"We don’t have any competition for these Chinese EV’s so our plan is to price the American public out of buying one even though we don’t have any cheap alternative EVs in America. We are so fucked here. If we don’t vote Biden we get straight up fascism if we vote for Biden we get a continued oligarchy. Great choices guys!
This is dumb. Americans are being ripped off by car prices and manufacturers who aren’t investing in this cheaper tech.
The Chinese cars are cheap because they’re going back to basics. Compared to any US DOT approved vehicle, they’re slow, they’re light, they don’t have any bells and whistles. Four wheels, a motor, some simple electronics, and a battery.
Ultimately, that’s all you need to get from one place to the next if you don’t need highway speeds or crash ratings…
Will high tariffs cause local manufacturers to develop their own version of cheap electric vehicles? Doubtful.
My thought as well, the video Tom Scott did on the mountain town that has bespoke electric vehicles (and strict usage on them for needed business) comes to mind (R2oD1ZHNMFE). I don’t know how much is law and how much is companies not caring to cater to that market (even with designs that they sell in Europe), but Kei-like vehicles can still be affordable without being fully unsafe (but the issue of safety is more about the market making larger-and-larger trucks and SUVs, and lack of viable car alternatives paired with high speed limits).
Higher cost really is not a fix. Other concerns like privacy seem like policy could mesh well with low-end (no internet connection, just-a-radio, common off-the-shelf parts, standards+no DRM etc). It would be nice for the option to exist in this space that US car companies are not trying to fill anyway.
This is very much a mixed bag of news - while it sucks to force ridiculously high tariffs on EV imports the Chinese EV market is currently unsustainably subsidized by the government and domestic companies wouldn’t be able to compete. If we want to grow our domestic EV automakers we can’t let them be forced to sell vehicle at a perpetual loss.
This is made even more complicated by the fact that EV manufacturing is already being heavily domestically subsidized by PE money - I believe one of the manufacturing startups is currently losing 350k on every car they sell.
Free market at work.
America is having record fossil fuel production…
It’s one of the few things keeping “the economy” afloat on paper.
If Biden let Americans buy affordable Chinese EVs, that hurts the American GDP numbers in a couple ways.
Neoliberals care about GDP more than CEOs care about stock price.
China is becoming an increasingly unreliable trade partner. Preventing them from taking over more of America’s economy is prudent.
Oh yeah, because there’s still cars made in America where the workers get decent wages and working conditions …
Like, I’m sure they don’t in China either.
But what’s the difference between a Chinese oligarch who doesn’t pay American taxes and an American oligarch who doesn’t pay American taxes?
I’m sure there’s a couple besides if someone’s wealth changes GDP, but are there any that make up for all Americans getting access to affordable EVs?
This move is terrible for the average American, so some different billionaires will make more money then they can spend.
Even if you want to make the case it helps auto workers (it really doesn’t) they make up a little over 1% of Americans.
Biden is hurting 100 Americans to “help” 1, because even that US autoworker could buy the affordable EV if they were sold here
Hell, isn’t capitalism supposed to be built on the free market? If these billion dollar corporations can only exist if we ban their competition, shouldn’t capitalists be screaming to let them burn?
In a completely capitalist market, American manufacturers would be paying Americans less money to make the cars, and if they couldn’t find people, they’d move the manufacturing out of the country. Why would they keep a factory here in the US if they could pay Mexicans to build them and ship them to the US with no tariffs (fucked up lobbying and a lousy government has sort of made this example happen, actually)? US auto worker are paid around $18 to $35 an hour. Chinese auto workers average (converted to US currency) $2 to $3.50 an hour.
So you tell me. Do you really want to go pure capitalism, no holds barred, and try to compete with a country paying their people $3 an hour without moving your own manufacturing out of the US? Do you know how many jobs in the US exist only because there’s tariffs in place? Do you know that just like Honda, Toyota and other foreign car manufacturers have done, China can avoid most of the tariffs by building their vehicles in the US, instead of shipping all of them in? Getting rid of tariffs would lower the wages of nearly every job you could get in the US. When millions of jobs leave the US, it makes it real easy for a capitalist to start paying less to desperate people, and start thinking that what you’re being currently paid is too much.
German industry is/was in shambles as they allowed an unreliable trade partner, Russia, to completely take over a segment in the German economy (oil & gas). When that unreliable trade partner pulled the rug in 2022, suddenly Germany is paying out the ass for LNG, reducing factory output, even on-lining coal plants to keep the lights on.
It is simply a bad idea to allow an unreliable trade partner to take over a segment in your economy.
oil & gas
Bruh.
