It’s easy to say “fuck america! Let’s bring in those chinese EVs!” And while we certainly put those tariffs in place in large part because of the States doing so, it’s also important to remember that China really, really doesn’t play fair on the global stage. It’s easy to point to subsidies as the culprit, but as usual with Chinese manufacturing, that only tells part of the story. It’s very likely that many parts of those vehicles are sold to these companies by CCP owned or partly-owned businesses, from the steel to the leather to the plastics, these cars are cheap for a reason.
When you buy a Chinese EV, the vast majority of that money goes to China. And if you’re really a “rah rah Canada” kind of person, that’s why those tariffs exist, because if they do flood the market with cheap vehicles, it’s important that we’re not wholly enriching a foreign nation (especially one that has shown it is happy to clandestinely meddle in Canadian affairs) at the expense of our own.
You’re not wrong to feel that way. Precedent says that the USA will probably swing left again at some point, but can you bank on that? What if the next moron is just as committed to an economic takeover of our country? China may have been caught meddling in our affairs, but the states are actively trying to flex their imperial might on us and essentially starve us into submission. Not a very enviable position for anyone.