So basically American cars are 2x overpriced rn
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And lots and lots of government subsidies.
Yea, it’s the subsidies. The government of China funds questionably profitable companies such that they can sell their products at what would be a loss by any other company, undermining the values of competition in Europe/States.
What does China get out of it? Chinese products distributed globally running Chinese software and sensors which are beholden to the whims of the Chinese Government. They also get to weaken the economies of the target countries.
The United States does similar things with intelligence, but citizens of that country can at least condemn, research, and publish findings against it’s own government. What can a Chinese citizen do? Very little except obey.
The United States is also massively flawed when it comes to competition but at least there are theoretical methods for the citizens of that country to change things. If they can destroy the corporate plutocracy currently strangling democracy.
Communist country figures out how to exploit capitalism better than capitalist country, how poetic.
China isn’t a communist country, it’s a totalitarian country.
Characterized by a government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control. Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
Communism is defined as:
political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.
It calls itself communist just like a big chunk of the world calls itself capitalist but doesn’t let the market regulate itself
North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Do you also refer to North Korea as a Democratic country?
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Being an open country has upsides and downsides certainly. The same could be said for Russia/China’s information war exploiting freedom of speech on those not educated in critical thought.
As if the US doesn’t also subsidize and funnel money into specific companies/industries for questionable reasons.
Did you read their whole comment? They addressed that and pointed it out several times themselves.
All they said is that you are allowed to call it out. Whoopdeedoo. Still happens.
Every car manufacturer receives massive subsidies no matter where they are located.
This is oil money, nothing more, nothing less.
You might want to look at some of the loosening child labor laws here in the US. Hyundai’s plants have been caught several times using child labor.
I’m not defending China’s practices by any means because many are truly horrific but the US is pretty far from perfect in many states.
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Yeah, at least the US uses only their own prisoners as slave labor.
What-aboutism is amazing, isn’t it? There’s a response for everything.
A direct comparison in a direct comparison conversation is not a whataboutism.
Source ?
Child labour? Care to back up that claim?
Do provide a source that shows Chinese cars are made with child labour.
What child labor? There are no kids in China, they have some of the lowest fertility in the world and the most intense school hours for the rest
You’re like 40 years out of date
Yes, and it’s poor Americans who need a vehicle to buy groceries and get to work everyday who are getting shafted while the automakers rake in the profits. Not to mention the environmental costs of driving on fossil fuels.
Maybe we should get our politicians to invest in, say, mass transit. Seems pretty obvious
Why would they do that when they get bribes from automakers.
Allowing China to sell these vehicles here at well below cost is only going to shaft poor Americans even further. They’re trying to do what Walmart does to small-town economies.
You give a great example because the US has no problem with shafting poor Americans if it’s American companies (i.e. big donors to American politicians) doing the shafting. At least we’d get affordable vehicles from these Chinese companies. Meanwhile the complacent American auto companies have engorged themselves on profits from overpriced vehicles, announcing record-breaking profits, and refusing to reduce prices even when supply chain issues have been worked out. This is after American auto companies sat around with their thumbs up their asses, dragging their heels on developing electric vehicles, and even working against the development of them. Now they’re claiming that demand for EVs isn’t actually all that great, but for some reason they’re afraid of Chinese EVs (probably because the Chinese are giving customers what they actually want – affordable practical EVs).
These leeches needed to be bailed out and they will forever need to be bailed out because instead of running a business that gives people what they want, they just do whatever can extract the most money out of people while squandering the profits on stock buybacks and fat bonuses for their executives. They’re considered too big to fail, but really they’re too big to exist.
You can make up dastardly schemes to explain the prices all you want but this isn’t borne out in reality. The bigger EV manufacturers here, outside of Tesla, aren’t even American companies, they’re South Korean and European and they’re all selling their vehicles for similar prices to American companies. Tesla seems to be doing pretty well with sales, which means plenty of people are willing to pay these prices.
Additionally, apart from Tesla, there are only two American auto companies, GM and Ford, so I don’t know why you think they’re controlling the entire auto industry in the US.
If I’m just making things up, then why are car prices so damn high and car companies are posting record profits? Tesla is only doing fine because it was the first big EV manufacturer to market and it’s riding on that momentum. People willing to go with the least worst option available doesn’t mean the option isn’t bad. If it was a good option, then the ones offering those options wouldn’t be afraid of the competition. Tesla cancelled development of a $25k model shortly before these tariffs would be announced. This is not a mere coincidence. They know that there is high demand for cheap EVs, but auto companies here much prefer fatter profit margins and the government is all too happy to protect those fatter profit margins.
Chinese companies focused on development of better and cheaper batteries and the result is that they’re able to offer much cheaper EVs. Why should that be punished while the other car companies get rewarded for dragging their heels on EVs due to their comfort in selling petrol cars?
