00:00Now, there's still a lot of reaction to the EU vote to impose heavy tariffs on electric vehicles from China.
00:07On Friday, the 27-member trading bloc decided in favour of those taxes against China,
00:13though of course it was a strongly divided vote.
00:15The China Council for the Promotion of International Trade has expressed their opposition to those tariffs.
00:21The council says an EU investigation into alleged subsidies was flawed.
00:26Peter Oliver has the story.
00:29The tariffs are approved and will come into force at the beginning of next month.
00:33However, it's not quite a done deal just yet.
00:36Talks will continue and there are those in EU member states, like here in Germany,
00:41that hope that a solution other than punitive tariffs can be reached.
00:45In fact, there was a similar message from the EU Commission as they made the announcement of the new duties.
00:52The reason we continue negotiating and negotiating in good faith
00:57and in a meaningful, constructive way with our Chinese counterparts
01:02is precisely because we want to find a solution. We're open to finding a solution.
01:06As it stands, additional duties will be added on a sliding scale
01:10based on how the EU Commission deems the Chinese EV manufacturers cooperated with their investigation.
01:17BYD will face an additional 17% on top of the 10% charged on all EVs coming from outside the bloc,
01:25with some seeing far higher duties imposed.
01:28There wasn't a majority in support of the tariffs, 10 out of 27,
01:33but blocking them would have required 15 nations or 65% to vote against.
01:38As it was, 5 voted against and the rest abstained, a sign that there's still work to be done.
01:45Because this is an ongoing process and we will sit again in a month or in two months
01:51and discuss the same questions again, because this is a process about recalibration,
01:57the benefits and costs of open markets and forms of protectionism.
02:02China's Commerce Ministry slammed the tariffs, calling them unfair, illegal and unreasonable.
02:08However, China remains committed to further talks in hope of finding a solution.
02:13The German car manufacturing giants are concerned that Beijing could introduce reciprocal tariffs
02:18on their products going into China, a huge market for them, worth over $29 billion last year.
02:25Mercedes, VW and BMW have all slammed these EU tariffs and said they hope a compromise can be found.
02:34Peter Oliver, CGTN, Berlin.
02:37Yeah, we understand those talks will continue on Monday to prevent those tariffs kicking in
02:43and if they do kick in, it'll be by the end of October.
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