U.S. Inflation Reduction Act disrupts global industrial, supply chains

Cartoon by Ma Hongliang

The U.S. government recently enacted the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, barring electric cars from qualifying for full tax breaks if battery components were manufactured or assembled by countries like China.

This is how the U.S. politicizes economic issues and deliberately sets up trade barriers in the battery supply chain, in an attempt to suppress China's new energy industry chain. Chinese firms account for more than 50 percent of the global EV battery market and satisfy as much as 90 percent of demand for some battery materials, according to BloombergNEF, Bloomberg's primary research service.

This has severely disrupted global industrial and supply chains and heightened the risk of a fragmented global economy. Competition should be fair and rational. The U.S. should earnestly fulfill its WTO obligations and uphold the authority and effectiveness of multilateral trading regimes.