President Donald Trump set up the joke, and now Canada has delivered the punchline. Today Ottawa agreed to slash tariffs on 49,000 Chinese-made electric cars a year as part of a wider thaw that also lowers Chinese duties on Canadian canola and other farm goods. Prime Minister Mark Carney framed the reset as adapting to “new global realities.”
All this came mere days after Trump, at Detroit’s Economic Club, said of Chinese automakers: “Let China come in…If they want to come in and build a plant and hire you…that’s great, I love that.” As well as being an interesting twist on Trump’s tariffs policy toward America’s global rival, it turns out the president wasn’t just speaking for himself. Younger U.S. buyers are already open to Chinese car brands. A January 12 national poll by AutoPacific found 49 percent of Americans aged 18–44 say they’d be likely to buy a Chinese-made car.
Elon Musk once warned that Chinese automakers would “demolish” rivals without tariffs. That hasn’t happened, yet, but they’re already making inroads into North America.
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The right has taken a hard line. “America should ban the sale of Chinese EVs—both those made in China and those made in other countries such as Mexico,” wrote economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth for the Heritage Foundation, arguing that Chinese “smart cars” could hoover up data or even be disabled remotely. Republican Senator Josh Hawley has likewise called for a stop to the “avalanche” of Chinese EVs and pushed for tariffs.
The left’s counter is that tariffs are isolating the U.S. while doing little to reshape global supply. Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer warned this week, “This will only get worse if we continue to put up walls with our friends,” and “America stands more alone in the world.” Across the Atlantic, Brussels is moving from punishment to price floors: the European Commission has been sketching a “soft landing” that swaps anti-subsidy duties for minimum price undertakings.
Musk has played both hawk and dove. In January 2024 he warned that Chinese carmakers would “pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world” without trade barriers. Months later, he told a Paris tech conference that tariffs were “not good” and “distort the market.”
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The U.S. imposes a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made EVs, a measure introduced under the Biden administration. The Commerce Department last year finalized sweeping “connected vehicle” rules that will effectively ban Chinese and Russian auto software and hardware from U.S. passenger cars beginning with software in the 2027 model year and hardware by 2030. If enforced, these rules make Trump’s Detroit invitation—“let China come in”—a conditional welcome: any Chinese-owned factory on U.S. soil would still need to scrub Chinese tech to sell domestically.
Abroad, however, the dominoes aren’t lined up the way Washington assumed. Canada mirrored the U.S. in 2024 with a 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs, but has now cut it to 6.1 percent on 49,000 units a year—with China reciprocating on canola and other farm goods—explicitly to diversify away from U.S. trade dependence. The EU, which imposed anti-subsidy duties of up to the mid-30s in 2024 and later reviewed rates that climbed as high as 45 percent for some brands, is reportedly inching toward price undertakings that keep cars flowing at agreed minimum prices rather than blocking them outright. And the U.K.—outside the EU—has no plans to add EU-style tariffs at all. Put plainly: North America’s biggest neighbor is reopening the door; Europe is propping it ajar; Britain never shut it.
The U.S. EV market slowed in 2025, partly as a result of persistently high prices. Chinese brands like BYD have demonstrated they can build credible electric hatchbacks for low five figures. When Canada says it will admit 49,000 Chinese EVs at 6.1 percent and signals that number can grow, it is in effect constructing a pressure valve next door: cars can enter North America, build brand familiarity, and then seep across borders via used-car channels, private imports, or future rule changes.
Taken together, the week has seen some potentially decisive shifts. Trump says “Let China come in” if they build here, and Canada is already letting in the cars. Musk’s 2024 warning that Chinese automakers would “pretty much demolish most other car companies” without barriers now feels less like hyperbole than a timeline. If Washington keeps stacking tariff and tech walls while allies open gates, Chinese EVs won’t need to knock down North America’s front door—they’ll just drive around it.
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