Cars are not fossil fuels…
Like, we’re talking America here, where people who work in offices drive 100k trucks with an hour commute each way.
There is literally no way that the allowance of cheap Chinese EVs substantially hurts American automakers.
You could give them out for free with a fill up and 50% of the country still wouldn’t ride in one let alone own one.
If you mean pickup trucks, that’s also a tariff-protected market. Frankly, the Japanese and European manufacturers probably should have taken over there in a competitive market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks (and originally on potato starch, dextrin, and brandy) imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken. The period from 1961 to 1964 of tensions and negotiations surrounding the issue was known as the “Chicken War”, taking place at the height of Cold War politics.
If an American “manufacturer” is competitive, it usually means it’s because we tax everyone else a ridiculous amount.
Which would be ok short term to build up our infrastructure.
But it’s long term, and because companies know it won’t end, they’ve just raised their prices and pocket the tax %.
Like as soon as Tesla lost their tax deduction, Musk charged that much less. It was baked into the max price of what someone would pay.
It’s to the point we can’t even say America is capitalist, we’ve got a few huge corporations that squeeze evwry but of money (work) from the populace and we fundamentally get no choice. It’s the shit they fearmonger about with communism.
The only difference is a government (even incredibly corrupt) could be held accountable in some way. Corrupt corporations that owns the only options that could run the government are bulletproof.
Even if the people try to pick the lesser of two evils, they still lose. It just makes enough feel like we did something that not enough try for more.
If an American “manufacturer” is competitive, it usually means it’s because we tax everyone else a ridiculous amount.
Hmm. I don’t know about that. There are some areas where the US is globally a pretty major player, like pharmaceuticals.
I think that a big factor is that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a lot of US manufacturing was assembly-line stuff, where a lot of the process was figuring out how to take someone off a farm who didn’t have a lot of domain-specific experience, and put them into something more-productive with a very limited period of time to get them going. Low-skill labor played a big role there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_system_of_manufacturing
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. The two notable features were the extensive use of interchangeable parts and mechanization for production, which resulted in more efficient use of labor compared to hand methods. The system was also known as armory practice because it was first fully developed in armories, namely, the United States Armories at Springfield in Massachusetts and Harpers Ferry in Virginia (later West Virginia), inside contractors to supply the United States Armed Forces, and various private armories. The name “American system” came not from any aspect of the system that is unique to the American national character, but simply from the fact that for a time in the 19th century it was strongly associated with the American companies who first successfully implemented it, and how their methods contrasted (at that time) with those of British and continental European companies. In the 1850s, the “American system” was contrasted to the British factory system which had evolved over the previous century. Within a few decades, manufacturing technology had evolved further, and the ideas behind the “American” system were in use worldwide. Therefore, in manufacturing today, which is global in the scope of its methods, there is no longer any such distinction.
The American system involved semi-skilled labor using machine tools and jigs to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance, which could be assembled with a minimum of time and skill, requiring little to no fitting.
Since the parts are interchangeable, it was also possible to separate manufacture from assembly and repair—an example of the division of labor. This meant that all three functions could be carried out by semi-skilled labor: manufacture in smaller factories up the supply chain, assembly on an assembly line in a main factory, and repair in small specialized shops or in the field. The result is that more things could be made, more cheaply, and with higher quality, and those things also could be distributed further, and lasted longer, because repairs were also easier and cheaper. In the case of each function, the system of interchangeable parts typically involved substituting specialized machinery to replace hand tools.
The need for firms to train uneducated people to perform only one thing in the productivity chain allowed for the use of non-specialized labor. Women and children were employed more frequently within larger firms, especially those producing furniture and clothing.
The thing is that that’s pretty labor-intensive and doesn’t require a specific skillset, and so it’s difficult to compete if you’re a country with high wages. Once lots of countries started industrializing, you could do that same work outside the US pretty readily.
But that doesn’t mean that the US doesn’t do manufacturing today. It’s just that the manufacturing it does looks different from what it once looked like. You have fewer, more-highly-skilled employees.
[continued in child]
Hmm. I don’t know about that. There are some areas where the US is globally a pretty major player, like pharmaceuticals
That’s not manufacturing, it’s the research.
And the research is only there because our shitty healthcare system is the only one that would pay for it.
In America the poor subsidize the cost for the most cutting edge treatments only the wealthiest can afford. Pretty much the opposite of every other developed country.
Actually making the medicine isn’t complicated, if it wasn’t for parents rival companies could make generic in a very short timeline and very low price.
That field only does well because of friendly legislation that, you guessed it, comes from lobbying.
It says a lot your one example of it being wrong, was a great example of me being right.
Thanks!
