European Market Shift Spurs Biden Administration’s Chinese Car Ban

Data privacy is a very real concern in the world today, and that’s one of several reasons cited for why the Biden Administration wants to protect US consumers from Chinese-made cars. New rules proposed by the administration would basically prohibit vehicles manufactured in the communist country from being sold here, a move which some are celebrating and others think is just plain stupid.

Mozilla says automakers will give your personal data to the US government.

It’s pretty self-evident that the dramatic shift in the European market has spurred this move by the current administration. After all, there’s enough panic on the other side of the pond, and when you combine that with what happened in Australia years ago, it’s not too hard to see what market the Chinese want to disrupt next.

Unlike when there was fear about the Japanese or Koreans doing similar things to the US auto market, this time around privacy and outright sabotage are at the forefront of the discussion. After all, modern vehicles are so technologically advanced they can be monitored and even controlled from afar.

Many Americans likely don’t realize there are a few Chinese-made cars rolling around on our public roads right now. They’re few and far between, a Volvo here and a Buick there, but they’re out there. The true concern is the big automakers from China are going to storm this market, flooding us with cheap cars in every sense of the word “cheap.”

Pressed financially, many American consumers would eagerly snatch up a less expensive vehicle. But that could give the Chinese Communist Party access to so much information those people probably think isn’t all that valuable.

Plus, if the Party wanted, it could lean on its domestic automakers to effectively shut down all their cars in the US remotely. At least that’s the concern which is reportedly spurring these proposed rules from the Biden Administration.

Is that fearmongering? A bid to control American consumers? A way to protect US automakers from the Chinese onslaught which put the mighty Volkswagen on its heels in its own domestic market?

It might be a mix of all that, plus perhaps a little more. We’ve already seen how our own government, insurance companies, and marketers in general will mine modern cars’ data to invade the privacy of Americans. Why should we let the Chinese Communist Party do the same thing?

Image via BYD

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