China is quietly taking over the North American car market

The automobile sector once represented American industrial might, but it’s now emblematic of something else: Beijing’s campaign to deindustrialize the rest of the world. Chinese companies are dumping cheap vehicles abroad to capture market share from North American and European rivals. And Washington is making the problem worse.

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was supposed to defend the North American market against China. But when the agreement’s mandatory six-year review began this summer, the Trump administration declined to extend the current deal and instead continued separate bilateral talks with Canada and Mexico.The U.S. hasn’t reached a trade deal with Mexico, and U.S.-Canada talks have devolved into tit-for-tat tariffs. That division helps Beijing.

Elaine Dezenski is the senior director of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.