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Why Chinese-made electric vehicles and solar panels now face some of America’s highest trade levies.
The United States raised tariffs on a range of Chinese-made climate technologies on Tuesday, including electric vehicles, solar panels, and battery components.
Inspired by the poet Wallace Stevens, here are 13 ways of looking at them:
The biggest tariffs in the bunch are for Chinese-made electric vehicles. The Biden administration has more than quadrupled them, imposing a 100% tariff on all vehicle imports. That means that Chinese-made EVs now face higher tariff levels than any other imported goods.
Right now, the U.S. imports relatively few electric vehicles from China, and the few vehicles that we do import — which are made by the Chinese-owned brands Volvo and Polestar — may not be affected by these levies because of how imports are counted under tariff law. (Neither Volvo nor Polestar has commented on the new rates.)
What’s more, the White House suggested in February that it would use national security law to prevent EVs from Chinese companies from coming into the United States at all — even if the cars were made in a country with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement, such as Mexico. So despite the eye-popping headline figure, the tariffs on Chinese EVs do relatively little to change the decarbonization calculus in the United States. America wasn’t going to import Chinese-made EVs before, and it’s not going to do so now.
While these EV tariffs may be more for show than anything else, that is not true for the other tariffs on clean technologies. Many of these categories already faced trade levies imposed by the Trump administration, and Biden has now raised them, effectively doubling down on his electoral rival’s policy.
Starting immediately:
The solar cell figure looks impressive — and has been the source of wrangling in the solar industry — but it matters less than it looks. The United States already imports more than 80% of its solar panels from Chinese companies operating in other Asian countries.
A second round of tariffs is scheduled to kick in in 2026. Even though these hikes won’t take effect immediately, they may counterintuitively matter more, because they affect sectors where China now dominates the global industry. The longer timeline suggests that the White House is trying not to disrupt the near-term market too much; in effect, it’s giving companies a deadline to diversify their supply chains. This second round includes:
Whether you love them or hate them, you shouldn’t see these tariffs as a standalone measure. They complement the aggressive subsidies that the Biden administration has already passed on EVs, batteries, and critical minerals in the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s often lost that the IRA subsidizes EVs and their constituent parts in two ways — not only with the somewhat convoluted $7,500 personal vehicle tax credit, but with the more important 45X production tax credit, which pays companies $35 for each kilowatt-hour of EV batteries that they produce in the United States. (There are similar 45X bounties for other manufactured goods, including solar panels.)
These policies now add up to classic industrial policy in the mold of Alexander Hamilton: The U.S. is hiking tariffs on high-value imports while subsidizing their domestic production, while also providing cheap credit via the Department of Energy to companies that want to participate in these new industries. The Environmental Protection Agency has also issued new rules that will encourage U.S. consumers to buy from these new domestic producers. The one element of the classic model the U.S. has not yet adopted — except in some states — is provisioning cheap land and easy permitting for new factories.
China, it should be said, followed a similar playbook to develop its own electric vehicle industry. That should let us dispel with one foolish idea right away: the premise that tariffs never work. On the contrary, tariffs sometimes do work; as the economist Brad Setser pointed out on the social network X, America only finds itself in its current position because of how well tariffs worked. Through a range of policies including tariffs and joint ventures, China walled off its domestic market and encouraged domestic industry. That industry has now grown to challenge the world.
But they do not always work. Another important aspect of Hamiltonian industrial policy is certainty: To make forward-looking investment decisions, companies need to know policies that exist today will still be around when the production line starts whirring. This China has in gobs, and the United States lacks. You may have noticed that the front-runner in this year’s presidential election is promising to repeal many of these policies that are now rolling out — just about everything but the tariffs.
These tariff rates are unlikely to go down anytime soon. There is no party in American politics advocating for free trade with China. The choice, in the near-term, is between Biden’s vision of free trade with democracies and developing countries, plus climate and defense-driven industrial policy at the margins, versus Trump’s vision of fossil-fueled populism that aspires to autarky.
There are forces within the country that wouldn’t hate to see a return of more open trade relations with China — you can see factions within the environmental movement, the Chamber of Commerce, and Big Tech pushing for it, to name a few — but they do not control a partisan coalition.
There is no equivalence between what the Biden administration announced today and the 10% across the board tariff on all imported goods from all countries that Donald Trump has proposed. Biden’s new tariffs focus on certain strategic sectors that American officials believe the country must cultivate to stay at the technological frontier, coupled with pre-existing subsidies meant to spur domestic production of those goods. Some of the tariffs only kick in beginning in 2026 — far enough in the future, policymakers hope, for the market to prepare. Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, would intentionally and chaotically hike prices.
