That might be because they are threatening european companies and Industries leading to dependencies which threaten european sovereignity.

When you have a rotting tooth and you'll let it fester, sooner or later you'll have to feel the short sharp pain of having it pulled in order to reach relief - you're going to lose it either way but this way you don't spend year in pain and don't risk actual death if the rot spreads.

I think European politicians who have spent literally decades tilting the playing field in favor of large companies instead of flatenning market barriers to entry in important markets and punishing cartels with fines large enough to actually bankrupt companies, are a lot more to blame for the situation were certain large European conglomerates could grown fat and lazy by enshittifying instead of innovating and even selling products which shouldn't be allowed due to their danger (for example SUV's are 70% more likely to kill pedestrians in collisons than sedans and don't get me started with the tens of thousands of EU citizens that die each year due to the higher diesel emissions of sulfur oxides) all the while it was painfully obvious a technological sea change was happening.

This shit we see now is the result of the hardcore neoliberals that dominate the EU refusing to actually do the "govern" part of governing all the while the Chinese (who, laughably, aren't even Capitalists) beat them in the Capitalist game by having actual high-level cross-industry strategies rather than "leave it to The Market".

Go figure - you can't win a "War" by having an "Army" where nobody sits at the top level doing Strategy and commanding those below them and expecting that "Having good Tactics is enough to win".

Literally denying a large part of the body of knowledge of Game Theory (most notably the Tragedy Of The Commons) and picking and choosing from Behavioural Economics (Nudge Theory yes, Humans not being rational economic actors, no) is a great way to set a society up for long-term failure.

This rotten tooth could've been treated early enough that it wouldn't need to be pulled, but the dominant politics in the EU is basically "each body cell knows best" and "the brain can't interfere with the free operation of the body", terminantly refusing to act as a top-down agent in oversight, so here we are now.

Protectionism now without a proper strategy to force more competitiveness in European car makers will just delay the innevitable reckoning or (it the market is totally closed) force the EU population and businesses to have higher costs than others because the market was closed to protect companies that spent decades chosing short term profits over mid and long term success, thus hindering the competitiveness of the rest of the EU Economy to protect a few fatcats.

https://news.sky.com/story/former-assistant-to-afd-politician-found-guilty-of-chinese-spy-charges-13441157

translated: their products are too good so we need to urge governments to buy inferior products from europe just because we're scared

usa has time and time again weaponized our dependence on them. china doesn't really have an incentive to do so

eu and european countries should just invest in things like electric bus production and buying them would come naturally without any pressure. everyone for example is buying swiss stadler trains cus they're just so good and reliable