Demand for Chinese electric vehicles continues to surge across the UK, but this near-unrelenting growth could soon slow to a crawl. According to a new report, the UK may follow in the footsteps of the European Union and impose tariffs on EVs from China.

The push for tariffs is being led by the EU. Officials have reportedly told British ministers that unless the country hits Chinese vehicles with tariffs, then the UK could be cut out from the ‘Made in Europe’ scheme. If this were to happen, it would make it much more expensive for British car manufacturers to sell vehicles into the EU.

Read: Half Of British Drivers Would Now Buy A Chinese Brand They Couldn’t Name 3 Years Ago

The Sunday Times reports that UK business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has started drafting a package for tariffs in the lead-up to a summit being held between the UK and EU next month. Up until this point, the country has been reluctant to impose tariffs, but as sales of Chinese vehicles have surged, it appears they are now getting ready to act.

Jaecoo Tops Sales Charts

A look at recent sales data shows just how much demand there is for Chinese cars in the UK. In September, almost a quarter of all new cars sold in the UK came from China. The nation’s best-seller was the Jaecoo 7 with an extraordinary 10,812 sold last month, allowing it to even outsell the Tesla Model 3.

The Jaecoo 7, often referred to as a ‘Temu Range Rover,’ is sold in the UK with a 1.6-liter turbocharged petrol engine and a 1.5-liter plug-in hybrid. September was the second month this year that it has been a best-seller in the UK. It’s unclear if the UK is weighing up tariffs against combustion-powered models from China, but it’d be wise to do so if it really wants to stop brands like Chery, BYD, and others from taking over local roads.

In the EU, EVs from China face tariffs of as much as 45 percent. Chinese brands quickly shifted their focus from EVs to plug-in hybrids after these tariffs were instated. Lawmakers in the bloc are now said to be weighing up the possibility of extending the tariffs to also include hybrids.

It appears British lawmakers are taking threats from the EU seriously. Last week, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders indicated the Made in Europe rules threaten British car production. If this latest report is true, it seems the UK is about to choose sides, and in siding with Europe, it may turn its back on China.

WASHINGTON — Small businesses will once again challenge President Donald Trump’s tariffs in federal court this week as they continue to feel the squeeze of the administration’s roller coaster policy on import taxes.

Spice importer Burlap & Barrel and rare watch importer Collective Horology will argue Wednesday in the Court of International Trade in New York City that the Trump administration did not properly establish forced labor cases against dozens of U.S. trading partners before levying duties on goods that numerous American importers buy.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced in late July that products from 60 top U.S. trading partners will be tariffed at 10% or 12.5%, depending on whether governments have or have not developed laws meant to combat forced labor. The new tariffs cover 99.4% of all goods imported into the United States, according to the office.

The plaintiffs, represented by the legal advocacy nonprofit Liberty Justice Center, allege the administration exceeded its tariff authority delegated by Congress under the forced labor statute, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. 

The plaintiffs also argue the tariffs are “arbitrary and capricious” because U.S. trade officials relied on “generalized assertions” that labor policies in 60 economies imposed concrete economic harm to the U.S.

Trade law expert blasts Trump usage

Ambassador Alan Wm. Wolff, a former trade official who helped draft the forced labor statute and filed a brief in support of the small business plaintiffs, said Section 301 was “designed for sort of a rifle shot of retaliation against a single foreign country doing some particular act that’s been verified.”

Wolff served in the Carter and Ford administrations, and later as a deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization.

“I sat through the executive sessions of the committees that were drafting the statute,” he said. “No one ever conceived of the idea that you could just create a sort of a fake, bogus test for other countries – 60 of them — that none of them could meet.”

Wolff told States Newsroom in an interview Sept. 21 that the statute has never been used in this way.

“If the U.S. was serious about forced labor being dealt with in this fashion … it would say, ‘Well, we’ll review it every six months, and if you put in a statute that has the following provisions, we would probably lift the tariff,’” he said. 

