President Donald Trump stated on Sunday that the 100% tariff on Chinese car imports has successfully kept Chinese automakers out of the US market and thereby protected Detroit manufacturers General Motors and Ford.
Last month, five major US auto trade groups — representing GM, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, and others — wrote to the White House urging it to maintain all restrictions and block Chinese factory investment.
“I put 100% tariff on all Chinese cars coming in, and that’s destroying Europe,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News.
“They’re destroying Europe because they’re taking away so much business from Mercedes and BMW,” Trump added before turning to the US market.
“And we don’t have any Chinese cars in our country because they would have destroyed General Motors, Ford, they would have destroyed these companies if they did it,” the US President stated.
US Tariffs on Chinese EVs
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was the first major political figure to publicly propose a 100% tariff specifically on Chinese-made cars.
As early as March 2024, he told supporters at rallies and in interviews that he would “put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars.”
Two months later, on May 14, 2024, the Biden administration became the first to implement this level of protection by announcing the quadrupling of the existing 25% Section 301 tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 100%.
Trump’s own first-term administration had applied a 25% tariff on Chinese vehicles and auto parts under Section 301 starting in 2018.
Upon returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump maintained Biden’s full 100% tariff without any reduction and later strengthened the overall barrier by issuing a new 25% Section 232 national-security tariff on all imported vehicles and auto parts in March 2025.
While Trump originated the 100% proposal during the campaign, Biden was the first president to enact it into law, and Trump has since preserved and expanded the policy.
On Sunday, Trump offered a rare compliment to his predecessor.
“So I put 100% tariff on and in all fairness to Biden, he allowed it to stay on, which is shocking to me. It’s one of the things, it’s about the only thing he did good,” the president said.
The Tariff Wall
The 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, imposed by Biden under Section 301 in May 2024 and maintained by Trump, remains fully in effect.
Trump’s administration has layered additional duties on top.
In March 2025, Trump issued a Section 232 national security proclamation imposing a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles and auto parts, regardless of country of origin. For Chinese EVs, this stacks on top of the existing 100% rate.
The combined tariff burden on a Chinese-manufactured electric vehicle entering the US currently exceeds 125%, making direct imports commercially unviable.
No Chinese-manufactured passenger vehicles are sold in the US market at any meaningful volume.
Chinese auto exports have surged elsewhere.
China shipped over 7 million vehicles overseas in 2025, most of them EVs and plug-in hybrids, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Overall exports rose 21% year-on-year.
The Connected Vehicle Ban
A second pillar — arguably more consequential than the tariff itself — effectively bars Chinese automakers from the US market even if they were willing to absorb the tariff cost.
In January 2025, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security finalised rules prohibiting the importation and sale of vehicles containing software or hardware linked to Chinese or Russian entities in their vehicle connectivity systems or automated driving systems.
The software ban takes effect for model year 2027 vehicles. The hardware ban is phased in by model year 2030.
The rule means that even if a Chinese automaker built a factory on US soil — an option Trump has publicly endorsed — the finished vehicles could not contain Chinese-developed software or hardware in their connected or autonomous systems.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer confirmed on April 9 that the administration has no plans to alter the ban.
“We don’t see any change in that — so it seems like it would probably be difficult for certain countries to establish new production here, given those sets of rules,” Greer said.
The Official
Three days after Trump’s January 13 speech at the Detroit Economic Club — in which he told Chinese automakers “let China come in” if they build factories and hire Americans — his administration forced out the official who led the development of the connected vehicle ban.
Elizabeth “Liz” Cannon, the executive director of the Commerce Department’s Information and Communications Technology and Services office, resigned in late January, under pressure from the new administration, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Cannon’s office, created in 2022, was responsible for investigating supply chain threats from foreign adversaries and led both the proposed and final rulemaking on the connected vehicle ban.
“This final rule reflects significant stakeholder feedback and protects our national security while reducing unintended impacts,” Cannon said when the rule was announced.
Trump’s Conditional Welcome
Despite the tariff wall and tech ban, Trump has signalled openness to Chinese automakers manufacturing in the US — a position he first articulated in January.
“Let China come in — if they want to come in and build the plant and hire you and hire your friends and your neighbors, that’s great. I love that,” Trump said at the Detroit Economic Club on January 13.
The connected vehicle rule — which Trump’s own trade representative confirmed will not change — requires any vehicle sold in the US to be free of Chinese-developed software in its connectivity and autonomous driving systems.
Trump himself acknowledged the tariff regime’s broader limitations in an October 2025 Fox Business interview ahead of a planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“It’s not sustainable, but that’s what the number is,” Trump said of the combined tariff rate, which at the time exceeded 150%. “They forced me to do that.”
Industry Pressure
In April, a bipartisan group of senators signalled legislation that would go further, seeking a total ban on Chinese automakers operating in the US in any capacity.
Trump’s Sunday comments suggest the tariff wall will remain intact.