We’re only here because China has won Round 1 on electric vehicles. It has created a thriving, competitive domestic EV industry that includes the BYD Seagull, an $11,000 hatchback that gets up to 250 miles of range; the Zeekr 009, a $70,000 minivan with more than 500 miles of range; and the Xiaomi SU7, a sleek $29,000 coupe. As the car journalist Kevin Williams has written, China’s EV market is far deeper, more varied, and more sophisticated than many realize. Beijing has built a Silicon Valley-style industrial cluster that produces cheap electric vehicles for the domestic market and the world — and the Biden administration can do almost nothing about that.
This dominance has emerged out of China’s economic agglomeration and its successful climb up the technological value chain. As I’ve written, China once made textiles and toys; then it made smartphones and computers; now it makes EVs and commercial jetliners. This agglomeration of economic complexity is not an academic observation; in many cases, the companies now producing China’s most competitive EVs emerged directly from its electronics industry. Xiaomi, after all, makes 15% of the world’s smartphones. CATL — now widely seen as the world’s best EV battery maker — began as a spin-off of Amperex Technology Limited, or ATL, which makes smartphone batteries. The iPhone is, in a sense, the younger sister of the Chinese-made Volvo EX30: Both are Western-designed consumer electronics that are made in Chinese factories, through Chinese engineering expertise.
Does one need to spell out precisely why American officials might care about staying even vaguely competitive with China in the EV industry? Do I need to mention the role that American-made motor vehicles have played in world history? But the motorization of war — which has now gone on for nearly a century — requires getting fossil fuels to the front lines in dangerous convoys; by one estimate, more than half of the 36,000 casualties suffered by American troops in Iraq were on fuel or water resupply missions. Wind and solar are not now so potent that they could liberate armies from these serpentine supply chains, but energy technologies can drive surprising military innovations anyway: In Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, we have already seen how e-bikes and drones powered by small, lightweight batteries have transformed modern warfare.
Perhaps this kind of thinking is premature, or too dire. Nonetheless, this is what makes this moment so different from the 1970s, when Japanese-made cars changed the American car market, or the 1980s and ‘90s, when the Korean brands arrived. For the first time, a country outside the American security umbrella — a country that, in fact, aims to compete as a geopolitical hegemon with the U.S. — has attained the cutting edge of motor vehicle production. Even if Michigan and Wisconsin were not so important in the Electoral College, even if climate change did not require the rapid decarbonization of the global car fleet, that fact alone would distinguish this moment from what has come before. This is why the Chinese EV industry poses such a profound challenge to American policy.
This challenge for the U.S. also requires conjuring an entire value chain from nothing. A thoroughly classic Hamiltonian industrial policy would involve reducing tariffs on commodity and low-value inputs, such as the minerals that make up batteries, while increasing them on high-value imports, such as completed batteries and cars. But China controls so much of the critical mineral supply chain — it is “the dominant player” in global minerals refining — that American officials feel like they must diversify; they must try to spin up low value supply chains for graphite, lithium, and rare earths at the same time that they encourage the construction of EV factories.
One of the most important aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act is that it pursues two simultaneous industrial policies: In some sectors (EVs, solar, batteries), it aims for America to catch up to its technological rivals; in others (carbon capture, hydrogen), it aims to preserve America’s pre-existing position at the technological frontier. Notice what industries aren’t affected by today’s tariffs — not carbon capture, not anything to do with fossil fuels, not even anything hydrogen-related, even though China makes 61% of the world’s electrolyzers. (That is because the Biden administration has shaped its hydrogen policy so it does not automatically favor the type of electrolyzer that Chinese firms make.)
It’s easy to get ahead of oneself here. Just because China has created a superior EV industry, that doesn’t mean it will have one forever; just because China makes better EVs, that doesn’t mean that America lags on all climate technologies. But make no mistake: America is trying to do something very difficult, and it has no guarantee of success.
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Berkeley-based Copper was selected to supply 10,000 stoves to the New York City Housing Authority.
Last year, New York City went shopping for 10,000 induction stoves so it could ditch gas in its public housing. Now it's ready to make a purchase.
The New York Power Authority and NYC Housing Authority have selected Copper, a Berkeley, California-based startup that was formerly known as Channing Street Copper Company, as the winner of their Induction Stove Challenge, Heatmap has learned. The agencies are planning to award the company a $32 million, seven-year contract to design, prototype, test, and install its stoves in apartments throughout the city.
As I wrote when I covered the launch of the contest in 2023, the goal is not just to improve the lives of NYC public housing residents by helping them avoid the toxic fumes of cooking with gas, but also to spur a larger market transformation that lowers the barriers to induction stoves for everyone.