“There’s none of that because the purpose is to have the tariff, not to combat forced labor,” he continued.

The Department of Justice declined to comment Monday on ongoing litigation.

The White House and the Office of the United States Trade Representative did not respond Monday.

One tariff after another

The legal challenge on behalf of small business plaintiffs is not the first one to be brought by the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit that focuses on “high-impact cases that defend individual liberty and challenge government overreach,” according to its website.

In February, the organization secured a victory against the Trump administration when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the president’s unprecedented executive tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, referred to as IEEPA, were unconstitutional.

The organization won the case on behalf of several small business plaintiffs, ranging from an Illinois-based toymaker and New York-based wine importer, to a Utah-based plastics producer and a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company, among others.

Almost immediately after the high court struck down his emergency tariffs, Trump imposed a new wide-reaching 10% tariff on global imports under a separate statute – Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The statute limited Trump to only 150 days.

The administration concurrently opened sweeping trade practice investigations, including under the Section 301 forced labor statute, on nearly all U.S. trading partners. The government announced its forced labor findings just as the earlier tariffs expired at the 150-day mark.

New duties ‘blatantly pretextual’

Sara Albrecht, the Liberty Justice Center’s CEO, described the administration’s new forced labor tariffs as “blatantly pretextual” to replace duties imposed under Section 122.

“And Section 122 was pretextual for the IEEPA tariff that rolled off this year when he lost at the Supreme Court. So we feel like our job wasn’t done because we struck down the IEEPA tariff, and then the administration just did it again,” Albrecht said.

The organization is again representing small business plaintiffs who allege harm to their bottom line because of the administration’s tariff policy. 

Burlap & Barrel, a New York-based company with warehouses in Hagerstown, Maryland, and Las Vegas imports spices from 22 countries. The California-based Collective Horology imports high-end mechanical watches from independent makers in six European nations.

“They are two individual American small businesses that have been swept up in a political kind of debate. We’re arguing this on behalf of every American small business, every American business that is being forced to once again pay illegal tariffs,” Albrecht said.

The organization has asked the Court of International Trade for class status.

“You have to keep in mind that they’re just getting their IEEPA refunds right now, and we’re almost done with that. But they had to start paying Section 122 (tariffs), and then when that stopped, they had to pay Section 301 (tariffs). So a lot of these businesses are effectively loaning all of their working capital to the U.S. government while we kind of sort this out in court,” Albrecht said.

The Liberty Justice Center had also challenged the Section 122 tariffs on behalf of Burlap & Barrel.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is still in the process of refunding roughly $166 billion worth of tariffs paid by businesses under Trump’s IEEPA import charges.

“We’re a small nonprofit that is, you know, 12 attorneys trying to again strike down the tariffs, and it would be nice if someone else wanted to jump into the fight,” Albrecht said. “So we’re doing the best we can, and I think we’ve done a good job so far.”

Prior to the tariff case win, the organization was most well known for its role in successfully arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME, in which its client Mark Janus challenged public sector unions over paying dues.

President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with Canada is creating headaches for Republicans ahead of November’s midterms as high prices remain a top concern among voters.

Responding to Trump’s increased tariffs, Canadian officials have said they’re deliberately targeting goods from states where there are close elections. And GOP candidates in Kansas, Maine and Ohio among others have been forced to balance supporting Trump with defending local manufacturers.

Trump has repeatedly targeted Canada, traditionally a close American ally, since returning to the White House last year. But his August move to impose 50% tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian imports has heightened tensions, pushing Canada to retaliate with its own tariffs on hundreds of American-made products that went into effect Tuesday.

Nearly $28 billion in U.S. exports to Canada now carry up to 50% tariffs, a dollar-for-dollar match on Trump’s taxes on Canadian goods imposed last month, according to Canadian officials. 

Trump has long argued that Canada is taking advantage of the United States because of a longstanding trade deficit — meaning more Canadian products are imported here than American products are exported to Canada.