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Chinese EV companies are rather profitable, with BYD making billions of yuan profit last year. On the other hand, Rivian is losing, what was it, just about $40,000 per car?
And that profit is coming straight from the government as there is no way they’re making billions in profit by selling brand new cars for $10k in 2024. There is zero margin there.
They have cars from $10k to $200+k. BYD includes a bunch of brands, including the Yangwang brand which builds the $150k U8 and the $230k U9. Not to mention their busses which are used around the world.
Cool but I don’t see how that’s relevant to the discussion of them trying to sell $10k EVs in the US.
Nobody here is arguing to buy a $230,000 Chinese EV.
They wouldn’t only sell $10k vehicles, and they wouldn’t only target the bottom of the market. If their actions in other countries are to be repeated, they wouldn’t sell $10k vehicles in the US, because the market isn’t nearly as competitive. It’s very likely, given the prices they’re charging elsewhere, that the lowest prices we’d see for a BYD would be $20k.
BYD currently makes ~$1,500 per vehicle, compared to Ford at $3,000, and Tesla at $5,300/vehicle. They’re lower margin, certainly, but they’re not just dumping cars at bargain bin prices.
US manufacturers received 4x the subsidy that Chinese manufacturers did last year. If anyone is trying to artificially manipulate the market, it’s the place that’s blockading their competitors vehicles while pumping dozens of billions of dollars into them every year.
You would be the person complaining about Japanese cars in the 80s, to be honest, and if we listened to them, we’d all still be getting 12mpg driving V6 and V8 2 ton monstrosities that break down every 5000 miles. Many of us still do, the F-150 is the most popular car in the US after all, but the rest of us at least have the option to get high mileage, high reliability vehicles.
I’m not working in the conditions the Chinese have decided is ok. They can be poor and live in barracks at factories, I like free time and money.
So youre saying American cars dont import any parts? They dont preassemble overseas? Everything is 100% made by american Union labor?
Big 3 copium as usual.
Eventually they’ll do what Japense OEMs did and open factories in the USA.
I mean, that’s precisely the ideal case and goal of many tariffs.
Only I think they’re already opening factories in Mexico. Which again isn’t a terrible situation either.
Mexico
How about American companies just learn to compete? The same bullshit is why we can’t get a fucking normal sized truck in this country.
How about American workers learn to work for the same wages and working conditions.
If you want companies to pay a living wage with strong unions and safe working conditions, then competition with other places that don’t bother with those things becomes near impossible.
See: The factories that iPhone is built in
No. We can still pay workers much better and make much more lower priced affordable models.
Stop giving the CEOs, upper management, investors, etc., millions and millions of dollars. I don’t care what anyone says.
We can have the sub 10k priced EV, or even less, like China has. They can still make money on luxury/performance “status” models.
This is all about keeping extreme wealth for the extreme wealthy. Wall Street, etc. Full stop.
We can have very well payed workers and much cheaper yet still quality vehicles.
Agreed. This is something that is very much overlooked when people talk about how manufacturing in China works. The country is split into special economic zones that have different rules and laws that govern the regions. This allows them to uniquely exploit their labor markets to keep their costs as low as possible.
iPhones are built by FoxConn in their Shenzhen factories. See FoxConn Suicides for more.
Are these tariffs based off how they treat their workers? Do countries with good working conditions not have tariffs?
EV manufacture is mostly automated… This argument makes no sense. 8 people to build an ICE. you only need one for an EV.
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China’s neighbor’s brains: CHINA BAD
They aren’t sweeping Chinese cars under the road here as much as they are sweeping an actually affordable, practical EV option that could easily win the mass market and shift the status quo away from ICE engine vehicles at scale.
Bigger problem is, that while blocking the Chinese options, they won’t give us a similar option at that same affordable cost.
Ah, the free* market at work
International companies are not entitled to a country’s free market
Sure … The free market is only free as long as i always win
How can you call it a “free market” if it’s actually a “free market*”?
*terms and conditions apply
Read as: The only way they can compete with Chinese vehicles is 100% tariff
Well yeah. The companies are state subsidized and a good bit of the tech is stolen from electric car companies in other countries that actually have to pay for R&D.
So Musk doesn’t get any tax incentives and write offs?
Not at the same level, no. And we frankly shouldn’t be doing that either.
Plus the US government trying to stage a coup in Bolivia to secure cheap lithium supplies: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros
that is the same myth that big pharma explains why Americans pay so much more for medicine.
https://newrepublic.com/article/153864/innovation-drug-price-myth
US automakers have expressed that they are fine economically making expensive cars for rich people. of course that is after 80 years of lobbying to under cut public transit and trains.
True, but far less than American manufacturers.
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i wouldnt hate this so much if america produced quality automobiles. but we dont. so watch people pay double for something that will last twice as long.
even at equal pricing, they just push out better quality than we can seem to muster
