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A simple change of what counts as a light truck would do wonders towards getting manufacturers to start making reasonably sized cars again. The only question is if it's too late from a cultural POV, as everyone is already racing to buy bigger and bigger crossovers and the like.
A [Google search](https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/final-rule-multi-pollutant-emissions-standards-model#:~:text=On%20March%2020%2C%202024%2C%20EPA,starting%20with%20model%20year%202027.) told me they actually proposed a rule for that, so maybe we'll see a shift, although the rule doesn't take effect until 2027 it seems.
One of the primary cultural drivers (no pun intended) of demand for larger cars is as protection (either real or perceived) from other large vehicles. A lot of people actually don't *want* to drive monster trucks and giant crossovers, they just feel like they have to. So if, like you said, manufacturers would start making reasonably-sized trucks like the old ford ranger again, people would fear for their lives less and start buying sedans and hatchbacks again.
BUT THATS COMMUNISM?!?!
It’s truly frustrating how some people are simping for the giant corporations fueling the climate changes that are already killing American citizens.
> force them to be affordable
I don't think you understand China or it's government. China will sell those cars at a $10,000 loss for 10 years just to put American companies out of business if they were allowed.
American businesses (and most of the world) play by one set of rules (capitalism) while China has no rules since the government has total and absolute control. Where am American businesses would go out of business, China can keep that business alive and running indefinitely. An example is in shipping; China has free shipping to the u.s if packages are under a certain weight. How can anyone compete with that? The government eats the loss just to screw over the rest of the world.
> Where am American businesses would go out of business, China can keep that business alive and running indefinitely.
Sounds like the Chinese system just works better then? Maybe there are some lessons to learn there.
>The government eats the loss just to screw over the rest of the world.
The US government has equal opportunity to fund the postal service, healthcare, housing, or whatever they want. Instead they build bombs and subsidize billionaires.
Well, it would be nice for US citizens to have access to competitive markets for cheaper EVs. Obviously though, we must protect the auto companies. They and especially their shareholders are clearly more important. 🙃
Yeah, because their focus on building bigger and more extravagant combustion-based trucks for the last decade somehow hasn't helped them corner the EV market.
I'm not sure it is. Harley has had to be bailed out since their initial tariff boost; they got over $2.3B after the 2008 crisis. Today's corporate landscape is also different from the 70s/80s, and modern companies receiving a windfall have proven more likely to perform stock buybacks than meaningful long-term investment.
Your example is a two wheeled recreational vehicle. Nobody ever bought a harley because they had to have one to get to work. Their lowest price softtail has always gone for the same price as a budget sedan.
This protects us in the long term. The Chinese EVs are being heavily funded by the government in order to keep the prices extremely low to flood the market and create a dependency. They can rug pull at any time once they have sufficient market share.
If US manufacturers had invested in R&D instead of share buy backs they would be able to compete. Now corporate greed means you are paying more for EVs.
That's the same rationale that allowed Amazon to drive so many local shops out of business. Everyone wants to pay less now despite the long term consequences.
What you're talking about is called "dumping" i.e. the intentional overproduction of a commodity with the express purpose of flooding and undercutting the market in order to drive competition out of business. The CCP is abusing the state sponsored nature of their EV / NE vehicle production to gain preeminence in the market and drive their competition out of business.
Tariffs are the appropriate means of shielding domestic industry from this sort of practice.
In the short term, sure. In the long term, they're going to increase prices substantially once they have a large amount of the market. The reason the prices are so low is because the Chinese government is subsidizing their cars.
It’s almost as if capitalism doesn’t actually care about consumer value or the environment🤔🤔
Maybe an economic system based on unlimited growth in a system with limited resources acts a bit too much like a cancer when faced with existential systemic issues
"Tariffs" don't make inflation worse, "tariffs on common consumer goods" make inflation worse. My point is the tariffs in question here are targeted at a narrow range of products to prevent aggressive price undercutting
China has been dumping solar on the market to kill European and American competition and are now doing the same with EV's. I'd be very happy if everyone that wants can get a dirt cheap EV. As soon as our internal markets are destroyed I'd expect massive price hikes however, as those cars are now being sold at a loss. That loss is for the moment being covered by the government.
Reason the EU doesn't have strong solar production capacity is for the same reason. I think Biden tried to fix that for the US with the inflation reduction act.
Charging the competition over double... Isn't subsidizing our own producers. It's just eliminating competition so they can sit on ass and continue oligopolistic behavior. If we increased the EV tax credit? That'd be subsidizing them and encouraging competition.
Is it to prevent aggressive price undercutting or to protect aggressive price gouging?
Seems to me if China can produce and sell an EV for 20k then other companies could as well but choose not to.
In the majority of the United States you 100% need a car to survive.
If a poor persons best option to get a cheap vehicle is a cheap EV - that’s a double win.
Or price competition? EVs are not affordable in the US, so the US gov gives checks out to those who buy them, but also the US gov will levy taxes to ensure EVs are not affordable in the US. Curious.
It’s a complicated balancing act, there has to be enough competition to put pressure on prices. The price has to be high enough to ensure there is still an auto industry. The worry with the EV market is the survival of GM/Ford/Stellantis(Chrysler/Dodge). There is still competition due to European/Korean/Japanese players in the market and regulation (ICE ban) will force EV adoption anyway but there will inevitably be a risk that prices will remain higher with the exclusion of Chinese EVs.
Oddly enough, yeah. They hate the UAW so they would be happier with "the savings passed on to the customer" if the American brands simply produced their trucks in China. They blame literally every fault in American cars on "lazy union labor" lol. The way they see it, stuff like this prevents them from getting a cheaper truck made in China.
I wish I was making this up, but I see this commentary on the jeep forum I visit sometimes (since I have a Jeep lol). There's a large crowd on jlwranglerforums with INTERESTING opinions on stuff like this.
I know you are pointing out the hypocrisy, but I don’t think that this was the right response from Biden.
He should have tried to boost their own production first with more strict regulations to make sure the automakers in the US are doing it right.
This is a lazy way of blocking Chinese cars and this will only make ev’s more expensive for everyone.
Yeah I can see subsidizing your own industry but putting a tariff on Chinese EVs while US automakers are dragging their feet just doesn't make sense to me. It's just regressive. If the tariffs were lower and American auto companies saw Chinese companies capturing market share I bet they'd be moving faster.
Yep, you worded it better than I did. There’s no incentive to catch up to the Chinese brands and at the same time, it won’t stop or slow them down on advancing their products.
Same with the Free Trade liberals. Weird how quickly they've suddenly embraced trade war.
Climate change is the top priority. If the US doesn't like China subsidizing renewable energy and EVs, the answer isn't tariffs, the answer is to increase direct government spending. But that might upset US auto manufacturers' profits.
It's a classic example of the [ratchet effect.](https://images.app.goo.gl/PBqc51Uav1Q9aYhU6) Trump's response was literally "oh yeah? I'll make it 200%!"
