What happened in China On 12 February 2026, China's commerce ministry shifted its stance on a question that Brussels had long assumed was settled: whether Chinese electric vehicle makers would negotiate tariff arrangements with the European Union as a bloc or as individual companies. The answer, it turned out, was neither — Beijing simply stopped insisting on the former. The shift was triggered by a precedent that few in Brussels had intended to set. The European Commission approved a request from Volkswagen's Cupra brand to exempt its China-made Tavascan SUV coupe from EU electric vehicle tariffs. The moment that exemption landed, other Chinese automakers — including BYD and SAIC — began moving toward individual talks of their own, eyeing the same treatment. Beijing's acceptance of this fragmentation was not a softening. It was a strategy. ## How it works / the detail The EU's tariff architecture for Chinese EVs…