Given what we already see playing out in Europe and America's existing history of trade policy with China, I suspect politics/trade policy will likely be very unkind to allowing imports of cheap chinese cars to the US any time soon.

European and Japanese manufacturers are already getting that nasty surprise in European markets competing with Chinese EVs like the MG4 etc.

>> European markets competing with Chinese EVs like the MG4 etc. <<

I suspect that most Europeans buyers have no idea that MG is now owned by a Chinese company. No native Chinese brand sell above 1% in the EU.

MG is a Chinese native brand in my eyes and a lot of European consumers - it's widely known it's a Chinese product even if consumers don't know of SAIC. This isn't like they bought 51% of some European car company and kept the same management, workers and factories; none of the cars are made in Europe, they are largely made in China and sold around the world with the logo of a failed UK car manufacturer SAIC acquired decades ago etc.

Certainly very few customers think they are buying a British product! It also hasn't prevented the MG4 from picking up a lot of critical acclaim/car of the year awards in Europe too, and virtually every review of the car mentions its Chinese origin, usually in the context of it offering more EV for less money in several regards than a European ID3 etc.

Sure, then what do you think explains such a high disparity between MG's and local Chinese brand's EV sales in EU? The best selling Chinese EV brand, BYD, has 0.6% of regional market share.

That's clearly because making and selling EVs don't make a ton of financial sense. EVs that do are ridiculed and criticized to death. It was almost solely because of Tesla selling vehicles at loss for literally a decade that EVs became recognized as wastefully expensive but viable option.

EVs that do or almost do make sense without strong subsidization by investments, such as Nissan Leaf, Toyota bZ4X, Honda e[1] are still ignored and/or trivialized for disappointing product value propositions.

1: Why is the e sometimes considered a compliance car? There's no gas variant or shared platform or body panel, it's all-custom all-new ... garbage. But not a factory engine swap like MX-30 EV or e-Golf.