“They don’t pay for anything, and they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state,” Trump said last month after trade talks fell apart.

The fallout could affect consumers and businesses across the country, but Canada targeted many of its tariffs to inflict political pain just ahead of the crucial U.S. midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. 

The trade standoff has put Republican candidates in a tough position with an electorate already fed up with high prices and underscores ongoing concerns about how federal trade policy will affect American business and state economies.

On Labor Day, Trump threatened to halt sales of the Canadian airplane manufacturer Bombardier, saying its planes weren’t good enough and the company was treating America as a “piggybank.”

That became immediate political fodder in Kansas, home to Bombardier’s U.S. headquarters and competitive races for governor and U.S. Senate this year. The company employs more than 1,000 people in Wichita, the state’s most populous city that calls itself the “Air Capital of the World” with a local economy dominated by aerospace and aviation manufacturing. 

Trump’s trade war with Canada escalates as new tariffs launch

The state’s senior Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran immediately defended Bombardier, as did Ty Masterson, the Republican nominee for governor and current state Senate president. But the issue has put pressure on the state’s junior Sen. Roger Marshall, a close Trump ally running for reelection in a competitive race. 

“We cannot allow this chaotic economic policy to continue to hurt Kansans; they deserve so much better. As your Senator, I will always stand up for Kansas workers,” the Democratic nominee in the race, Adam Hamilton, wrote on X Monday. 

On Tuesday, Marshall said he would fight to keep Bombardier’s jobs in Kansas, posting on social media, “I’ve already taken that concern inside the Oval Office.” Marshall said he agreed with Trump’s aim of bringing more manufacturing jobs, particularly in Bombardier’s case because the company sells half its products in the United States.

Tariffs on Canadian and American goods are poised to especially hurt Northern and Midwestern states, according to an analysis from Oxford Economics. It identified North Dakota, Montana, Michigan, Illinois and Vermont as the states most likely to be affected because they trade the most with Canada. 

Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha, a Democrat, said the trade feud is just the latest federal move to push up costs for businesses, consumers and local governments. Her office oversees some $56 billion in local government spending through financial integrity audits and budget analyses. She said Minnesota cities and townships have had no choice but to raise property taxes as they encounter rising prices.

“It’s just one wave after another. And it’s piling up,” she said. “All these rising costs are just coming home to roost, and they’re hitting Main Street.”

Minnesota shares a 547-mile border with Canada. Blaha said the state’s crucial agricultural industry is especially threatened as businesses constantly send products back and forth for processing. She highlighted General Mills, the maker of well-known cereals, including Cheerios. The firm buys Canadian grain that is processed in Minneapolis before being distributed to domestic cereal plants and sold across the U.S. and Canada. 

Grain is not on Canada’s list of targeted products for retaliatory tariffs, but the country did enact new tariffs on agricultural equipment, dairy and other food products. 

“These tariffs have a bigger impact than just one just one hit on a price,” she said. 

Canada’s political pressure

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs were aimed at pressuring the White House by targeting certain states and industries.

“We’re being wise and strategic to put political pressure,” Canada’s Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said last week. 

Canadian data show countermeasures will hit Ohio harder than any other state, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported. Ohio is home to one of the most competitive Senate races this cycle as Republican Sen. Jon Husted defends his seat from former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. 

Husted has largely defended Trump’s tariffs in the Senate. In an August interview with MS Now, he acknowledged the president’s decision-making was not in line with how he would negotiate, but declined to second guess Trump’s stance on Canada. 

Canadian tariffs to further raise prices, a top concern for voters

“It depends on how it ends,” the senator said. “If we get a good deal, both Canada and America can come out of this well, but it’s going to require both sides.”

Canada is Ohio’s biggest export market, sending $17.5 billion in goods across the border — roughly a third of the state’s total exports. More than half of the state’s exports to Canada come from the equipment and machinery and the transportation industries. Ohio is a leading producer of automobiles, an industry deeply affected by tariffs because of interconnected supply chains that span American, Canadian and Mexican factories. 