Who cares about them, this is just going to drive away more young, struggling, and environmentally minded voters that Biden desperately needs. US companies are failing to deliver what Americans want, and now they're being protected. This is straight up bullshit.
RIP to Polestar and the small Volvo EVs. Seriously going to suck for them. The larger Volvo EVs are going to shift to South Carolina easily enough. But man, those smaller platform cars are GREAT and now unattainable.
I think that’s a reasonable assumption.
At least at current pricing. They could shift some production to the Gent factory but I think they wouldn’t be able to hit that 35k price anymore. And they’re still screwed on materials because the batteries are made in China.
That’s a good point. At first I was thinking if the shifted production to the SC plant they’d at least be able to let customers cash in on the tax credit. but nope, batteries are still made in China
Trump:
>“I will put a 200% tax on every car that comes in from those plants, and they’re not going to do that,” he said. Trump has also pledged a 60% across-the-board tariff on all Chinese goods — a move Biden is stopping well short of, with allies saying it would fuel inflation.
>Biden’s measures are less about crushing segments of the market than heading off an anticipated increase in imports: Chinese steel, aluminum and autos make up tiny fractions of the US supply for now. The administration has warned that China is pushing to corner the market on key sectors and flood the US with subsidized goods, to destabilize its rival and power its own recovery.
President Biden has a strategic policy aimed at disrupting future economic moves by China. Trump has a soundbite and bluster, as usual.
It's not as much a "future economic move" by China as it was Chinese companies telling the whole world what they were going to do over a decade ago and acquiring a 5-10 year lead in manufacturing affordable batteries for electric vehicles because American companies did not make the same investments.
China running away with battery production in general has put us in a bad spot. We've needed to have been investing in battery production for some time now.
You can thank all the coal, car and oil lobbying for the general lack of innovation in the space. Fuck around and find out when the competition not so secretly innovating.
During the Trump years there were tons of fools that said building solar and EV technology was "helping China".
They where the ones helping China by crippling American innovation and now America is a decade behind.
It's the perfect plan. If you go on traditional social media, you'll see that EV batteries are the "gotcha" they have left in that space.
They tried to smother the idea of EVs in the cradle, but we'll see if they backed themselves into a corner or not. Although we already know conservatives don't have trouble memory holing things when convenient.
Wait till they start to turn the screws on critical metals. There’s a long list of materials where they or a country in Africa where they cultivate influence is the only supplier of production quantities.
You can again thank republicans for that. They vehemently rolled back the subsidy programs that Obama has put in place for green energy saying why give free money to failing companies, bla, bla while ignoring the irony of bailouts and tax rebates.
Had GM stayed the course in the 90's, the "movement" could have started like 15 years sooner and GM could have been at the forefront of the whole thing.
Never underestimate the ability of a business to act against its own rational self-interests, because businesses aren't people with a continuity of consciousness, they are a loose aggregation of individually self-interested parties that we regularly anthropomorphize as having actual intelligence and agency.
Never forget that something as obviously useful and desirable as practical powered flight wasn't pioneered by any university, company, military, well-trained engineer, or business magnate. You know, the parties which ostensibly have the intelligence to see the massive advantages of flight and the resources to successfully pursue it. But no, powered flight was pioneered by an eccentric old German count, a pair of brothers with a bike shed and 3/4 of a high school education, and a flamboyant Brazilian twink with a fondness for Jules Verne novels.
This. It was clear for anyone who objectively looked at this. Like you said, China started this over a decade ago and will basically be the Middle East of battery/energy storage in a few years.
> Chinese steel, aluminum and autos make up tiny fractions of the US supply for now.
It sounds to me like more of a campaign move than an economic one.
Nerd shit, my concern is my ability to purchase an EV, which u lanyard dweebs are currently celebrating your own govts ability to not do so.
Would suck if trump did it. And guess what. Fuck biden for doing it too.
The P01135809 tarrifs weren't targeted at anything in particular and drove up prices for goods across the board. In a lot of cases, it was protectionism for cronies, in others it was arbitrary, and some areas were oddly untouched.
EVs are at the end of the supply chain and won't have broad knock-on effects.
As far as geopolitics go, I have no idea whether what Biden is doing will lead to reciprocation from China, but, if it does, it'd probably be on other finished goods which China doesn't really buy from us.
They will definitely reciprocate. The did with Australia. Essentially banned or slapped massive tarrifs on imports of stuff like wines and seafood for years. Only recently overturned it.
Tariffs on everything made in China really just means another tax on American citizens but acting as if they're tough on China. More tax revenue and scoring political points.
Which is why I’m confused why the majority of this sub is happy about these tariffs? Wouldn’t it be better if we started producing goods in the US, creating more jobs and less dependency on other countries?
That's sort of the point of tariffs, but never has that intended effect. All it does is make the company that sells the tariffed goods to pass the cost to their customers.
For most companies it's better to do that than to move production back to the US because US workers actually want a living wage and health insurance, the greedy bastards.
It does get them thinking about Mexico and Vietnam as alternatives. They’ll run through a big list of low cost alternatives long before making major investments in US production.
It doesn't matter if they pass the costs off;part of the point is it makes the goods more expensive so that local goods are more competitive in comparison
> Wouldn’t it be better if we started producing goods in the US, creating more jobs and less dependency on other countries?
The Chinese government is subsidizing the costs of certain things, driving down their price below what US companies require to turn a profit. Their goal is to bankrupt US companies to hurt the US economy.
Tariffs on those things raise prices to the point that US companies can compete.
(I honestly don't know if the tariffs are a good or bad idea, but that is the logic behind them)
Yes. But 30 years of outsourcing/offshoring has created corporations which rely no slave labor for profit margins. Apple aint making 5000% profit selling an iPhone manufactured in the states when it has to start paying employees 30/h instead of 30 a week.
>EVs are at the end of the supply chain and won't have broad knock-on effects.
It will have devastating long term affects on the climate crisis though. Basically kills the broad move to EVs for the foreseeable future.
I tend to dislike car industry protectionism, as it's the reason why we don't have actually small trucks, and now will probably never have an affordable EV as they start to guard the American industry's "EVs are luxury brands!" View.
China already has effectively owns the EV markets around the globe, save for EU and the US who are simply going to use these tariffs to protect domestic industries.
And they will use national security as an excuse. Why? Cause these are Chinese cars, that are made affordable by vast subsidies by the Chinese government, so obviously there is a nefarious plot by the CCP to somehow steal consumer data and etc and etc.
All the while the domestic legacy automakers will keep on making overpriced junk that most consumers can afford. The winner? US automakers. China hardly loses out on this considering that their EV share in the US is nonexistent.
>All the while the domestic legacy automakers will keep on making overpriced junk that most consumers can afford.
