Sadly, I think it was Biden that put a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. Fuck Trump, but come on, Biden, don’t do this shit for them. I really like that new Xiaomi YU7.
Comment on Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Oh no! The type of capitalism where we have to compete!
Make it go away, Daddy Trump!
LMurch@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
III@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The issue is not so simple. Blocking BYD has a lot to do with protecting American manufacturing jobs. That’s not to say Biden’s tariff was the right answer. But it is a more complicated problem to solve than it appears from the perspective of a single car buyer.
Zetta@mander.xyz 1 month ago
Sucks to suck, our car companies suck and they absolutely should loose and be forced to fire people if they can’t compete. Give me my cheap and decent Chinese cars please. I live in a capitalist country so lets act like it instead of being fucking pussys
network_switch@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
It the country wasn’t so hostile, also pretty racist when talking about Chinese (99% of the time people say Chinese not CCP as an insult to anything about creativity, invention, culture, whatever), to Chinese consumer big ticket goods, I’d imagine BYD and other would build manufacturing plants in the US. If things weren’t so hostile, the Chinese battery companies like CATL may be willing to build batteries in the US without major concern of a hostile nation stealing their battery tech
It isn’t even a truly political idealism conflict that causes the split. Americans were fine with South Korean and Taiwanese products when those countries were military dictatorships. Vietnam has the company VinFast selling cars in the US and it’s political structure is a lot closer to China than the US. Americans have never shown appetite for reigning in how American companies treat labor in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Really not even domestically like in makeshift housing that American farmers pack migrant workers into or meatpacking plants. So it’s really just rich/powerful people not liking to see non-European descendants take the leading role in global trade of high margin goods and services that are often cutting edge technology
If China was still primarily a labor country, damn near no one would care about Chinese domestic issues like famines. In my mind the inevitability will be another wave of xenophobia that will eventually target India and the Indian diaspora as their military and domestic military and technology companies develop
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
But the Chinese government could be spying on you if you bought a Chinese manufactured car!!
P.S. for bonus points, does anyone know where most GM automobiles are currently being manufactured?
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Tbf notoriously China subsidizes BYD to net loss so its not exactly capitalism.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 month ago
All car manufacturers world wide are subsidized.
subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent-totals
Of course China can make cheaper cars, because most car manufacturers get their parts produced in China anyway.
BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Did you forget all the bailouts US car manufacturers received?
cuteness@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Sadly, ever since “too big to fail”, any large corporation is now nearly indistinguishable from the federal government. Just another example of socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To clarify, the bailouts of US car companies were Chrysler around 1980 and GM and Chrysler around 2008. To help them avoid bankruptcy and the resulting loss of jobs, they received loan guarantees (like having a cosigner) and direct loans, all of which they paid back. I think the public generally has a misconception that a corporate “bailout” means they just get money, but it’s not.
Note - I’m not trying to convince you not to hate corporations, and there’s no need for a lecture on how evil they are. Just clarifying that one topic.
Burninator05@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The program started under W and ended under Obama and I think at the end the government actually made money off the deal.
Don’t confuse this with the COVID PPP loans that were given out by Trump, forgiven by Trump, and then had a lot of the records about them destroyed by Trump.
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not the same thing?
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 month ago
What do you think Walmart does when they enter a new market, the eat losses till the local competition folds and they are the only option left
Zink@programming.dev 1 month ago
Well don’t forget that Walmart itself is literally government subsidized when the people employed there still need food stamps or other welfare programs.
madcaesar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Your point is? They are both shit, agreed. The fact that we have asshole corps here, doesn’t mean we need more of them. We need to fight Walmart, not bring in the Walmart of cars.
stoly@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The US subsidizes farms and petroleum.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 month ago
[They phased out their subsidies in 2022]news.cgtn.com/news/2023-11-18/…/index.html)
They still have a trade in program to get ICE vehicles off the road.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A lot of these subsidies (both in the US and China) are implicit. Chinese state rail networks operate at cost, allowing cheap transportation of materials and labor. American borrowing is heavily subsidized through the Fed Credit Window, which keeps rates in the low single digits while corporate bonds and consumer loans can be 2x-30x as high. Both countries cut corners on environmental enforcement and subsidize waste management. Both countries subsidize education and incentive R&D through their university systems.
The real benefit BYD enjoys - even above its Chinese peers - is vertical integration. They own everything from mining interests to technology patents to dealerships. This is a deliberate consequence of Chinese trade policy, which requires foreign investors to partner with Chinese nationals in order to own and operate capital. Consequently, Berkshire Hathaway - a large early investor in BYD - cannot dictate Chinese vehicle manufacturing policy from a private office in Omaha. Chinese locals benefit from the innovation, the domestic capital, the experienced labor force (which can migrate to local competitors), and the increased economic activity it produces.
China is insourcing it’s wealth aggregation, which has a cyclical compound benefit over time.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 month ago
this also means that chinese companies are notorious for stealing IP. it’s easy to be cheap when you don’t do the R&D - you just fast track to producing the product
theonetruedroid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
It’s state sponsored capitalism and China has pumped a ton of money into BYD to get them to where they are.
I can see them giving larger tax breaks to companies in the US, but current administration is all in on tariffs as the way to increase our domestic production. It doesn’t make ours any better or cheaper, just everything else more expensive.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 month ago
it also makes your domestic products more expensive because cars etc still have to source components and industrial machines from internationally so it’s tariffs all the way down
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
And if they didn’t source internationally, they’d have to pay local labor prices, so it’s more expensive regardless of the direction they choose to go.
Ileftreddit@lemmy.world 1 month ago
State sponsored capitalism is what everyone does. The only reason Tesla even exists is because of US government support
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 month ago
So do a lot of other governments, to be fair. It’s one of those industries that employs a lot of people, and it’s always bad press to close it when a bit of money could have kept it. Certainly cheaper than putting thousands of people on benefits.
Plus there’s subsidies for domestic sales as well. The UK at least had a grant for plug in cars that they ended a few years ago, presumably just to get the infrastructure up and running.
But then the new vehicle price is neither here nor there in the long term, since most people drive used vehicles anyway. What matters is how many vehicles trickle down to the masses, and whether wear on the battery is a concern. Some of the early smaller models didn’t have great batteries to start with, but as a daily driver to the shops and work it’d probably be fine. For some reason the conversation always drifts over to “but what about that one time you drove across the state” or “remember that time you transported a fridge”, as if that’s something people can’t work around for the once a year they do it.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
fair game IMHO. if you look at china as one big agent, then they can indeed act like that.