Trump’s tariff “decision is going to make it very difficult for folks in the automobile supply chain to be able to succeed in Ohio,” Rob Moore, principal at public policy firm Scioto Analysis, told the Ohio Capital Journal.

While Canada’s countermeasures were politically targeted, they will sweep across the country, affecting solidly conservative and liberal states. 

Connecticut State Treasurer Erick Russell, a Democrat, said the trade war will especially hurt New England states that trade more with Canada. He said the tariffs could raise prices of everything from electricity to consumer goods. 

Though tariffs will hit businesses and consumers first, Russell said they will eventually put more strain on local and state government budgets.

And the president’s on-and-off-again history with imposing and rescinding tariffs injects more uncertainty for both business and government, he said.

“Where things are right now, there isn’t any certainty or clarity around where this is ultimately going to land,” he said. “What is consistent through all of this is that consumers in Connecticut and all across the country are going to continue to pay for this tariff war.”

Concerns across New England states

The trade standoff could further hurt New England’s tourism industry that depends on steady Canadian traffic. 

In New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, tourism is big business year-round as travelers flock to beaches in the summer, leaf peeping in the autumn and skiing in the winter. Those businesses have suffered a drop in Canadian visitors amid Trump’s ongoing aggression with the country.

Steve Wright, general manager of Jay Peak Resort in Vermont’s Green Mountains, recently assured Canadians that they were welcome to the resort that sits just a few miles from the border and a roughly two-hour drive from Montreal.

“The border may feel different right now,” Wright wrote online. “We do not. You are our neighbors. You are our friends. You are part of this place.” 

Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott recently characterized the president’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America as “petty and disappointing.” Scott, who is favored in polls to win reelection in November, said the trade war harms communities on both sides of the border.

“Further escalating tensions does nothing to help American or Canadian families and businesses,” he added. 

In neighboring Maine, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has criticized the tariffs and urged the administration to resolve its dispute with Canada. A Republican in a competitive race for reelection, Collins grew up just 20 miles from the Canadian border. 

Troy Jackson, her Democratic opponent, has blamed Collins for not stopping Trump’s trade policies. 

Last week, Collins told reporters that the White House viewed tariffs in a macro sense without appreciating how damaging they are to border states such as Maine. Collins said Trump’s tariffs were already hurting local governments that rely on Canada for imported salt to treat roads in winter and could further hurt the state’s crucial lumber and blueberry industries.

While Maine’s important lobster industry was spared retaliatory tariffs, Canada did impose 50% tariffs on wood products and agricultural products. 

“Canada is not China. It is not an adversarial nation,” Collins said. “It is our closest ally, our neighbor, our friend. And our economy is so intertwined with Canada that I am very worried about what the impact will be.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

WASHINGTON — Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on American goods kicked in Tuesday, escalating a trade war with one of the largest U.S. trading partners that President Donald Trump continued to antagonize over the holiday weekend.

Trump posted an AI-generated cartoon image of himself Sunday evening in which he is depicted as a hockey player striking Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who is shown down on the ice, with a hockey stick. 

“Get up, governor,” a speech bubble from Trump’s mouth reads, apparently referring to Canada as a U.S. state rather than a sovereign country. 

Nearly $28 billion in U.S. exports crossing the border to Canada now carry up to 50% tariffs, a dollar-for-dollar match on Trump’s taxes on Canadian goods imposed last month, according to Canadian officials. 

Among the 629 categories of products Canada has targeted are key outputs from U.S. states with hotly contested races in the fast-approaching November midterm elections, including Maine’s paper and lumber industry, Michigan’s vehicle manufacturing and Wisconsin dairy production.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who’s in the midst of a tough reelection campaign, warned in late August roughly $170 million of her state’s goods will be impacted by the Canadian tariffs, with more than half of that coming from the forest product sector. Canada revised its tariff proposal Aug. 27 to exclude seafood, including Maine’s significant lobster industry. 

