Source: Yuyuan Tan Tian
The European Commission released a cartoon about the preliminary determination of anti subsidy investigation on electric vehicles in China
In the past two days, in response to the disclosure of the preliminary determination of the European Commission on the anti subsidy investigation of electric vehicles in China, Tan Zhu continued to release exclusive information, which attracted great attention from the western media.
Following their reports, we can find that, The most frequently cited information points in western media are all related to China's counter measures:
BBC、 When quoting Tan Zhu's report, the Daily Telegraph of the United Kingdom used the relevant content of "Chinese automobile manufacturers urge the Chinese government to raise tariffs on European large displacement gasoline vehicles" as the title;
Bloomberg News and other media have paid attention to Tan's report that "the industry calls for the 'most severe measures' against Europe" and the possible losses faced by European car companies;
The Wall Street Journal and France Radio International are paying attention to the progress of China's anti dumping investigation of brandy against Europe mentioned by Tan Zhu.
In fact, the European Commission itself is also following China's trends. In response to China's continuous release of counter measures, the European side said:
The EU is unwilling to launch a "trade war", but China's behavior is to provoke a "trade war".
I can hit you, but you can't fight back.
Today, the European Commission also tries to pretend that it is acting under the framework of the WTO, and tries to give China the hat of "launching a 'trade war'".
Tan Zhu deeply analyzed the attitude of relevant European people, followed and explored in the US and Europe reports, and revealed the real driving force behind the dispute.
According to the European Commission, the reason for launching a countervailing investigation on Chinese electric vehicles is that the Chinese electric vehicle industry has "threatened" Europe.
In terms of data, in the first four months of 2024, China's market share of electric vehicles in Germany will rise to 40.9%, making it Germany's largest importer of electric vehicles.
In principle, Germany should be the country most able to feel China's "threat" and "impact". However, Germany has always opposed the European Commission's imposition of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
Before the recent visit to China, German Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Habak specially released Germany's attitude to the media:
“ China is Germany's partner in all fields. ”
Germany, which is so closely related to China's electric vehicles, did not feel a "threat". Where did the "threat" come from?
The timeline can be pushed forward to the time before the European Commission makes a decision.
By means of big data, Tan Zhu analyzed the media reports on "China's electric vehicles" in 27 EU countries since 2023. On the day when the European Commission announced the launch of a countervailing investigation on Chinese electric vehicles, there was an obvious peak of reporting.
However, in the report of the whole year 2023, the words "tariff", "investigation" and "subsidy" are not the subject of media reports on "China's electric vehicles" in most EU countries.
Most reports focus on the development of their own industries. Take the German media with the highest coverage. In 2023, the high-frequency topics reported by German media are "battery", "growth" and "investment capital". By 2024, topics such as "battery", "transformation" and "high-quality development" will continue to emerge.
Key words reported by German media on "Chinese electric vehicles" in 2023 and 2024
German media pay special attention to the topics of "investment" and "growth". Behind them is the transformation dilemma faced by German and even European car companies in the past year.
Due to the tightening of fiscal policy, in 2023, the German government will gradually reduce the consumption subsidies to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles, which will reduce the market demand. At the same time, high inflation keeps the manufacturing cost of German electric vehicles high.
In this context, reducing the manufacturing cost of electric vehicles is the most effective way for European car companies, including German car companies, to achieve transformation.
Correspondingly, it can be seen from the data that the reports of Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and other media with high access rates mentioned the characteristics of "high quality and low price" of Chinese electric vehicles. European industry insiders even said frankly that without China, there would be "no energy transformation".
Through cooperation with China, it has become the choice of European automobile enterprises to sharpen their own cost control and production capacity.
However, at the same time when European car companies were in trouble and struggling to seize the opportunity of transformation, the European Commission began to release the news that it would impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
According to the European side's explanation, the European Commission's judgment on the "threat" of China's electric vehicles was derived from media reports.
Just mentioned, the report of 27 EU countries on China's electric vehicles has no fermentation of relevant content. What kind of reports do people in the European Commission read?
During the same period, the most mentioned topic was the American media, with more than 113000 reports.
The first reporting peak of American media will be from March to April 2023. The cause of the matter was originally that the United States and Europe wanted to discuss solutions to the problem that excessive subsidies in the US Inflation Reduction Act hurt the interests of the EU industry. However, the US media began to "link" the so-called "subsidy" problem in China's electric vehicle industry in their reports.
After this discussion, James Bachker, the assistant director of the European Center of the Atlantic Council, an American think-tank, first mentioned the word "subsidy". He said, "Reaching consensus on the diversification of the electric vehicle battery supply chain is an important step in the US Europe relationship, and any measure to avoid the subsidy war is meaningful."
The term "subsidy" began to appear in European media reports on Chinese electric vehicles.
Subsequently, two senior officials of the European Commission revealed in a media interview that the department responsible for trade protection measures of the European Commission was discussing whether to launch a countervailing investigation on Chinese electric vehicles.
According to the excavation of professional organizations, Stuart Liu, a reporter in the European edition of Politician, is also cooperating to release the news that the European Commission will launch a countervailing investigation against China and that the European Commission will impose tariffs on China's electric vehicles. This has become the key communication node of the public opinion field.
Interestingly, it is not only European journalists, but also American media that have cooperated with the European Commission to release information. In addition, the American media took the lead in launching the information bombing, setting off a number of rounds of reports on the issue of "subsidies".
In comparison, the peak of European media coverage was later. It was only after Von Delain officially confirmed that an investigation would be launched that European media focused on "China's electric vehicles" and "subsidies" for several days.
