Brussels is demanding that the UK be bound by European restrictions on Chinese EVs and that ministers imposetariffs of up to 35% on Chinese-made EVs as the price of allowing British car firms equal access to EU markets, reports The Times

Brussels is demanding that the UK be bound by European restrictions on Chinese EVs and that ministers imposetariffs of up to 35% on Chinese-made EVs as the price of allowing British car firms equal access to EU markets, reports The Times.

Demands of this kind, where market access is conditioned on adopting the counterpart's trade defence measures, are a recurring feature of post-exit UK-EU relations, and the established pattern is that they surface in sector-specific negotiations before becoming formal negotiating positions. The underlying issue is rules of origin: preferential treatment under the trade agreement depends on local content thresholds for vehicles and batteries, and past episodes have shown the timetable on these thresholds being extended or renegotiated when industry compliance lagged. The distinction worth drawing is between the UK autonomously mirroring EU anti-subsidy duties, which London has previously been reluctant to do given its trade defence authority's own procedures, and a negotiated carve-out that preserves tariff-free flows without full alignment. The transmission channel runs through the European-listed automakers with UK plants and their supply chains, where tariff pass-through and retaliatory risk from Beijing have in comparable episodes weighed on sentiment toward the sector. What bears watching is whether the demand is formalised in official talks, whether the UK trade defence machinery opens its own investigation, and any Chinese response, since retaliation in past trade defence rounds has tended to target politically sensitive export sectors rather than the disputing industry itself. As a reported negotiating position rather than agreed policy, the signal is directional and contingent on follow-through.