Holy christ the media is overall doing a completely shit job of clearly presenting what’s actually going on here. I’ll help:
The PRC is engaging in economic warfare by heavily subsidizing export EV production costs for basically all of their car manufacturers, in the interest of pushing literally everyone else out of the market.
That’s it. That’s the story.
It is entirely rational and justified to enact trade protections to combat those tactics.
And before anyone tries to gatcha me on being pro-American car manufacturer or whatever: again, no. The split is China/not-China. They’re undercutting EVERYONE else intentionally.
China has an excess EVs and are looking for places to offload their inventory and contracts for the supporting charging infrastructure.
No… China is looking to put everyone else who’s manufacturing EVs out of business - or at least, severely diminish their market share. It’s economic warfare. It’s quite obvious.
I’m a little surprised, but also amused, at the intense pushback I’m getting from some people on this topic. It seems to fall into two categories:
- sinophiles
- “leftists” who are oddly focused on wanting a product for less than it actually costs to make, and damn the larger scale geopolitical implications.
Where are the incentives for US automakers?
There aren’t any export subsidies.
It is beyond me why so many people are refusing to acknowledge that export subsidies and domestic rebates are entirely different things. I know that it’s nuanced. But there is a meaningful difference, and in a geopolitical sense, the difference is actually quite immense. Pretending it’s the same is to going to make it the same.
American car companies honestly deserve to get obliterated here, sorry it is capitalism shrugs.
If you make shitty cars that are totally out of sync with what the world needs and that makes you massively lose against a country that is willing to actually make practical EVs… then your company deserves to go out of business.
I just worry that, as always, we the customers will bear brunt of this. Cheap EVs flooding the market is what American car companies deserve but if it’s all garbage wish . Com versions of Teslas then American consumers don’t deserve to have yet another disposable commodity forced on them. If the course of action follows we’ll have shit overpriced EVs and almost no real selection.
Cheap EVs flooding the market is what American car companies deserve but if it’s all garbage wish . Com versions of Teslas then American consumers don’t deserve to have yet another disposable commodity forced on them.
China doesn’t make crap, that is very very outdated perspective on Chinese goods. Chinese corporations isn’t necessarily in the business of ensuring quality control all the way up the production chain, but more luxurious brands still make all their shit in China too, they just (sometimes) add an additional layer of quality control on top of the Chinese method of industrial production.
I am sure there are absolutely shit Chinese EVs, but I am absolutely sure that there are also extremely nice affordable economy Chinese EVs, because China is a massive country and has countless different industrial production chains. It is simply a matter of doing the work to figure out which ones are producing quality EVs and which ones aren’t, same as buying any other product directly from China instead of having a western brand do the work of finding the quality products being produced in China for you and relabeling it with their brand.
There are absolutely still garbage products coming out of China, that hasn’t changed.
What has changed is that not all of their products are garbage. Companies there have absolutely stepped it up in recent years.
That being said: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3196259/tests-show-12-out-13-childrens-toothpastes
That’s all but one of the toothpastes tested *containing lead. Make of that what you will, but I personally wouldn’t put it past Chinese companies taking shortcuts with what they export.
You phrased it backwards, 12 of 13 contained lead but you said 1 of 13.
Probably a typo!
Fuck, yeah I accidentallied that one. I even had to re-read it because I missed it when you corrected me too haha
Tell me you don’t understand the geopolitical context without telling me you don’t understand the geopolitical context
The last time this happened it was Japanese cars, and the US auto industry failed and got bailed out. I expect that to happen again with Chinese EVs.
The ability to make cars involves a lot of skills that can have military applications. There’s a reason car factories were converted to build basically everything in WWII, and the US won’t give up that ability for national security reasons. So our auto industry can’t fail, and will be propped up by the government.
nationalize them and force EV product lines and then spin off as a worker co-op
I have to wonder if people are serious with these absurd suggestions or what on Earth you are trying to achieve by writing this. This is about as realistic at demanding that America should build a second moon entirely out of cheese.