5% of goods in question

The United States and Canada’s dueling tariffs represent roughly 5% of the two countries’ massive and intertwined trading partnership, which totaled $879.9 billion in goods in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

But the escalation has been accompanied by Trump’s near constant trolling of the U.S. northern neighbor, including threats since his days on the 2024 campaign trail to annex Canada as the 51st state. 

Over the Labor Day weekend, the president declared on his Truth Social platform “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!”

“If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a ‘piggybank.’ BUY AMERICAN. FLY ON AMERICAN AIRLINERS. ENJOY AMERICAN LIQUOR AND BEVERAGES. SAIL ON LAKE AMERICA. AMERICA FIRST!” Trump wrote, referencing his executive order Aug. 27 renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America.

The Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier has multiple manufacturing partners and facilities in the United States, including in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Kansas and New Jersey, according to the company.

“Bombardier aircraft create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs through the company’s growing American footprint as well as within its supply chain made up of approximately 2,800 American companies across 47 states,” according to a Bombadier statement issued Monday. 

“The company spends over $2.5 Billion with suppliers each year. This deeply integrated network and incredible growth stem from the company’s heritage in the business jet industry, dating back to the innovations of Learjet in Wichita, Kansas, and the first business jets to enter service,” the statement continued.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said in a post on X Monday evening that he contacted Trump “to make certain the President is aware of the significant contributions of Bombardier to Kansas and the importance of its presence in Wichita to many Kansas workers at Bombardier and in the Bombardier supply chain.”

The company supports roughly 1,000 jobs in the state, according to the Kansas Republican.

Executive orders

Trade talks between the U.S. and Canada collapsed Aug. 21. In days prior Trump had said he would delay new tariffs on Canadian goods while negotiations continued. 

Trump signed three executive orders for new tariffs on Canada in late July using a Depression-era law that has never been enforced. 

Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 authorizes the president to impose duties up to 50% of a product’s value in response to discrimination against U.S. commerce. 

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) walked through the shelves of pasta, olive oil, tinned fish and frozen pizzas at Fraboni’s Italian deli in Monona on Thursday as part of her statewide tour assessing how President Donald Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran are affecting small businesses. 

In May, the owners of the third-generation family business said that tariffs and increased gas prices had caused the cost of fresh tomatoes to increase about 40%. That price hike included domestically grown tomatoes because tariffs that increased the cost of imported tomatoes pushed up  demand for domestic tomatoes, while higher gas prices made even nearby crops more expensive to ship.
Store co-owner Bennett Fraboni added that his deli had done its best to avoid passing the increased cost of products on to its customers. 

“We always hope that it’s going to be a temporary increase, and that we can swallow it ourselves and not have to pass it on,” Fraboni said.

The deli, which has operated in the Madison area since 1971, sells Italian grocery items and operates a popular sandwich counter. Fraboni said that as the economy has fluctuated over the past year, he’s seen the two sides of the business move independently. When money is tight, he said, people are less likely to go out to eat, so sandwich counter sales slow but the sales of grocery items increase as people look to cook at home more. 

Baldwin said that hearing these stories from businesses across the state is especially frustrating because U.S. economic struggles are “self-inflicted.” 

Traveling the state during the Senate recess, she has heard from small business owners about the challenges they are facing because of  tariffs, trade wars and Trump’s war of choice in Iran, she said. “In many ways, they describe a very chaotic environment — volatile — and recognize that a lot of these things that are causing challenges for our small businesses are choices that this administration has made.”

Democrats across the country are  pushing a message about “affordability” and highlighting voters’ worries about high prices. While Congress doesn’t usually have a simple policy solution for lowering the prices of household expenses, Baldwin said if Democrats take control they can immediately act to end Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. 

“The type of policies that this president has engaged in are extremely harmful to the consumer and to our small businesses and to our farmers who are producing these products,” Baldwin said.