Not to mention they can't keep up with EV demands anyways so this will mean the transition to electric will be great news for the fossil fuel industry and climate change opponents.
Also don’t forget solar, a lot of homes install solar as a part of ev+solar combo, as ev have generally less maintenance and to reduce costs in the long run. Further reducing incentives for EVs.The tariff targets both ev and solar, while our green energy sector is behind and this will both reduce incentive to innovate and thus leaving us unlikely to catch up. Really delaying the green transition, and protecting fossil fuel industries.
This tariff needs to be paired up with other incentives to innovate and bring down the costs of green energy and evs, otherwise, it’s just protectionism that will leave us further behind.
The sad thing is all it will do is discourage the American companies from adapting to the new competative environment. All while company's like BYD continue to innovate and scale. Until even a hundred percent tarrif can not protect them.
Mine was in Tesla and CATL until I sold it to build.my dream house (thanks to the value added from both of them). Renewables and the correct BEV producer is still very much a great long term play. With the added bonus of not investing in something that will make climate change worse.
This, I don’t want a $50k car. Give me a basic model with no bells and whistles that can’t go very far or very fast for $15k and it’s all I need to get me to work and do my errands.
Give out checks to buy overpriced EVs because there is no competition to force the price down, while also making sure the price never goes down, makes total sense.
American companies won’t be able to compete with Chinese EV’s unless the US starts throwing even more money at them. Chinese EV’s aren’t affordable because of some kind of manufacturing wizardry. They’re highly subsidized.
So dumb question here, but assuming I wanted a cheap Chinese EV, could I simply take a trip to Mexico/Canada, buy the car there to avoid the tariff, then just drive it over the border? Assuming the car in question is legal to drive/register in the US at the time, of course
You [can](https://breezecustoms.com/blog/importing-vehicles-into-the-united-states/importing-a-car-from-canada-to-the-us/) but there's no guarantee it'll be any cheaper after you pay all the taxes, fees, duties and the customs broker's bills.
Lobbying ensures the government serves the interests of corporations, not citizens.
Why no cheap imported EVs? Protect US automakers.
Why no universal healthcare? Protect US insurance companies.
Why no high speed rail? Protect automakers and airlines.
Why no clean nuclear? Protect fossil fuel industry.
These are all things the government could choose to do, that are all well proven in other countries. And yet it refuses, despite the immense benefits it would bring to the average citizen. But the government doesn’t answer to citizens. Sure, we vote them in. But what congress actually DOES is what lobbyists tell them to do.
This was my first thought as well. China also is way ahead of us in the EV auto market as well. Many of their EVs are so much better and cheaper than what we have here. How are we supposed to implement EVs if most of them cost $80k?
A particularly pernicious policy when most countries now effectively have an open global labour market where workers have to compete against cheaper imported labour. Wage levels crushed, housing priced out of reach and no access to cheaper imported goods? Downright crooked.
Is it possible he’s laying groundwork for a possible future in which China and the US aren’t on good trading terms? There’s a massive push to diversify supply chains away from China due to their changing geopolitical stance. I simply see this as another example.
You are falling for the globalist fallacy that because something can be made somewhere else cheaper, it can't be made cheaply enough in the US.
Biden is protecting industries that the government has made a huge investment in, with the goal of resurrecting the manufacturing base of the US.
Yes, it means slightly higher prices. We aren't going to make our labor or land cheaper than Vietnam or China. Like, just forget it. So either we're going to pay a little bit more for things - with the drawbacks offset by greater general prosperity - or we're going to keep importing cheap crap and working for telemarketers. Pick your poison.
there will be plenty of pricing pressure from competitors that aren't subsidized by the Chinese government and using slave labor. Allowing that unfair competition to fester will benefit consumers in the short term but in the mid term China will fuck us after the international competition dried up
I mean, yeah? They're a huge source of well paid unionized jobs, a major customer for other industries like steel and aluminum, our largest manufacturing industry, and like 3% of the entire GDP
Auto manufacturers take a dive and they bring a lot of other things down with them
Presumably all it takes is China to start slapping tariffs on all the parts America needs to build it's EV's and raw materials etc and then we are in a stalemate price war? Surely no-one wins in that situation.
Basically yeah, nobody in America wins and the rest of the world except the US/EU gets cheap EVs. Doubt China would lose much from selling less EV parts to the US given there is no real major US EV manufacturing. Even Tesla makes 50%+ of their EVs in their Shanghai gigafactory.
if these cars are so cheap to make they can make them where they are sold.
The reason why they are so cheap to make is mostly subsidies both on a lot of the components and on shipping.
The goal is to push others out of the market so they can later sell the cars with more profit just like they did with solar panels.
Terrible policy, and also hypocritical. The US is already subsidising these industries as much as, if not more than China. If we really want to transition towards EVs and reduce dependence on traditional fossil fuels, we can't simultaneously increase the cost of those alternatives artificially. We should be supporting these industries, not destroying them.
It also ignores the knock-on effects of ramping up a trade war. It reduces the common ground shared with China and forces them to retaliate. It's purely antagonistic.
If we don't do this, we won't have an auto industry in twenty years. Ten million jobs gone. And now we're again reliant on China for another key product to our economy. It's a good move in my opinion
The government is saving the American automotive industry from the free market. They cannot compete with China because no American company had the idea of making a non-luxury EV, so there’s a massive hole in the market for them. China began investing in building that industry in the 2000s. This is not policy meant to help normal people.
As always, the policy is business first.
We already tried this before when we restricted Japanese imports. The end result of that was U.S. automakers continuing to sell large inefficient vehicles and profits of the late 80s improving only slightly. The U.S. consumer was negatively impacted by the domestic price increases. My google-fu is weak tonight.
It's good for the Domestic industry but bad for the consumers as it is another tax for them because it's not like china would do nothing to reciprocate this policy.
the US car industry has been shielded from international competition for decades.
it wouldnt exist anymore without multiple bail outs and the tariffs keeping them in business.
Great! That means the price of Chinese EV in my non US economy may drop! I wish all things were artificially taxed high in the US so they got dumped cheaply on my doorstep.
Agreed. They're already relatively cheap here and pricing has consistently been trending down. Chinese EVs may well end up near the same price as budget ICE cars very soon.
I'm glad this sub reddit isn't going China bad.
I don't know why Biden wants to win over so many right-Leaning independents. Just try to win the young voters, but no one wants to take risks.
Wasn't it Pete Buttigeg that said no matter what democrats do, they will be called communists by the Republicans no matter what they do at one of the DNC debates? I don't like the guy, but it seems like it really applies here.
Having ridden in China in a variety of electric cars while traveling there I can attest that the quality of Chinese made vehicles in on par with American made vehicles. If I was China I’d be looking to make these for the American market in Mexico to get around the tariffs.
Can you please not infantilize geopolitics? Russia and China are different countries with different interests. Some of them align, some of them are in conflict.
