China Car Sales Growth Slumps In March As Tax Incentives Removed

Jon Alternative Media, Blogosphere, Economy

As U. S. auto OEM’s deal with ‘plateau-ing’ sales domestically, it appears increasingly likely that they’re also about to suffer the consequences of some volume pull forward in China that artificially boosted 2016 sales.
As the Wall Street Journal points out this morning, Chinese auto sales growth has slowed materially so far in 2017, with passenger car sales up just 0.59% in March versus 15% growth in 2016, after auto ‘purchase taxes’ were raised to 7.5% from 5% last year. The tax cut was implemented in 2016 to boost slowing car sales and it seems to have worked ‘beautifully.’ The tax is expected to return to it’s normal level of 10% at the end of 2017…unless more stimulus is deemed necessary in the interim, of course.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Apr 11, 2017.