I'm not saying "trust the government", not at all. But meddling in China trade is absolutely not meddling with the free market.
Ideally what you would want is to get China to stop doing that, but now propose a mechanism to get them to.
China subsidizes (among other things) battery manufacturing, which is the biggest single cost for making EVs. If you get your batteries cheaper than competing companies then you can make premium cars with an electric range at the high end of the market and then use the subsidized cost to provide other amenities that cause customers to choose your product over alternatives even at a premium price. It allows you to take the high end of the market on value just as well as the low end on cost.
because trade balances are established by free markets, but China doesn't allow many of our goods and does not allow free market competition. Also "strategic dumping" to establish supremacy in markets which can later be exploited.
also, "free market" does not have anything close to a precise meaning; i used it because you used it but it's highly ambiguous, better to rephrase sentences to accurately include the phrase "market clearing price" while identifying external strictures which might move the market clearing price away from where it should be.