These aren’t just any induction stoves. Manufacturers were challenged to design an appliance that’s compatible with a standard 120-volt outlet so that it doesn’t require an expensive electrical upgrade to install. Most products on the market require a 240-volt outlet.
The news of the winner was buried in the minutes of a NYPA Finance Committee meeting that took place in July, when Authority staff submitted a request to the committee to recommend that its Board of Trustees approve the award. The Trustees approved the award at a meeting on July 30.
It’s unclear whether the contest ultimately fostered much innovation. The meeting minutes say that only four companies submitted proposals. I’m aware of at least two startups — Copper and Impulse Labs — that were already designing induction stoves for 120-volt outlets prior to NYPA’s challenge. Both companies solve the issue with a similar solution — their stoves come with built-in batteries that can supply extra voltage as needed.
In response to a question about why NYPA selected Copper, a spokesperson pointed to the fact that the company has already designed, developed, and manufactured stoves with similar specifications to what the contest was calling for. “From the competitively procured proposal and interview, the company demonstrated their deep understanding of both residential electrical systems as well as battery equipped products,” they told me.
Still, the award has the potential to make this technology more accessible by bringing down the cost through economies of scale. Currently, Copper’s least expensive stove sells for $5,999; NYPA said the stove delivered for the program is expected to be below $3,000, but NYCHA is still negotiating the cost and other aspects of the product before fully awarding the contract. (Copper was not able to respond to questions about the award as it has not been officially announced yet.)
That price also doesn’t take into account the avoided cost of redoing the electrical work in the buildings. Ultimately the order could also be much more than 10,000 — NYPA has said that 12 other housing authorities representing more than 300,000 housing units have signed up to support the initiative. There’s also a good chance that the stoves will be eligible for a 30% tax credit.
Once the contract is fully awarded, the next step will be for Copper to produce a single unit for testing before moving on to the pilot stage, where it will produce and install 100 stoves. If the pilot is successful, the agencies will purchase at least 10,000 units.
The same agencies are in the pilot phase of a similar contest called Clean Heat For All, which aims to bring new heat pumps to market that can be installed in a window rather than requiring costly construction work. Last winter, they ran a pilot in two dozen NYCHA apartments with the winning units — models from the startup Gradient and veteran manufacturer Midea. NYPA reported this summer that the units “provided consistently comfortable temperatures throughout the pilot period, with residents reporting high levels of satisfaction,” and said it planned to study the tech’s cooling capabilities next.
From the national to the state to the local level, the state is about to hold some of the country’s most crucial elections.
In 2022, the Arizona Republic published a sentence many Democrats had dreamed of reading for decades: “Arizona,” the paper announced, “is a blue state.”
At the time, it felt true. In 2020, Joe Biden won the Grand Canyon State — only the second time a Democrat had done so since Arizona broke for Harry Truman in 1952 — and Democrat Mark Kelly defeated Republican Sen. Martha McSally in a special election to fill the late John McCain’s Senate seat, a victory that helped the Inflation Reduction Act get over the finish line. The 2022 midterm elections confirmed that the Democrats’ wins in the state hadn’t just been a one-time occurrence: Kelly successfully defended his seat, securing a full term; Katie Hobbs won the governorship; and Adrian Fontes beat a January 6 participant to become the secretary of state, Democrats all.
With the 2024 election still a little more than a week away, it’s too soon to tell whether the blue state proclamations of 2022 were premature. But Arizona hasn’t been looking terribly cerulean. In 2023, the Republican-held state legislature passed eight of 16 anti-environment bills introduced and stranded 22 pro-environment bills without committee hearings. Republican voter registration in the state has also swelled since 2016 as Democratic rolls stayed relatively stagnant, giving the GOP an edge in a place where 10,457 votes can make all the difference.
Arizona is just one state out of 50 (or 11 electoral votes out of 538, if you prefer), but it represents a curious microcosm of the high-stakes climate and energy elections happening all over the country this November. Or perhaps it is not so curious: Arizona is on the front lines of the climate-related impacts of droughts, longer and nastier heat waves, ozone pollution, and wildfires, while also being in a position to weigh the trade-offs of crucial clean energy developments like building new energy transmission, critical mineral mining, and utility-scale solar. “It’s like an incubator. There’s just so much happening here, it’s ready to burst,” Jane Conlin, a co-leader of the Tucson chapter of the Citizens' Climate Lobby, which has been engaging in get-out-the-vote efforts with the Environmental Voter Project, told me.
