Punitive import duties were designed to halt the Chinese electric wave, but a surging trade in nearly-new imports is delivering BYD, Xiaomi, and Zeekr hardware at 40 percent discounts.
When Brussels crafted its punitive tariff regime against Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles, the regulatory playbook seemed straightforward: insulate domestic assembly lines…
The mechanism is an age-old grey-market manoeuvre supercharged by Chinese industrial scale.
The insatiable appetite for these grey-market arrivals is driven by an engineering gap that has widened from a trickle into a chasm.
Punitive import duties were designed to halt the Chinese electric wave, but a surging trade in nearly-new imports is delivering BYD, Xiaomi, and Zeekr hardware at 40 percent discounts.