The European Union voted on Friday to impose tariffs as high as 45% on electric vehicles from China, threatening a broader trade conflict with Beijing which has already vowed to protect its companies.
This is the market place, brah. If the US or EU want to keep up, they can subsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree. We are just too stuck on subsidizing O&G to realize that harvesting value from a dying industry is going to leave us out in the cold as the new technology matures.
Free market capitalism and what we operate under haven’t been the same thing for as long as I’ve been alive. What some may call “Communist China” is beating us at the game. Get on the bus or get run the fuck over.
I feel like we would need to utterly destroy the working class to the point that cheap Chinese EVs would become expensive if we were to compete at the same level. I could be wrong, but how many of the chinese workers are driving brand new evs?
Western manufacturing tends to be much more automation heavy. Chinese manufactures don’t bother with buying a $100k machine that can make a car part when they can just hire 10 guys at $10k/yr to make that same part with a $50 drill press and some hand files.
It’s not that it all strictly balances out, but if we actually gave a shit we could potentially be cost competitive for a lot of price brackets, especially given the costs to move whole ass cars across the Pacific.
Bear in mind these sub $10k Chinese EVs are not something US consumers would really be interested in buying, they are basically tiny car shaped golf carts with extremely minimalist feature sets. Think ‘no audio system at’ all type interiors.
If the US or EU want to keep up, they can subsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree
You can’t allow dumping-inducing subsidies without also allowing defensive tariffs, otherwise the richer and more authoritarian countries, which have greater capacity for subsidies and greater ability to concentrate them in specific sectors, will easily kill foreign competition and establish monopolies.
Last I checked US prints money like there’s no tomorrow for shit like wars, but as soon as it comes to subsidizing something actually useful all of a sudden the concern trolling starts.
Yeah I find it a ridiculous parallel I recently saw an article that put a number on Chinese EV subsidies and it seemed extremely low compared to the barrels of money we’ve been giving the oil companies.
This is the market place, brah. If the US or EU want to keep up, they can subsidize EV manufacturing to the same degree. We are just too stuck on subsidizing O&G to realize that harvesting value from a dying industry is going to leave us out in the cold as the new technology matures.
Free market capitalism and what we operate under haven’t been the same thing for as long as I’ve been alive. What some may call “Communist China” is beating us at the game. Get on the bus or get run the fuck over.
…
then talk about subsidies or non capitalist country controlling the currency, markets, VCs, etc.
What does that even mean?
I did… that was the part about extracting value from a dying industry.
I feel like we would need to utterly destroy the working class to the point that cheap Chinese EVs would become expensive if we were to compete at the same level. I could be wrong, but how many of the chinese workers are driving brand new evs?
Western manufacturing tends to be much more automation heavy. Chinese manufactures don’t bother with buying a $100k machine that can make a car part when they can just hire 10 guys at $10k/yr to make that same part with a $50 drill press and some hand files.
It’s not that it all strictly balances out, but if we actually gave a shit we could potentially be cost competitive for a lot of price brackets, especially given the costs to move whole ass cars across the Pacific.
Bear in mind these sub $10k Chinese EVs are not something US consumers would really be interested in buying, they are basically tiny car shaped golf carts with extremely minimalist feature sets. Think ‘no audio system at’ all type interiors.
bruh https://www.statista.com/chart/31337/new-installations-of-industrial-robots-by-country/
You can’t allow dumping-inducing subsidies without also allowing defensive tariffs, otherwise the richer and more authoritarian countries, which have greater capacity for subsidies and greater ability to concentrate them in specific sectors, will easily kill foreign competition and establish monopolies.
Meaning that we would either have to increase tax rates or borrow more money? Wow, what a great solution.
Last I checked US prints money like there’s no tomorrow for shit like wars, but as soon as it comes to subsidizing something actually useful all of a sudden the concern trolling starts.
Or not subsidize oil and gas to the tune of ~$20 billion/yr and corn at $2.2 billion/yr and redirect that towards EVs.
Yeah I find it a ridiculous parallel I recently saw an article that put a number on Chinese EV subsidies and it seemed extremely low compared to the barrels of money we’ve been giving the oil companies.