Aside from its electoral college allocations, the most consequential race in Arizona this cycle will be for outgoing Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s seat. The state is currently leaning slightly toward Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego, who could help stem a total hemorrhaging of blue seats from the Senate — which, in turn, would have implications for the passage of any decarbonization legislation in the next administration.
Two U.S. House elections in Arizona could similarly help determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill come January. AZ-01 is the wealthiest congressional district in the state, in the northeastern corner of Phoenix’s Maricopa County, where a former E.R. doctor is trying to unseat a seven-term Republican incumbent in a battle that has centered on abortion access. (The district is also home to the Rio Verde Foothills, which made national headlines in 2022 when Scottsdale cut off its water supply due to drought-related shortages.)
But it’s the other race, in the sixth congressional district spanning the suburbs of Tucson, that looks more like a proxy battle between different climate ideologies. Kirsten Engel — who previously worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and serves as the co-director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Arizona — is challenging Juan Ciscomani, a Trump-endorsed moderate conservative who has backed residential solar projects, promoted himself as an advocate for a “secure water future,”and, earlier this year, co-sponsored a bill seen as a first step toward a carbon border tax. (As his opponents quickly point out, he also voted against the IRA; Ciscomani has also been tied to a groundwater scandal involving a Saudi Arabian-owned alfalfa farm.)
Engel previously lost a tight election against Ciscomani in 2022, and has made abortion a centerpiece of her campaign, too. But she has also gone aggressively after the Republican for his alignment with the mining industry, including his support for a proposed open-pit copper mine that opponents say will pollute Tucson’s air and waterways; supporters, meanwhile, say it’s critical to create a domestic supply chain for the energy transition. The League of Conservation Voters, which identified the sixth congressional district election as one of its priority races, is running ads in the state playing up this pollution angle.
Engel herself has slammed the proposed mine, which would be built on public lands, as a “giveaway” to a foreign mining company, and touted the need to protect the region’s “spectacular scenic vistas and the tourism economy.” She has also sought to go toe-to-toe with Ciscomani on water conservation, though as Grist has reported, drought and water rights can be tricky for Arizona politicians to run on because voters don’t have a firm grasp of how the complicated policies work.
The future of climate policy at the regional and municipal levels in Arizona is also in play. Democrats could potentially flip the balance of power in the state House and Senate, each branch currently having just a one-seat Republican advantage, and restart movement on the slate of stalled pro-environmental bills. (The Democratic governor’s term runs through 2026.) “The state legislature in Arizona is so critical,” John Qua, the campaign manager of Lead Locally, told me. “Not only does building a democratic trifecta get the state closer to passing policy that tackles climate change in some of the ways we might more typically understand it — like moving towards clean energy — but it also makes it much likelier that the state legislature will pass water conservation policy.”
The 11 races are “all at a razor-thin margin,” Qua told me, though climate is unlikely to be the issue that tips the balance in any of them. That goes for just about any race in Arizona — except the state’s Corporation Commission, which Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo covered earlier this week. Currently, the ACC is operating with a four-to-one Republican majority, but with three Democrats, two Green party candidates, and three Republicans (including an incumbent) running to fill three seats, there’s a wide-open chance that candidates sympathetic to clean energy policy, including the state’s massive solar opportunity, could take control.
“Arizona could lead the world in solar power if politicians would only let it,” Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project, told me. “But that isn’t going to happen unless the climate movement starts showing up in unstoppable numbers whenever there’s an election.”
Conlin, who co-leads the Tucson chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, has been working on the ground to reach the 230,000 potential first-time environmental voters that Stinnett and his team have identified in the state. (EVP numbers released earlier this week showed that those who vote based on climate issues were about 20% more likely to have submitted an early vote than the average voter.) During a recent folklife festival CCL volunteers attended, “I think about only 25% of people [we engaged with] were really aware of the Arizona Corporation Commission,” Conlin told me. But she’s excited nevertheless: This year, the ACC poll is on the front of Arizonans’ ballots, rather than the back, making it harder for even low-information voters to overlook.
The state is also a case study of how an elected body as small and seemingly insignificant as a school board can make a difference in the progress toward decarbonization. The Tucson Unified School District board of governors will vote next week on a climate action plan that would set a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045. If successful, TUSD would be one of the first school districts in the nation to have implemented such a plan.
Arizona is not the only state in the country that, as Colin put it, feels “on this cusp of being able to reach out — not only to see a 50% cut in emissions but 100%. It’s doable, it’s within reach.” Pennsylvania and Michigan voters will also have opportunities to elect politicians who will advance climate legislation, and voters in Washington, California, and New York can defend their states’ progress. But it’s Arizona where the stakes seem especially immediate — and high. “It’s supposed to be 96 [degrees Fahrenheit] here today,” Conlin marveled when we spoke this week, at the end of October.