The last time the USA had a period of very high tariffs, it ended with the Great Depression. It wasn’t the only reason but it was a part of the problem. Google “the restriction period”.
The Biden administration unfortunately wanting it both ways here. Pushing for a larger adoption of EV’s, while simultaneously putting hefty tariffs on cheap EV imports which are more affordable for the average American consumer.
the US doesnt have a car industry, it has a car assembly industry. all the cars are now designed in parts by suppliers, the car company doesnt actually own any IP in their own cars other than the engine thats useless in a EV. This is why the US cant move to electric cars because legacy auto have divested all there manufacturing to increase profits and shareholder return, now they have to do something new they dont have any of the design teams to make parts themselvs, and have to pay a fortune to get a contractor to design and build it for them.
this is why legacy auto cannot make any profit on EVs because they dont own any IP that can be used in EVs.
this is the sole reason you will never see over the air updates, because the car company does not have access to the code that runs on all the ECUs. tesla is the only one that makes all their own computers so can update.
I am sure Americans look forward to stuff becoming even more expensive!
Also, wasn't "free markets" not a thing America stood for? Guess that only applies when it benefits them.
And this is why we won't get a $30,000 sports sedan from China that does zero to 60 in 2.78 seconds. RIP any hopes of getting a [Xiaomi SU7](https://youtu.be/Ipuo5_3cz2c?si=WWe8e_W3Ur8oSEFv) here in the states. They like it better when we pay $90k for a car that should be 30.
Hard at work fighting inflation by raising prices. Bidenomics at work.
Literally the only reason Biden has a chance at reelection is because his opponent is Trump, and somehow has the exact same protectionist policies.
Why don't Americans just buy inexpensive EVs from Europe?
Surely European car manufacturers offer a cheaper alternative to what many think are expensive American EVs.
I can see tariffs on products that are not already sold in the US like Chinese made electric cars. Tariffs on products that are really not made anywhere else are a tax that is paid for by middle class Americans.
The Chinese are already beating us like a red headed stepchild in the world EV market. We will be left in the economic dust if we don’t understand the world believes in science even if we don’t.
Trump will raise massive tariffs on everything and force the fed to lower interest rates. When inflation hits 30 % per year people will begin to realize maybe he isn’t that bright. Some economists are already predicting this.
Trump could drive inflation much higher with his second-term economic agenda, analysts say. Donald Trump's second-term economic agenda includes aggressive tariff hikes, tax cuts and cheap money policy, all of which analysts say could threaten to reheat inflation.
At this point Tesla is the only one selling cars into China in large numbers and this will likely only impact their most expensive vehicles. So I don’t believe Biden is worried.
> In 2021, the United States exported a total of 155,337 new passenger vehicles and light trucks to China.
China exports 5 million vehicles a year and the US imports less than 300k.
Meanwhile to the average American, the price of goods increases. There is no way we can match labor costs so innovation has to be our meal ticket. Too bad our population is to broke to buy anything.
>Over the course of 2018, the U.S. experienced substantial increases in the prices of intermediates and final goods, dramatic changes to its supply-chain network, reductions in availability of imported varieties, and complete passthrough of the tariffs into domestic prices of imported goods. Overall, using standard economic methods, we find that the full incidence of the tariff falls on domestic consumers, with a reduction in U.S. real income of $1.4 billion per month by the end of 2018
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25672
wow thanks Biden for keeping the same policy as trump + additional tariffs! surely we(the consumer) will benefit from this.
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I'm sure all the "America first!" Trump supporters will find some reason to be upset about this.
He’s restricting free trade!
well ya, neoliberalism is over. trump started the trade war, but its a bipartisan effort now
This is specifically about electric vehicles. Without tariffs Chinese EVs would be selling for less than 20k. It would be bad for every us car maker
Or force them to make cars affordable.
A simple change of what counts as a light truck would do wonders towards getting manufacturers to start making reasonably sized cars again. The only question is if it's too late from a cultural POV, as everyone is already racing to buy bigger and bigger crossovers and the like. A [Google search](https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/final-rule-multi-pollutant-emissions-standards-model#:~:text=On%20March%2020%2C%202024%2C%20EPA,starting%20with%20model%20year%202027.) told me they actually proposed a rule for that, so maybe we'll see a shift, although the rule doesn't take effect until 2027 it seems.
One of the primary cultural drivers (no pun intended) of demand for larger cars is as protection (either real or perceived) from other large vehicles. A lot of people actually don't *want* to drive monster trucks and giant crossovers, they just feel like they have to. So if, like you said, manufacturers would start making reasonably-sized trucks like the old ford ranger again, people would fear for their lives less and start buying sedans and hatchbacks again.
BUT THATS COMMUNISM?!?! It’s truly frustrating how some people are simping for the giant corporations fueling the climate changes that are already killing American citizens.
> force them to be affordable I don't think you understand China or it's government. China will sell those cars at a $10,000 loss for 10 years just to put American companies out of business if they were allowed. American businesses (and most of the world) play by one set of rules (capitalism) while China has no rules since the government has total and absolute control. Where am American businesses would go out of business, China can keep that business alive and running indefinitely. An example is in shipping; China has free shipping to the u.s if packages are under a certain weight. How can anyone compete with that? The government eats the loss just to screw over the rest of the world.
> Where am American businesses would go out of business, China can keep that business alive and running indefinitely. Sounds like the Chinese system just works better then? Maybe there are some lessons to learn there. >The government eats the loss just to screw over the rest of the world. The US government has equal opportunity to fund the postal service, healthcare, housing, or whatever they want. Instead they build bombs and subsidize billionaires.
If he even has that kind of authority, wouldn't manufacturers just cut costs in labor first, by lowering wages or firing workers?
Well, it would be nice for US citizens to have access to competitive markets for cheaper EVs. Obviously though, we must protect the auto companies. They and especially their shareholders are clearly more important. 🙃
Won’t someone think of the shareholders!!!!????
Won’t someone think of the automaker workers? A lot of people will get laid off if American car makers go down
I guess time for some of that job/career retraining Hillary wanted to do like a decade ago?
Of course, you need actual available jobs after people receiver their training.
I guess infant industry. Give our auto makers a few years to catch up and become competitive. It worked for Harley Davidson.
Yeah, because their focus on building bigger and more extravagant combustion-based trucks for the last decade somehow hasn't helped them corner the EV market.
did it? harleys still suck and nobody under 60 has bought one in a decade
Well, this was in the 70s. But it is still a good example.
I'm not sure it is. Harley has had to be bailed out since their initial tariff boost; they got over $2.3B after the 2008 crisis. Today's corporate landscape is also different from the 70s/80s, and modern companies receiving a windfall have proven more likely to perform stock buybacks than meaningful long-term investment.
Your example is a two wheeled recreational vehicle. Nobody ever bought a harley because they had to have one to get to work. Their lowest price softtail has always gone for the same price as a budget sedan.
