The Biden administration finalized guardrails for its electric vehicle tax credit on Friday that keep President Joe Biden’s EV adoption goals in sight but are likely to draw challenges from critics on both sides of the aisle who say he is illegally opening the door for Chinese imports.
The rules offer some reprieve for automakers on the most severe restrictions on Chinese minerals, acknowledging that fledgling American battery suppliers will need years — or possibly decades — to catch up to their Chinese competitors.
The regulations nonetheless have left only around 20 percent of electric models qualifying for the lucrative incentive. That is unlikely to change with the final rules, as they continue to bar vehicles with a majority of their battery minerals sourced from abroad or relying on suppliers with even loose links to the Chinese government.
The Biden administration says its efforts to crack down on foreign suppliers are already paying dividends, as shown by the billions of dollars companies are investing in the United States to manufacture electric cars and the minerals that power them.
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