Before Wang’s visit, the Commission rejected a first Chinese offer on minimum prices, but left the door open to further negotiations by saying it wasn’t “up to us to be prescriptive” on how such a scheme should look. That first proposal, the Commission said, failed to cancel out the Chinese subsidies sufficiently and also had issues on how to enforce the pricing.
Germany has fought a rearguard action against imposing EV duties for months, but has so far failed to win enough allies among EU member countries to sway Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission as it gets tough on trade with China.
With a final vote to confirm the duties — of up to 35 percent — potentially just days away, the last off-ramp for Berlin would be a negotiated settlement. Germany, on paper at least, lacks the necessary supermajority to block the tariffs in the Council, the intergovernmental part of the EU.
The European Commission last year launched an anti-subsidy probe that found Beijing was unfairly propping up its electric vehicle industry. Beijing has retaliated with its own anti-subsidy probes into EU exports of pork, brandy and dairy.
Koen Verhelst contributed to this report.