This has always been true of gas vehicles as well. They're banned for not having some safety feature or otherwise complying with FMVSS or some other regularity body, not because they are "affordable".
The US gave $7500 per car sold in the US to any manufacturer, with the "Buy American" restriction added only in the last two years of the policy.
I'm also curious to hear your source for the subsidies - from what I can see China has spent anywhere from 3x to 5x propping up the domestic EV industry as the US has over the last 15 years. The US had Tesla which almost went bankrupt multiple times despite the subsidies; China has a dozen EV manufacturers, half of whom are on life support now that the government is withdrawing subsidies.
The Chinese spent more money on an absolute basis, yes. They gave less per car, but built > 10x as many cars, so your number of 3-5x sounds about right.
The best source IMO is the commission that came up with the European countervailing duty of 17%.
That is insane. Smaller vehicles are safer at a social level because they do less damage when they hit something - especially a pedestrian. Regulatory bodies should be encouraging them for that reason alone (let alone all the others).
Manufacturers might prioritise the safety of their customers, and people are likely to care more about their own safety than that of others, but regulators should be looking at overall public safety which is definitely improved by encouraging small cars.
The regulatory bodies aren't specifically discriminating against smaller vehicles, they're discriminating against vehicles that haven't proven safety to passengers in crash tests acceptable to the FMVSS. The vehicles may or may not also be missing mandatory internal safety features like airbags in all the right spots, etc.
If Chinese EV manufacturers put their vehicles through these tests, include all the mandatory features, and strip out the forbidden telemetry (certain manufacturers are banned in the US for reporting to the CCP- most notably but not exclusive to Huawei) then they too can be sold here.
If anything is preventing Chinese EVs from the US market, it's almost certainly their electronic components.
This is likely confounded by the dealership model. Dealers have practically zero incentive to sell affordable cars, and especially not EVs that they’ll make almost no servicing money on. Some dealers also stock only a handful of EVs (or none) so they may not even have them to sell in the first place.
It’d be nice if affordable EV models were available from direct to consumer companies. If one could go online and buy a $22k electric hatchback that shows up in your driveway with zero haggling, it’s difficult to imagine it not selling well.