US election can't stop global wave

Before anyone can start renegotiating trade treaties, new situations will pop up

Republican Donald Trump has beaten Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in a close race to win the 45th US presidency. But he is not as likely to be as friendly to globalization as Barack Obama - even if he wants to be.

In one way or another, the new president will not hesitate to give China a hard time, either by raising tariffs on imports across the board, or by placing additional restrictions on China's overseas mergers and acquisitions.

Granted, this is part of the relationship between China and the United States and won't affect the entire landscape of economic globalization, which is a much broader process - many-sided collaborations, with competition among nations and global market players. It will not be easily stopped or interrupted.

It is likely that before anyone can start renegotiating existing trade treaties or defining new rules, new things - even game changers - will start popping up. Creative destructions, economists will call them.

One example was what Carlos Ghosn, the legendary CEO of Renault and Nissan, recently told the press, that the two companies' joint program will turn out electric vehicles of $7,000-8,000 per unit from their China-based factories "without government incentives".

China's EV market is growing rapidly now, driven by bold subsidies from the government, which said it wants 5 million EVs and plug-in or hybrid vehicles on the road by 2020.

According to Trendforce, a market intelligence provider, the nation sold 350,000 EVs from January to September in the domestic market. With an estimated annual sale of 550,000 units, China will account for more than 55 percent of the global EV market in 2016.

The Renault-Nissan has competition not only from US-based Tesla but also from China-based BYD.

From a separate source, Americans bought about 100,000 EVs and plug-in hybrids combined through the first 10 months of the year.

If $8,000-per-unit EVs can be put into mass production, "it's going to change the game," Ghosn said. But what is his game? One should bear in mind that when EV technology is being honed to be increasingly friendly to a mass market, EVs with autopilot features are on horizon as well. Soon enough, EVs and autopilot EVs will make a tectonic change to the world automobile industry.

How can any country protect its old automobile industry by hiking tariffs - such as on imported parts for assembling the new vehicles - in its own land, and for export?

How can any trade containment pact prevent a country from playing a part in the emergence of a new market, especially when it is already being pioneered in the industry?

By the same token, once a new vehicle developer can claim a level of proven reliability (BYD claims it will be able to do so when its electric bus is used for urban transit on fixed routes), how can any regime stop investors betting on its further success?

We are not talking about sci-fi here. The coming of the new vehicles, be they EVs or autopilot cars or autopilot EVs, will most likely be one of the new things faced by the incoming US president in the next few years - representing a difficult choice between the demands of automobile workers in a declining market of fossil-fuel vehicles, and the attraction of technologies spearheaded by more advanced and environmentally friendly vehicles.

By the time Ghosn ships some products assembled in China - say $8,000-per-unit Renault-Nissan EVs - to sell in the US market, will they be counted as exports from China or France or Japan?

Or, if some EVs assembled in the US use batteries made by American workers in companies with Chinese investors - but not so many as the number of workers in all the old automobile factories - will they be seen as a constructive or a destructive force in the US job market?

Asking all the above questions is not meant to say that China will be just fine. China has plenty of its own problems. And its government can't claim to have done enough to help its entrepreneurs and workers prepare for an ever-changing business environment.

Calling attention to the rising tide of the EV industry is merely to show one example of how globalization can get more complex just at a time when some people are attempting to shut it off.

The author is an editor-at-large of China Daily. Contact the writer at edzhang@chinadaily.com.cn