I’m usually against tariffs but in this case it seems like a pretty fair tit for tat to China basically removing the budgetary concerns for their manufacturers that said manufacturer’s international counterparts won’t have.
Subsidizing local production for local markets is fine enough, but exporting products made with an infinite money glitch active is more or less an intentional play at market capture.
And before some sinoboo tries to gatcha me I do also object to examples where the west subsidizes domestic production for international markets.
I want a $10000 car that would normally be inflated to $30000 in the US.
I’m no lover of China, but fuck the capitalist auto companies.
That $10k Chinese car cost $20k to make. A competitor undercutting the market that much leads to monopolization. When that competitor is being bankrolled by a foreign government it’s potentially even a hostile act.
People have been mad for decades about what Walmart did to retail in the US. Taking steps to prevent that from also happening with the auto industry should be appreciated.
People have been mad for decades about what Walmart did to retail in the US.
And the government stepped in and addressed the situation, right? Right?
I want a $10000 car that would normally be inflated to $30000 in the US.
You can’t make that same car in the United States for anything like the same price. Even ignoring the Chinese Governments heavy subsidies there’s still a massive cost gap due to worker compensation, cost of compliance with safety regulations, cost of compliance with environmental regulations, and a whole host of other things.
The cost of manufacturing in the United States is radically higher than it is in China and that simply isn’t fixable unless you’re going to unwind Union pay deals, remove environmental laws, and reduce safety restrictions.
You cannot have both, so which are you choosing? Are you going to go with your wallet like a self absorbed capitalist or are you going to support union workers, stronger environmental laws, and more worker safety?
This is what I try to tell people who just want the cheapest things possible. We’re voting with our dollars what kind of world we want.
Also, shipping things across the sea burns some of the worst fuel for the environment so I’d rather buy things made here and support the local economy whenever possible.
so which are you choosing?
I think most people will choose what they can actually afford. The fact that things cost so much and people aren’t being paid anywhere near enough to compensate for the skyrocketing price of consumer goods, including vehicles.
Whatever the reasons, there is a very serious and dangerous disconnect between the prices of American goods and the spending power of the average American. Unless we do something about that - and I do not mean short-sighted, punitive, protectionist measures like tariffs - China is going to drink our milkshake.
Thatsthething.
Everyone talks about how shitty the environment is and that we’re going to get burned alive in our lifetime…but at the same time, fuck the environment if it means cheap goods.
Here’s some fun math. Burning a gallon of gas emits 8,887g of CO2. Let’s call it 8.9kg. 1000kgs in a tonne. That means 112 gallons emits a tonne of CO2.
With me so far?
It costs around $500 to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere.
People act like $3/gal for gas is too much. I say, it’s nowhere near high enough. Gas has to cost $4.46/gal just to cover cleaning up the CO2 emitted from it. That’s just cleanup.
Maybe if we had to pay the cost for our lifestyle, we’d readdress what we actually need. Instead, we have government subsidized global destruction. All of the EV/renewable tax rebates are great (as long as you can use them)…but it’s nothing compared to what oil gets.
Don’t even get me started on beef.
Mexico is just across the boarder, and US car makers already make their stuff there to save cash. Mexico has a pretty low unemployment rate right now, so pushing even more labor demand their way would help improve a lot of peoples’ lives by lifting salaries.
But a lot of the cost is in battery manufacturing, not assembly. We need to experiment with sodium-ion batteries to bring those costs down for economy-class cars, just like China is. Maybe $10k is too little, but $15-20k should be feasible for a very basic car.
Sure we will take the sacrifice… I’m sure this time capitalist will get the message and start behaving reasonably
It’s like that time thousands of us reduced or eliminated meat intake and suddenly the Kardashians realized taking private jet flight to avoid a few minutes of traffic was bad and stopped doing it
While I can’t say any of this is wrong, you’re missing likely the single biggest component inflating the cost of US manufacturing: profit margins. Every step of the supply chain has a profit margin attached. Sometimes just a few percent, but often double digits. These compound, so a 5% margin on a simple component will see an additional 15% when sold as part of an assembly, which is then marked up another 20% when sold as part of the finished good. There’s also financialization which burdens US companies. Companies generally need to take loans to fund their operations, and end up having to pay heavy interest fees and rent which also drives up cost. Workers and environmental protections are more expensive, but in practice they are relatively minor compared to a lot of other inefficiencies US industry struggles with.
I was born into a car centric society. So much so they design the places we live around them. Including dense residential far away from employment that requires transportation. Chop all attempts at decent public transit and now you have created a market of completely artificial demand. Which the law says cars must become more expensive. I have to have a car because of the awful design choices made by unqualified politicians past. Fuck the auto industry. They could have been out saviors by being the example of what union companies do but instead chose violence.