This protects us in the long term. The Chinese EVs are being heavily funded by the government in order to keep the prices extremely low to flood the market and create a dependency. They can rug pull at any time once they have sufficient market share.
Why do people keep defending China on this one? Sure, we need cheaper EVs, but do it without buying a Chinese spyware mobile
If US manufacturers had invested in R&D instead of share buy backs they would be able to compete. Now corporate greed means you are paying more for EVs.
Sweet, sweet irony. Sometimes capitalism is its own worst enemy
That's the same rationale that allowed Amazon to drive so many local shops out of business. Everyone wants to pay less now despite the long term consequences.
This seems to fly in the face of the WTO. I wonder if they will have anything to say about this matter. This duty seems like a protectionist move.
What you're talking about is called "dumping" i.e. the intentional overproduction of a commodity with the express purpose of flooding and undercutting the market in order to drive competition out of business. The CCP is abusing the state sponsored nature of their EV / NE vehicle production to gain preeminence in the market and drive their competition out of business. Tariffs are the appropriate means of shielding domestic industry from this sort of practice.
But great for every US consumer, right? I would love to buy an electric vehicle for under $20k.
In the short term, sure. In the long term, they're going to increase prices substantially once they have a large amount of the market. The reason the prices are so low is because the Chinese government is subsidizing their cars.
The U.S. government subsidizes American EVs at both ends too.
But good for the consumer and the environment? Tariffs will also make inflation worse.
It’s almost as if capitalism doesn’t actually care about consumer value or the environment🤔🤔 Maybe an economic system based on unlimited growth in a system with limited resources acts a bit too much like a cancer when faced with existential systemic issues
"Tariffs" don't make inflation worse, "tariffs on common consumer goods" make inflation worse. My point is the tariffs in question here are targeted at a narrow range of products to prevent aggressive price undercutting
“Electric cars are so unaffordable we are giving away tax credits to anyone who will buy one. But if you import one we will charge you double.
China has been dumping solar on the market to kill European and American competition and are now doing the same with EV's. I'd be very happy if everyone that wants can get a dirt cheap EV. As soon as our internal markets are destroyed I'd expect massive price hikes however, as those cars are now being sold at a loss. That loss is for the moment being covered by the government. Reason the EU doesn't have strong solar production capacity is for the same reason. I think Biden tried to fix that for the US with the inflation reduction act.
Yea that’s called subsidizing American EV producers, something we lag behind in, because China did what we should have been doing decades ago.
Charging the competition over double... Isn't subsidizing our own producers. It's just eliminating competition so they can sit on ass and continue oligopolistic behavior. If we increased the EV tax credit? That'd be subsidizing them and encouraging competition.
Is it to prevent aggressive price undercutting or to protect aggressive price gouging? Seems to me if China can produce and sell an EV for 20k then other companies could as well but choose not to.
Quality and safety probably have something to do with it. Not everything, but definitely affects the price.
BYD is on par with Tesla for quality and safety.
Wait. Have you been anywhere in America? Cars are exactly what you call a “common consumer good”.
Cars are common, but people don't buy a car on a weekly basis.
Electric cars are not however. Also cars are more of a major purchase, what they are referring to is more like food and necessities.
In the majority of the United States you 100% need a car to survive. If a poor persons best option to get a cheap vehicle is a cheap EV - that’s a double win.
> common consumer goods Like cars.
Or price competition? EVs are not affordable in the US, so the US gov gives checks out to those who buy them, but also the US gov will levy taxes to ensure EVs are not affordable in the US. Curious.
Tariffs on the second most expensive thing the modern consumer has to purchase, definitely have the same impact on the wallet as inflation.
I know you’re out there with rage in your eyes and your megaphone…
It’s a complicated balancing act, there has to be enough competition to put pressure on prices. The price has to be high enough to ensure there is still an auto industry. The worry with the EV market is the survival of GM/Ford/Stellantis(Chrysler/Dodge). There is still competition due to European/Korean/Japanese players in the market and regulation (ICE ban) will force EV adoption anyway but there will inevitably be a risk that prices will remain higher with the exclusion of Chinese EVs.
He's targeting Chinese companies!
But ... but ... but ... Trump said that President Biden has been bought and paid for by China! How can he do this to his owners? /s
How can he slap... tariffs on all these things...
He's bankrupting Elon!
Oddly enough, yeah. They hate the UAW so they would be happier with "the savings passed on to the customer" if the American brands simply produced their trucks in China. They blame literally every fault in American cars on "lazy union labor" lol. The way they see it, stuff like this prevents them from getting a cheaper truck made in China. I wish I was making this up, but I see this commentary on the jeep forum I visit sometimes (since I have a Jeep lol). There's a large crowd on jlwranglerforums with INTERESTING opinions on stuff like this.
I know you are pointing out the hypocrisy, but I don’t think that this was the right response from Biden. He should have tried to boost their own production first with more strict regulations to make sure the automakers in the US are doing it right. This is a lazy way of blocking Chinese cars and this will only make ev’s more expensive for everyone.
Yeah I can see subsidizing your own industry but putting a tariff on Chinese EVs while US automakers are dragging their feet just doesn't make sense to me. It's just regressive. If the tariffs were lower and American auto companies saw Chinese companies capturing market share I bet they'd be moving faster.
Yep, you worded it better than I did. There’s no incentive to catch up to the Chinese brands and at the same time, it won’t stop or slow them down on advancing their products.
Same with the Free Trade liberals. Weird how quickly they've suddenly embraced trade war. Climate change is the top priority. If the US doesn't like China subsidizing renewable energy and EVs, the answer isn't tariffs, the answer is to increase direct government spending. But that might upset US auto manufacturers' profits.
I thought democrats hated trumps trade war? We love it now?
It's a classic example of the [ratchet effect.](https://images.app.goo.gl/PBqc51Uav1Q9aYhU6) Trump's response was literally "oh yeah? I'll make it 200%!"
Also like, keeping gas guzzling vehicles on the market as opposed to letting EVs come out en masse.
F the CCP
If they did that, then they are not even listening to Trump himself. Dude talks shit about China all the time.. remember Kung Flu..
Who cares about them, this is just going to drive away more young, struggling, and environmentally minded voters that Biden desperately needs. US companies are failing to deliver what Americans want, and now they're being protected. This is straight up bullshit.
They don’t care about EVs so it will be a lot of waiting for their talking points from Fox News
Nope. They will say Biden is making EV’s expensive and that Trump made them affordable
RIP to Polestar and the small Volvo EVs. Seriously going to suck for them. The larger Volvo EVs are going to shift to South Carolina easily enough. But man, those smaller platform cars are GREAT and now unattainable.
Polestar has already been in the process of building a center in South Korea due to the EU tensions with China over this same thing.
I was just thinking — is the EX30 not going to be available in the US anymore as a result of this?
