Orbán envisions a war between China and the EU

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has criticised the European Union’s tariffs on China’s biggest electric vehicle manufacturers as “bad and ill-thought-out”, warning that the measure could trigger a trade war.

Trade war between China and the EU?

Orbán said the “biggest aim and the strongest hope” was that the tariffs would only be temporary and would be lifted after four months.

He said the European Commission had justified the introduction of the tariffs with the need to protect the interests of European manufacturers, adding, at the same time, that the leaders of the major carmakers he had spoken to ahead of the start of Hungary’s EU presidency had strongly opposed the measure.

Photo: Unsplash / myenergi

“These kinds of bad and ill-thought-out decisions can push economic life towards a trade war”, the prime minister warned, saying this “decision by the bureaucrats” could trigger counter-measures from the East.

Hungary’s interests, he said, lay in averting a trade war, because “we make our living by being able to sell what we produce in Hungary all over the world”. “But if there’s going to be a trade war then we won’t be able to sell the products produced in Hungary, and this could eventually threaten jobs,” he added.

Official: EC’s temporary tariffs on Chinese electric cars bad for European customers

The European Commission is implementing temporary punitive tariffs on electric cars imported from China, a government commissioner noted on Facebook on Friday, adding that the decision was “certainly not good for European customers”.

István Joó, who is also the head of national investment promotion agency HIPA, said the tariffs hampered competition when it came to price and quality and would harm Europe’s car industry, especially German companies manufacturing in China. Further, the measure would hold back research and development as protectionism “does not help these processes”.

Moreover, economic ties between Europe and China would suffer, he said, insisting that the EC was acting willfully and its policy was not supported by the biggest automotive industry players.

“Hopefully the measure genuinely will be temporary,” Joó wrote.

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