Interview: U.S. high tariffs on Chinese EVs outdated, useless, says economist

ZAGREB, May 19 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government's move to increase the tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) imports is outdated and ineffective, a Croatian economist told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The White House announced last Tuesday its decision to increase the tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles imports from some 25 percent to 100 percent.

"This is actually more of a political measure than an economic measure," Ljubo Jurcic, Croatian economist and former minister of economy, said.

The real motive of the United States, under the pretext of protecting its automobile industry, is to hurt the Chinese economy, suppress China's growth, and preserve the U.S. leading position in the world, said the economist.

Moreover, the United States regards China, the second largest economy in the world, as its only real competitor and has been sparing no effort to hinder its development through not only trade and economics but also politics and technology, Jurcic noted.

"History has shown that this (high tariffs) is not a good measure," he said, adding that the active measures to protect domestic industry should be to catch up and overtake competitors via technological development.

The U.S. high tariffs try to completely ban the export of Chinese EVs to the U.S. market, only to the detriment of both the American EV industry and the American consumers as the American EV industry will no longer compete with the Chinese counterparts and the American consumers will be deprived of the access to diverse choices better than the American EVs, Jurcic explained.

Jurcic said he believed the U.S. tariffs would hardly impact Chinese EVs as they are primarily produced in China, which is the world's largest EV market.