I could hear the weariness in the voices of the organizers I spoke to after a long, hard-fought season; candidates are set to make their final pitches to voters next week. Early-voting ballots are already in the mail or in hand. The CCL has just one final day of canvassing planned, on November 2. The polls will close three days later, at 7 p.m. local time, and then the count will begin.
Tesla got to thump its chest this week. In a Wednesday earnings call with investors, CEO Elon Musk and company shared better-than-expected sales and financial numbers for the third quarter of 2024. That good news caused the electric vehicle-maker’s stock to rebound following what had been a disappointing sales year so far, with the slump compounded by a tepid reaction to the “We, Robot” event earlier in October, when Tesla debuted its autonomous Cybercab.
A few important factors underlie Tesla’s big rebound: Manufacturing costs fell, the refreshed Model 3 is doing well, and the Cybertruck has begun to sell in big enough numbers to help the company’s bottom line. Then there was this line from Musk’s presentation: “Preparations remain underway for our offering of new vehicles – including more affordable models – which we will begin launching in the first half of 2025.”
You might think that sentence suggests the long-rumored $25,000 Tesla is, at last, right around the corner. But when pressed by an investor whether the company would indeed build a "$25,000 non-robotaxi regular car model," Musk called the idea “pointless.” "It would be silly. It would be completely at odds with what we believe," he continued, saying that it’s “blindingly obvious” autonomy is the future.
It’s beginning to look like the idea of a little human-driven Tesla that costs as much as a Toyota Corolla will forever be a fantasy. One could argue, though, it has already done its job. The promise of the “Model 2,” perpetually dangled in front of the world as something just a few years away, enticed many people — including, crucially, investors — to believe Musk would extend his dominance of the EV market and truly conquer the car industry by offering an entry-level electric car for the masses. But if that ever was the plan, it isn’t anymore.
Tesla has always played fast and loose with deadlines and promises. It finally launched the Model 3 after years of promising the $35,000 Tesla, though obtaining the base version of the car at that price was a major challenge. In fact, most Model 3s that sold cost well into the $40,000s, if not more. The cheapest one you can order today starts at $43,000 before incentives.
The even smaller Tesla has been the topic of long-running rumors, buoyed by signals from the mothership. In 2022, Musk simply had “too much on his plate” to work on the car. In 2023, when Tesla finally began to sell a new vehicle, it was not a cheap compact but the Cybertruck. Musk then reportedly tabled the cheap Tesla indefinitely.
That didn’t stop the optimism. In the leadup to this week’s earnings call, one major analyst said it was the potential $25,000 EV, not the Cybercab or any of Tesla’s future-looking autonomous projects, that would drive the company’s success (and stock price) in the short term. After all, an EV with that MSRP could have a true cost under $20,000 after tax credits. At that point, it would undercut even entry-level gas cars in the U.S.
During the call, while scoffing at the idea of a small Tesla for carbon-based drivers, Musk pointed out that the Cybercab is technically a $25,000 car after tax breaks (though, this is the same man who, while throwing his weight behind the Trump campaign, has said that ending the EV tax credit would benefit Tesla). It’s just one that happens to have no steering wheel and no pedals. Teslaraticoncluded that the company’s promise of more affordable cars to come in the beginning of next year refers to lowering the prices of Tesla’s current offerings, not any plans to debut something new and different.
The EV market has changed a lot since the dawn of this decade, when Tesla rolled out the Model Y and cemented its grip on the industry. The rise of the super-cheap Chinese EV in particular spooked not only Western governments, but also American car companies that had dreams of competing for the lower end of the market. Combine that with Musk’s insistence that Tesla remain a lean, innovative firm rather than maturing into a boring EV-maker and you arrive at this point, with Musk going all in on trying to win the race for the true self-driving car instead of diversifying the kinds of vehicles it’s actually selling today.
History could prove him right. Still, that’s cold comfort for anyone who’d been hoping for a small, cheap EV they could drive themselves. It’s certainly possible to envision the Cybercab adapted for human drivers, but Musk is adamant that won’t happen. So an affordable, normal EV will have to come from elsewhere.
And it might. Despite gloomy headlines about a supposed slump, EV sales in America are steadily rising. At the less expensive end of the market, Chevy has begun selling the base-level version of the Equinox EV at the promised $35,000, which could fall under $30,000 with tax breaks. The Chevy Bolt should be even cheaper than that when it returns for the 2026 model year. Detroit has a whole lot to figure out in the coming years about how to build electric vehicles profitably, but, at the very least, the legacy carmakers might actually offer you an affordable EV — with a steering wheel.