Did the Countervailing Duties Limit the Rise of Chinese-made Battery Electric Vehiclesin the EU?

Kurzfassung

This thesis analyses the impact of the EU’s countervailing duties (CVDs) on new battery electric vehicles (BEVs) originating from China, which were implemented in late 2024. Utilizing a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) approach, the study compares EU member states’ passenger car registrations with new registrations in other non-EU European countries, namely Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. The results suggest that the CVDs caused the market share of Chinese-origin cars among new BEV registrations to be approximately 4% lower than it would have been otherwise. Although the CVDs are implemented at the OEM level, the magnitude of the assigned duty was not correlated with the reduction in market share for the respective OEMs. While the findings do not show a clear linear relationship between tariff magnitude and market share decline, they suggest that non-Chinese OEMs were negatively impacted by the anti-subsidy tariffs. Finally, this thesis finds no evidence that the CVDs led to a shift toward non-BEV imports from China into the EU. Overall, this analysis concludes that while the CVDs did limit the rise of Chinese BEVs in the EU during their first year of implementation, they did so primarily by impacting Western OEMs that had been using China as a manufacturing hub.