th, China's EV export value last month was $1.58 billion (approximately 2.2 trillion KRW), down 42% compared to the same month last year. Last month's EV export value marked the lowest since July 2022 ($1.4 billion).

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, "This decline is the steepest since April 2022, when global supply chains were disrupted due to the Shanghai lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the Ukraine war."

EV export volume in November decreased by 19% compared to the same month last year. This suggests that the drop in export value was driven more by price declines than by volume reduction.

The sharp decline in China's EV exports is largely due to the EU's imposition of high tariffs on Chinese EVs starting at midnight on October 30. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, raised the tariff rates on EVs exported from China to the EU from the previous 10% to between 17.8% and 45.3% following an anti-subsidy investigation. As a result, last month's EV export value and volume to the EU fell by 36% and 23%, respectively, compared to the same month last year.

Liang Yan, Associate Professor of Economics at Willamette University in the United States, stated, "The EU accounts for about one-quarter of China's total EV export value," adding that the decline in exports to Europe was the main cause of the overall decrease in export value. Chinese EV manufacturers such as Shanghai Automotive plan to expand their product lines to include gasoline and hybrid vehicle models to minimize the impact of the EU's high tariff measures on EVs.

Exports to emerging markets also declined. EV export value to ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member countries in November dropped by about 25% year-on-year, while exports to Latin America plunged by 47%.

Meanwhile, supported by Chinese subsidies, domestic sales of EVs and hybrid vehicles in China surged 47.4% year-on-year last month, reaching 1.5 million units.