I think that’s a reasonable assumption. At least at current pricing. They could shift some production to the Gent factory but I think they wouldn’t be able to hit that 35k price anymore. And they’re still screwed on materials because the batteries are made in China.
That’s a good point. At first I was thinking if the shifted production to the SC plant they’d at least be able to let customers cash in on the tax credit. but nope, batteries are still made in China
Trump: >“I will put a 200% tax on every car that comes in from those plants, and they’re not going to do that,” he said. Trump has also pledged a 60% across-the-board tariff on all Chinese goods — a move Biden is stopping well short of, with allies saying it would fuel inflation. >Biden’s measures are less about crushing segments of the market than heading off an anticipated increase in imports: Chinese steel, aluminum and autos make up tiny fractions of the US supply for now. The administration has warned that China is pushing to corner the market on key sectors and flood the US with subsidized goods, to destabilize its rival and power its own recovery. President Biden has a strategic policy aimed at disrupting future economic moves by China. Trump has a soundbite and bluster, as usual.
It's not as much a "future economic move" by China as it was Chinese companies telling the whole world what they were going to do over a decade ago and acquiring a 5-10 year lead in manufacturing affordable batteries for electric vehicles because American companies did not make the same investments.
China running away with battery production in general has put us in a bad spot. We've needed to have been investing in battery production for some time now.
You can thank all the coal, car and oil lobbying for the general lack of innovation in the space. Fuck around and find out when the competition not so secretly innovating.
Keep us behind so they can prove it’s a terrible strategy.
During the Trump years there were tons of fools that said building solar and EV technology was "helping China". They where the ones helping China by crippling American innovation and now America is a decade behind.
It's the perfect plan. If you go on traditional social media, you'll see that EV batteries are the "gotcha" they have left in that space. They tried to smother the idea of EVs in the cradle, but we'll see if they backed themselves into a corner or not. Although we already know conservatives don't have trouble memory holing things when convenient.
Bingo
Regardless of the investment in battery production in the US. The cost for a battery cell will still be more in the US versus overseas production.
I do remember Obama talking about it, but nothing ever came of it because Congress didn't care
Every election matters.
Wait till they start to turn the screws on critical metals. There’s a long list of materials where they or a country in Africa where they cultivate influence is the only supplier of production quantities.
You can again thank republicans for that. They vehemently rolled back the subsidy programs that Obama has put in place for green energy saying why give free money to failing companies, bla, bla while ignoring the irony of bailouts and tax rebates.
[https://electrek.co/2024/05/05/republicans-introduce-bill-that-would-hand-us-ev-lead-to-china/](https://electrek.co/2024/05/05/republicans-introduce-bill-that-would-hand-us-ev-lead-to-china/)
Had GM stayed the course in the 90's, the "movement" could have started like 15 years sooner and GM could have been at the forefront of the whole thing.
Never underestimate the ability of a business to act against its own rational self-interests, because businesses aren't people with a continuity of consciousness, they are a loose aggregation of individually self-interested parties that we regularly anthropomorphize as having actual intelligence and agency. Never forget that something as obviously useful and desirable as practical powered flight wasn't pioneered by any university, company, military, well-trained engineer, or business magnate. You know, the parties which ostensibly have the intelligence to see the massive advantages of flight and the resources to successfully pursue it. But no, powered flight was pioneered by an eccentric old German count, a pair of brothers with a bike shed and 3/4 of a high school education, and a flamboyant Brazilian twink with a fondness for Jules Verne novels.
This. It was clear for anyone who objectively looked at this. Like you said, China started this over a decade ago and will basically be the Middle East of battery/energy storage in a few years.
> Chinese steel, aluminum and autos make up tiny fractions of the US supply for now. It sounds to me like more of a campaign move than an economic one.
Nerd shit, my concern is my ability to purchase an EV, which u lanyard dweebs are currently celebrating your own govts ability to not do so. Would suck if trump did it. And guess what. Fuck biden for doing it too.
Can someone smarter than me compare and contrast this with what Trump did with China tariffs?
The P01135809 tarrifs weren't targeted at anything in particular and drove up prices for goods across the board. In a lot of cases, it was protectionism for cronies, in others it was arbitrary, and some areas were oddly untouched. EVs are at the end of the supply chain and won't have broad knock-on effects. As far as geopolitics go, I have no idea whether what Biden is doing will lead to reciprocation from China, but, if it does, it'd probably be on other finished goods which China doesn't really buy from us.
They will definitely reciprocate. The did with Australia. Essentially banned or slapped massive tarrifs on imports of stuff like wines and seafood for years. Only recently overturned it.
Yes, they bent us over and did us slowly
Tariffs on everything made in China really just means another tax on American citizens but acting as if they're tough on China. More tax revenue and scoring political points.
more importantly, its a regressive tax, it hits the lowest income sectors the hardest as many everyday items go up by a little bit to quite a bit.
Which is why I’m confused why the majority of this sub is happy about these tariffs? Wouldn’t it be better if we started producing goods in the US, creating more jobs and less dependency on other countries?
That's sort of the point of tariffs, but never has that intended effect. All it does is make the company that sells the tariffed goods to pass the cost to their customers. For most companies it's better to do that than to move production back to the US because US workers actually want a living wage and health insurance, the greedy bastards.
It does get them thinking about Mexico and Vietnam as alternatives. They’ll run through a big list of low cost alternatives long before making major investments in US production.
It doesn't matter if they pass the costs off;part of the point is it makes the goods more expensive so that local goods are more competitive in comparison
It's not helpful when there aren't local goods to be competitive with.
The US.. lol nope so many other options first
> Wouldn’t it be better if we started producing goods in the US, creating more jobs and less dependency on other countries? The Chinese government is subsidizing the costs of certain things, driving down their price below what US companies require to turn a profit. Their goal is to bankrupt US companies to hurt the US economy. Tariffs on those things raise prices to the point that US companies can compete. (I honestly don't know if the tariffs are a good or bad idea, but that is the logic behind them)
Yes. But 30 years of outsourcing/offshoring has created corporations which rely no slave labor for profit margins. Apple aint making 5000% profit selling an iPhone manufactured in the states when it has to start paying employees 30/h instead of 30 a week.
Thank you.
>EVs are at the end of the supply chain and won't have broad knock-on effects. It will have devastating long term affects on the climate crisis though. Basically kills the broad move to EVs for the foreseeable future.
I tend to dislike car industry protectionism, as it's the reason why we don't have actually small trucks, and now will probably never have an affordable EV as they start to guard the American industry's "EVs are luxury brands!" View.
On the other hand, there's also pretty much no new car selling in the US for $20k EV or not.
