in reaction to us banning electric cars from import (they would probably hurt our domestic car market

Which is an entirely different story that I don’t get. Sure, the protectionism, ok, but there’s no one even attempting to compete with them, and legacy manufacturers have backtracked even more in introducing any. Even Tesla appears to have given up on a reasonably priced EV. What’s the point of protectionism if there’s no equivalent market to protect and no one wants to establish one?