Number of European media reports on "China", "subsidies" and "electric vehicles" in 2023
After the peak, it soon dropped to insipidity.
The topic of subsidies alone cannot cause too much attention. Subsequently, American consulting companies issued reports one after another, saying that "the imposition of 50% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles is the 'necessary condition' to prevent Chinese automobile manufacturers".
These actions have become the "reasons" for the European Commission to launch actions.
But this is not the whole picture.
In order to clarify the deeper thinking of the European Commission, Tan Zhu found the operator of the anti subsidy investigation against China.
Tan Zhu analyzed the reports about "China"+"subsidies"+"electric vehicles" in the European and American media in the past year, and found that a person named Dennis Redoney was frequently mentioned.
He is the chief trade enforcement officer of the European Commission. The year before the establishment of this position, the US government announced that it would impose a 25% tariff on steel imported from the EU and other places, and a 10% tariff on aluminum imported on the grounds of national security.
After the tax increase, the European Union's steel exports to the United States fell by 4.55 million tons compared with that before the tax increase, almost halving. Since then, the European Union has not found new buyers, and the steel industry has suffered greatly.
The trade commissioner of the European Commission was originally responsible for these matters. The United States' approach has sounded an alarm bell for the EU, which needs a role with more experience in law enforcement.
The organizational structure of the European Commission's General Department of Trade before the establishment of the "Chief Trade Enforcement Officer of the European Commission"
Against this background, the European Commission established the position of Chief Trade Enforcement Officer, and Dennis Redonne was appointed as the first Chief Trade Enforcement Officer.
Launching a countervailing investigation on Chinese electric vehicles is the biggest "political achievement" of Dennis Redonne after he took office. Dennis Redoney's tactics can also be regarded as "learning from foreigners to make 'Chinese'" - they are all learned from Americans.
The European media commented on Dennis Redonne's practice in this sentence:
This has transformed the EU from the most open trade group in the world into a well defended "economic fortress".
The European Commission has also been labeled as a "geopolitical committee".
Behind this, what can best reflect the transformation of the European Commission's thinking is the core of the countervailing investigation - the understanding of "subsidies".
Take the initiative of the European Commission to launch an investigation.
Countries set up the initiative clause in their anti subsidy legislation, which is not intended to be a major means of relief. Ding Ru, who has been tracking the development of international subsidy rules for a long time, shared a detail with Tan Zhu:
WTO free trade rules are intended to leave such a policy space for countries, which is a technical blank. Because if there is no reservation, countries will not be willing to join the WTO free trade arrangements.
In other words, the purpose of retaining the initiative to initiate countervailing investigations is to promote globalization. This can also be confirmed in the official statement of the European Commission. According to the European Commission, anti subsidy and other trade defense measures were originally intended to "safeguard the open market and free trade of the EU".
However, the European Commission's understanding of trade defense means is gradually deviating. This can be seen clearly from the development of the European Commission's countervailing rules.
Ding Ru told Tan Zhu that in general, subsidies refer to direct financial support or tax reduction and exemption by the government. However, since more than a decade ago, the EU's investigation of China's "subsidies" has gradually increased to include electricity, land, loans, upstream raw materials and other aspects provided by state-owned enterprises, which has gone far beyond the scope of traditional countervailing investigations and is also an abuse of existing WTO rules.
In 2020, the European Commission completed the first third country subsidy case in the world - the subsidy provided by Chinese state-owned enterprises to third country enterprises was also recognized as the scope of the European Commission's countervailing.
After this subsidy case, the European Commission began to legislate, and finally passed the Regulations on Foreign Subsidies in 2023, which further included foreign enterprises' investment in Europe in the scope of the European Commission's anti subsidy investigation.
It is precisely because the European Commission has continuously expanded the application of countervailing measures. It can be seen that in the past two years, the EU's countervailing investigations against China have been conducted with the highest frequency and density in history.
As the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce of China said, the European side has constantly provoked trade disputes. Since 2024 alone, the European side has intensively introduced 31 trade and investment restrictions on China, including 25 trade remedy measures. It has also launched an investigation into the Regulations on Foreign Subsidies (FSR) and the International Procurement Instrument (IPI) against China, seriously interfering with China EU economic and trade cooperation.
There is a special theory called "Brussels Effect" for the European Commission's practice of using regulation to influence foreign enterprises and then regulate the market. It says that the global competitiveness of European enterprises is declining. At this time, Europe can change the behavior of global enterprises and maintain Europe's influence in the international community by investing in regulatory legislation.
At first, the "Brussels effect" was used in data privacy and other fields, because there were gaps in legislation in these fields, and there were legislative requirements for regulatory rules. However, in the field of countervailing, there are already WTO rules in advance.
At this time, the European Commission proposed new anti subsidy rules with a strong protectionist color, and the application of the "Brussels Effect" will actually only bring about the retrogression of international free trade.
The United States learned how to expand the scope of countervailing measures and abuse countervailing measures like the European Commission. This year, the newly revised countervailing regulations of the United States have also added the part of tracing back to the market. Whether Chinese invested enterprises or Chinese products are used in the upstream of the industrial chain, the United States can conduct countervailing investigations against related enterprises as long as they have some contact with China and in accordance with the new countervailing regulations.
It can be seen that countervailing has become a kind of argument for levying tariffs. When tariffs are abused, a "trade war" will begin.
China certainly does not want to see such a situation. Tan learned that China has communicated more than 80 times with EU institutions and 16 member countries, including Germany and France, through meetings, talks, calls, letters and other means.
But China is not afraid of such a situation.
Instead, it's Europe. Think about it.