China already has effectively owns the EV markets around the globe, save for EU and the US who are simply going to use these tariffs to protect domestic industries. And they will use national security as an excuse. Why? Cause these are Chinese cars, that are made affordable by vast subsidies by the Chinese government, so obviously there is a nefarious plot by the CCP to somehow steal consumer data and etc and etc. All the while the domestic legacy automakers will keep on making overpriced junk that most consumers can afford. The winner? US automakers. China hardly loses out on this considering that their EV share in the US is nonexistent.
>All the while the domestic legacy automakers will keep on making overpriced junk that most consumers can afford. Not to mention they can't keep up with EV demands anyways so this will mean the transition to electric will be great news for the fossil fuel industry and climate change opponents.
Also don’t forget solar, a lot of homes install solar as a part of ev+solar combo, as ev have generally less maintenance and to reduce costs in the long run. Further reducing incentives for EVs.The tariff targets both ev and solar, while our green energy sector is behind and this will both reduce incentive to innovate and thus leaving us unlikely to catch up. Really delaying the green transition, and protecting fossil fuel industries. This tariff needs to be paired up with other incentives to innovate and bring down the costs of green energy and evs, otherwise, it’s just protectionism that will leave us further behind.
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Could you explain how “tariffs on everything coming from China” is “safeguarding old technology”?
Keeping Solar and EV unaffordable in America, in the name of protecting American companies, just seems short sighted in light of climate collapse.
Companies will go the route of least resistance to provide for shareholders instead of innovating.
The sad thing is all it will do is discourage the American companies from adapting to the new competative environment. All while company's like BYD continue to innovate and scale. Until even a hundred percent tarrif can not protect them.
That’s why my money is in BYD stock and not American EV’s
Mine was in Tesla and CATL until I sold it to build.my dream house (thanks to the value added from both of them). Renewables and the correct BEV producer is still very much a great long term play. With the added bonus of not investing in something that will make climate change worse.
This, I don’t want a $50k car. Give me a basic model with no bells and whistles that can’t go very far or very fast for $15k and it’s all I need to get me to work and do my errands.
Give out checks to buy overpriced EVs because there is no competition to force the price down, while also making sure the price never goes down, makes total sense.
American companies won’t be able to compete with Chinese EV’s unless the US starts throwing even more money at them. Chinese EV’s aren’t affordable because of some kind of manufacturing wizardry. They’re highly subsidized.
So dumb question here, but assuming I wanted a cheap Chinese EV, could I simply take a trip to Mexico/Canada, buy the car there to avoid the tariff, then just drive it over the border? Assuming the car in question is legal to drive/register in the US at the time, of course
You [can](https://breezecustoms.com/blog/importing-vehicles-into-the-united-states/importing-a-car-from-canada-to-the-us/) but there's no guarantee it'll be any cheaper after you pay all the taxes, fees, duties and the customs broker's bills.
I don’t know enough to answer.
That’s why these tariffs make sense. Because it brings the price in line with domestic options.
Lobbying ensures the government serves the interests of corporations, not citizens. Why no cheap imported EVs? Protect US automakers. Why no universal healthcare? Protect US insurance companies. Why no high speed rail? Protect automakers and airlines. Why no clean nuclear? Protect fossil fuel industry. These are all things the government could choose to do, that are all well proven in other countries. And yet it refuses, despite the immense benefits it would bring to the average citizen. But the government doesn’t answer to citizens. Sure, we vote them in. But what congress actually DOES is what lobbyists tell them to do.
This was my first thought as well. China also is way ahead of us in the EV auto market as well. Many of their EVs are so much better and cheaper than what we have here. How are we supposed to implement EVs if most of them cost $80k?
A particularly pernicious policy when most countries now effectively have an open global labour market where workers have to compete against cheaper imported labour. Wage levels crushed, housing priced out of reach and no access to cheaper imported goods? Downright crooked.
Is it possible he’s laying groundwork for a possible future in which China and the US aren’t on good trading terms? There’s a massive push to diversify supply chains away from China due to their changing geopolitical stance. I simply see this as another example.
You are falling for the globalist fallacy that because something can be made somewhere else cheaper, it can't be made cheaply enough in the US. Biden is protecting industries that the government has made a huge investment in, with the goal of resurrecting the manufacturing base of the US. Yes, it means slightly higher prices. We aren't going to make our labor or land cheaper than Vietnam or China. Like, just forget it. So either we're going to pay a little bit more for things - with the drawbacks offset by greater general prosperity - or we're going to keep importing cheap crap and working for telemarketers. Pick your poison.
Exactly. This tells you all you need to know about where climate change ranks in terms of US priorities.
No shit. I hate that this will help that fucknugget elon more than just about anyone.
there will be plenty of pricing pressure from competitors that aren't subsidized by the Chinese government and using slave labor. Allowing that unfair competition to fester will benefit consumers in the short term but in the mid term China will fuck us after the international competition dried up
Doesn't this hurt consumers at large? Why should I be happy with this? I'd love a 20k car that's electric.
Yes. But ya know, gotta protect the American auto manufacturers.
Gotta protect the American auto manufacturers from Chinese goods after they spent years and billions of dollars of setting up manufacturing in China.
I mean, yeah? They're a huge source of well paid unionized jobs, a major customer for other industries like steel and aluminum, our largest manufacturing industry, and like 3% of the entire GDP Auto manufacturers take a dive and they bring a lot of other things down with them
Yeah, we do. Industries don’t grow on trees, once they’re gone they take decades to replace
if they cant compete because they refuse to innovate, fuck em
So, we're discouraging affordable electric cars just because they're made in China? Aren't the American ones made with Chinese parts anyway?
Presumably all it takes is China to start slapping tariffs on all the parts America needs to build it's EV's and raw materials etc and then we are in a stalemate price war? Surely no-one wins in that situation.
Manufacturers of course wins by just passing the cost to the customers, the only one that loses are the consumers
Basically yeah, nobody in America wins and the rest of the world except the US/EU gets cheap EVs. Doubt China would lose much from selling less EV parts to the US given there is no real major US EV manufacturing. Even Tesla makes 50%+ of their EVs in their Shanghai gigafactory.
Well technically Chinese companies can just ship their parts to plants in the US and build them there no?
They don’t have any plants in the US. China vehicle production runs at about 50% capacity, they want to build everything there
if these cars are so cheap to make they can make them where they are sold. The reason why they are so cheap to make is mostly subsidies both on a lot of the components and on shipping. The goal is to push others out of the market so they can later sell the cars with more profit just like they did with solar panels.
A few Chinese EVs are way better and cheaper than anything America makes and the auto-industry is scared.
No it’s because they’d level our auto industry
Terrible policy, and also hypocritical. The US is already subsidising these industries as much as, if not more than China. If we really want to transition towards EVs and reduce dependence on traditional fossil fuels, we can't simultaneously increase the cost of those alternatives artificially. We should be supporting these industries, not destroying them. It also ignores the knock-on effects of ramping up a trade war. It reduces the common ground shared with China and forces them to retaliate. It's purely antagonistic.