It’s not the capitalist auto companies who are going to get hurt though. The price advantage of the Chinese companies comes from low labor costs and government subsidies, so the auto companies will just move there production to whatever country offers the most subsidies and least labor costs because in our current globalized world capital can move freely.
The real losers will be the unionized auto workers who’ll be abandoned while capitalists maintain or even increase there profits in the third world. These sorts of race to the bottom always harm workers, whether it be with clothes and shein , or EVs.
Ah yes, great way to fuck over our capitalists, by supporting their worse capitalists instead
I mean if we’re being capitalists, that’s how the free market works, right?
I prefer the circular solution. Make a tariff equal to the delta, and use the tariff to subsidize local production and reduce the delta.
God forbid anyone get a cheap EV before US car companies sort out which $50,000+ car brand can position itself as the “luxury” one before accepting that they need to build cheaper models.
The Chinese ones are cheap because they’re being subsidised by the Chinese govt to be sold that cheaply overseas as a deliberate economic attack tho
The Chinese state isn’t selling cars under the cost of construction. The subsidies come in the form of cheap (increasingly nuclear) energy, publicly funded STEM/trade schools, and public health care. These socialized benefits reduce the real cost of living in China and grow the domestic consumer car market, along with lowering the per-unit production costs.
American car companies have long been hobbled by the obscene cost of employment benefits - high salaries to cover housing costs and student debts, high private insurance premiums, high administration overhead, the constant need to fund stock buybacks in order to keep the value of their stock-incentives up. The deal with the devil they cut with Truman - to make medical insurance a private tax write-off rather than a public good - combined with the enormous Reagan Era tax cuts and rapidly metasticizing private health industry administrative overhead, drives up the cost of each vehicle by thousands of dollars.
This sucks for the car companies, but is fucking awesome for the FIRE sector. And since 30% of the US GDP is tied up in financing, insurance, and real estate growth, our private automotive industry is effectively forced to subsidize their profits. That’s what makes American cars so expensive relative to their East Asian peers.
Chinese vehicles suck. Here in mexico they’re all over the place, and their quality is questionable. MGs are a joke now. Good for the US to block these imports.
I’m more annoyed that basically every western car company tried to make a $70,000 luxury EV to upscale their brand instead of making a sensible one that people will actually buy. If we want widespread adoption, we need more EVs that aren’t priced based on some pipe dream that people will wake up one day and think Ford is a luxury brand.
The tech for EVs is not quite there yet. Most technologies/services star as a luxury ok this cases where the manufacturing costs are still too high. For example Uber, which started as a luxury service before being widespread with the shitty service they became.
That’s one of the reasons why I hope my country sets restrictions on these Chinese EVs, as there is not enough infrastructure in Mexico for EVs to even existe, and we can’t produce enough energy for them to be a viable solution for transportation. Heck, I’m even with Toyota and believe EVs are not a tech we should be investing in, and the world will not move to EVs as a widespread mode of transportation. i certainly hope so, because people buying EVs thinking they are the most green solution are not seeing the elephant in the room.
If these Chinese vehicles suck so much, why are US car companies so afraid of them?
Cuz China is well known for subsidizing production (well the US kinda does it too for some productos anyway). I personally wouldn’t buy a Chinese vehicle out of security and quality concerns, regardless of it being Ev or not.
MGs were already a joke though. And if they’re so bad then why do they need to be blocked?
Don’t buy shitty Chinese EVs, buy the somehow even shittier American EVs!
Wait, we were allowed to import these cars??
I was just talking to my dad about this the other day and I told him that it was only a matter of time before the US government goes after Chinese EV’s at the request of the US auto lobby.
I didn’t think it would be this soon, though. Hurray for more garbage EV’s for $50,000+
Volvo EX30 compact EV SUV comes out this year with a base price of 35k. I consider that exceptionally reasonable (esp. for a Volvo). I’d buy one myself, but getting my house setup for EVs is a huge can of worms. My electric main is buried, I only have 100a service and my panel is full to the brim.
Isn’t 100A considered inside for an all electric home?
Most homes nowadays are 200A. I could probably make it work, or get a smart panel to not have to worry about it…but upgrading service is practically impossible unless I can get someone else to pay for it. We’d have to remove a bunch of trees to trench to where the junction box is, and then trench across our driveway, too. Unless I lucked out and there oversized conduit there already, but I highly doubt it. As much as I’ve been told, the neighborhood was built with direct-bury service entrances.
