China that effectively reopens the Canadian border to Chinese electric vehicles.
Canada has agreed to allow an annual quota of 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the country at the tariff rate of just 6.1% .
According to the Prime Minister’s office, this volume represents less than 3% of the Canadian new vehicle market. However, the deal explicitly targets the low end of the market, with the government anticipating that within five years, “more than 50% of these vehicles will be affordable EVs with an import price of less than $35,000.”
In exchange for opening the EV floodgates (or at least starting to break the dam), China has agreed to lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed from roughly 85% to 15% and to lift restrictions on Canadian lobster and crab.
In years past GM manufactured vehicles in Canada. I can’t imagine those vehicles weren’t under warranty in the USA.
I don’t know about buying and registering Canada vehicles in the USA.
Manufacturer’s warranties are usually not valid from one country to another. For instance, if you buy a product with a manufacturer’s warranty from a foreign online retailer or during a visit to another country, it may not protect you in Canada. That is true even if the same product is available for sale in our country.
Most companies do not come with an imported car warranty. This is because, before, it was hella cheap to buy imported cars from dealers compared to their domestic counterparts. Voiding imported car warranties is their way of “punishing” dealers who take on these arbitrage opportunities.
Here are some manufacturers that void warranties when a vehicle is exported: Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Hyundai, Genesis, Honda Acura, Mitsubishi, Mercedes, Kia, and more.
49,000 Chinese electric vehicles is just a few percentage points of Canada’s new vehicle annual sales. So this is a toe in the water trial. If it goes well Canada will likely allow more Chinese EVs into the country.
Oh it’s so much more than that, it’s the camel’s nose in the tent of trade and investment between the two countries.
While the US was at first fearful of Japanese cars, we found that bringing their production to the US created tens of thousands of good paying jobs. There are plants by Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia & Hyundai (Korean) and others throughout the South paying good wages and supporting local economies.
Now let’s ask, which country is China most likely to invest in and build an auto manufacturing facility in? Oh sure, China will hem and haw and prefer to keep all the production in China and ship cars by the thousands and offload from a boat, but within a few years they will be announcing plans to build factories and cars, and employ locals and source materials locally, and given what I’ve read about the Chinese cars, they will be successful.
How many Chinese manufacturing facilities do you think will be built in the US?