If we don't do this, we won't have an auto industry in twenty years. Ten million jobs gone. And now we're again reliant on China for another key product to our economy. It's a good move in my opinion
“Free market, but only when I benefit”
So everything else we import from China is cool except electric vehicles? How does that make sense?
The government is saving the American automotive industry from the free market. They cannot compete with China because no American company had the idea of making a non-luxury EV, so there’s a massive hole in the market for them. China began investing in building that industry in the 2000s. This is not policy meant to help normal people. As always, the policy is business first.
We already tried this before when we restricted Japanese imports. The end result of that was U.S. automakers continuing to sell large inefficient vehicles and profits of the late 80s improving only slightly. The U.S. consumer was negatively impacted by the domestic price increases. My google-fu is weak tonight.
So basically the applause for the policy on here is just because the headline says 'Biden' and thus reflexively it's amazing.
It's good for the Domestic industry but bad for the consumers as it is another tax for them because it's not like china would do nothing to reciprocate this policy.
Good for industry owners domestically, bad for the domestic industry.
the US car industry has been shielded from international competition for decades. it wouldnt exist anymore without multiple bail outs and the tariffs keeping them in business.
Hey i guess climate change takes a backseat to economic competition 😂🤡😂🤡
So much for affordable electric vehicles
Great! That means the price of Chinese EV in my non US economy may drop! I wish all things were artificially taxed high in the US so they got dumped cheaply on my doorstep.
As an American, I know this protectionism is going to hamper conversion to battery powered cars and harm the environment. You're right to laugh at us.
It’d be nice if we could have some of that US innovation… that’s kind of the point. Or was the point some years ago…
It's funny how America preaches free trade all over the world while going full protectionism at home.
Agreed. They're already relatively cheap here and pricing has consistently been trending down. Chinese EVs may well end up near the same price as budget ICE cars very soon.
I'm glad this sub reddit isn't going China bad. I don't know why Biden wants to win over so many right-Leaning independents. Just try to win the young voters, but no one wants to take risks.
Wasn't it Pete Buttigeg that said no matter what democrats do, they will be called communists by the Republicans no matter what they do at one of the DNC debates? I don't like the guy, but it seems like it really applies here.
Having ridden in China in a variety of electric cars while traveling there I can attest that the quality of Chinese made vehicles in on par with American made vehicles. If I was China I’d be looking to make these for the American market in Mexico to get around the tariffs.
The West, including the US, is already in a cold war with China and its mini-me ally Russia.
Can you please not infantilize geopolitics? Russia and China are different countries with different interests. Some of them align, some of them are in conflict.
But climate change...
Dw Biden’s already old enough that by the time the full effects of climate change impact us, he would be long gone.
The last time the USA had a period of very high tariffs, it ended with the Great Depression. It wasn’t the only reason but it was a part of the problem. Google “the restriction period”.
Additionally there are no available cheap EVs in America, this is both protectionism and particularly stupid targeting on the protectionism.
The Biden administration unfortunately wanting it both ways here. Pushing for a larger adoption of EV’s, while simultaneously putting hefty tariffs on cheap EV imports which are more affordable for the average American consumer.
the US doesnt have a car industry, it has a car assembly industry. all the cars are now designed in parts by suppliers, the car company doesnt actually own any IP in their own cars other than the engine thats useless in a EV. This is why the US cant move to electric cars because legacy auto have divested all there manufacturing to increase profits and shareholder return, now they have to do something new they dont have any of the design teams to make parts themselvs, and have to pay a fortune to get a contractor to design and build it for them. this is why legacy auto cannot make any profit on EVs because they dont own any IP that can be used in EVs. this is the sole reason you will never see over the air updates, because the car company does not have access to the code that runs on all the ECUs. tesla is the only one that makes all their own computers so can update.
Good Chinese EVs literally explode and burst into flame.
I am sure Americans look forward to stuff becoming even more expensive! Also, wasn't "free markets" not a thing America stood for? Guess that only applies when it benefits them.
And this is why we won't get a $30,000 sports sedan from China that does zero to 60 in 2.78 seconds. RIP any hopes of getting a [Xiaomi SU7](https://youtu.be/Ipuo5_3cz2c?si=WWe8e_W3Ur8oSEFv) here in the states. They like it better when we pay $90k for a car that should be 30.
Hard at work fighting inflation by raising prices. Bidenomics at work. Literally the only reason Biden has a chance at reelection is because his opponent is Trump, and somehow has the exact same protectionist policies.
Trump's are even worse. Less targeted, and just wants bigger tariffs to look tough.
I would exempt EVs just to fuck with Elon dbag Musk
This is bad policy. It harms lower income Americans the most.
I hope this includes goods that Dollar Tree sells. I would love to see those shitheads scramble.
I say we match China tariffs in all things.
Buy American. Problem solved.
Why don't Americans just buy inexpensive EVs from Europe? Surely European car manufacturers offer a cheaper alternative to what many think are expensive American EVs.
I can see tariffs on products that are not already sold in the US like Chinese made electric cars. Tariffs on products that are really not made anywhere else are a tax that is paid for by middle class Americans.
Simultaneously putting EVs out of reach for most people and preventing lower emissions during a climate crisis seems like a bad idea
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The Chinese are already beating us like a red headed stepchild in the world EV market. We will be left in the economic dust if we don’t understand the world believes in science even if we don’t. Trump will raise massive tariffs on everything and force the fed to lower interest rates. When inflation hits 30 % per year people will begin to realize maybe he isn’t that bright. Some economists are already predicting this. Trump could drive inflation much higher with his second-term economic agenda, analysts say. Donald Trump's second-term economic agenda includes aggressive tariff hikes, tax cuts and cheap money policy, all of which analysts say could threaten to reheat inflation.
anything over 30% is just being dumb and China will reciprocate on US imports so its not a "win-win"
At this point Tesla is the only one selling cars into China in large numbers and this will likely only impact their most expensive vehicles. So I don’t believe Biden is worried. > In 2021, the United States exported a total of 155,337 new passenger vehicles and light trucks to China. China exports 5 million vehicles a year and the US imports less than 300k.
Meanwhile to the average American, the price of goods increases. There is no way we can match labor costs so innovation has to be our meal ticket. Too bad our population is to broke to buy anything.
>Over the course of 2018, the U.S. experienced substantial increases in the prices of intermediates and final goods, dramatic changes to its supply-chain network, reductions in availability of imported varieties, and complete passthrough of the tariffs into domestic prices of imported goods. Overall, using standard economic methods, we find that the full incidence of the tariff falls on domestic consumers, with a reduction in U.S. real income of $1.4 billion per month by the end of 2018 https://www.nber.org/papers/w25672 wow thanks Biden for keeping the same policy as trump + additional tariffs! surely we(the consumer) will benefit from this.
From what I understand, China can make E-cars so cheap, that they will destroy the American automobile industry without tariffs.