So reasons include: politics (Lots of swing voters work in the auto manufacturing industry that would get pissed with an influx of chinese cars), national security (worries of the type of information Chinese cars would send back home), and lastly industry protectionism.
As much as this sucks, I kind of agree. We really don’t want to rely on China until they prove to reliably not want to screw us. If this was Taiwan, Mexico, any country from the EU, etc. I would definitely want their cheap EVs to hit our market and bloody up the american manufacturers.
To add to the national security angle: the auto industry is one of the industries that would be able to pivot to wartime production the fastest (as seen in the world wars). Probably not the first thing on everyone’s mind, but I’d bet it’s at least part of the consideration.
Killing the planet so you can be ready for war.
God bless America.
What? Burning bunker oil to ship Chinese made cars across the ocean is better for the planet than manufacturing them domestically?
Well. Yes, probably.
The environmental costs for shipping on a large container ship are, per unit, pretty low. China’s already got the process for making cheap EVs down cold; we are still building our industry up, and it’s slooooooooow. It’s also more environmentally expensive to be duplicating processes rather than making scaling an existing process.
OTOH, the ability to wage war effectively is a compelling national security interest.
Yes actually, if you understood economies of scale there’s a lot of reasons why planting your own garden in your backyard is worse than having industrial farms. Similarly, one country being able to control all the pollution would be far better than spreading it out and having little to no locust of control.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23132579/eat-local-csa-farmers-markets-locavore-slow-food
For some articles about farming. Now obviously, there are situations where you can make local manufacturing better, but that comes at a high cost.
Either way, the point is, your initial assumption is wrong and I hope you learned something.
We aren’t talking about small scale manufacturing vs large scale. It’s large scale either way. Your analogy doesn’t work.
Sadly for the US is it small scale manufacturing. Which is kind of the problem. There’s been so much reduction in US manufacturing capability that they are essentially small scale. Other people have already pointed that out. What I will extend though is technically this is what the US is concerned about. The whole point that the US government is trying to make is that it’s a national security issue that the US only produces at such small scale. So not only is what the US saying is that they want to destroy the environment and spend billions to start to maybe create large scale manufacturing again. Is it worth it? I dunno, but that’s what’s being proposed. Kill the environment, stick with ICE vehicles so USA can still compete in large scale manufacturing. Thus, Biden is a hypocrite.
Oh I must have missed the press release where he announced much higher tariffs for all cars, including ICE ones, manufactured on the other side of the Pacific.
Not to mention that China is pretty big into the “prepare for war” game too.
To add a bit more to the national security angle: with the potential to escalate into open warfare with China, due to tensions between Taiwan and China, we really don’t want millions of drivable computers sending harvested metadata about our road systems and behavior patterns directly to enemy leadership.
What?
We make about 150,000 vehicles a month in America…
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA
We sell about 150,000,000
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
If Biden if fucking over every other American to “protect” a few thousands jobs…
That’s a bad choice.
For damn near everyone except the executives of companies who make most of their vehicles in Mexico anyways.
Like, if Biden is doing this to protect jobs, it’s protecting jobs that went to Mexico decades ago.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/889529/mexico-automotive-production-volume/
This isn’t a few thousand jobs, auto manufacturing in the u.s. employs millions and millions more work in services or industries dependent on it.
Also union auto jobs keep wages high for other unskilled labor as it puts upward pressure on employers as they compete for workers, eg. Amazon may have to increase wages to compete with a unionized auto plant that got a raise with the recent negotiation, otherwise people might choose to work there. If that auto plant goes under though, or moves over to China, then there’s a surplus of workers who need a job so amazon can lower wages cause they know they’re desperate, this is how the middle class collapses.
Globalization encourages a race to the bottom for wages which hurts workers. That’s why free trade deals like NAFTA/USMCA will have minimum wages put on auto manufacturing, and why it’s better for cars to be manufactured in Mexico then in China, where no such minimum wage exists. Chinese cars aren’t cheaper because their manufacturers are more efficient, its because their workers are more exploited.
We do need to transition away from gas cars, ideally to public transit, but absent that we can encourage EV adoption with subsidies and discourage gas car purchases with taxes without destroying the middle class.
This isn’t a few thousand jobs, auto manufacturing in the u.s. employs millions and millions more work in services or industries dependent on it.
So why dont we have tarrifs on the ones that are produced in Mexico too?
That’s the problem with “moderates” you can’t argue with consistent logic.
You have to fliflop back and forth and sometimes argue the exact opposite.
If this is to protect US jobs, and that’s a good thing, why don’t every foreign country have tariffs? Why let American corporations send the jobs to Mexico?
Have a look at that NAFTA replacement agreement. There’s provisions in there specifically to put upwards pressure on Mexican wages.
Wow, can we get anything like that for American auto workers?
We have that. They’re called unions. Of course, that’s also at risk, since half the population seems OK with breaking union power.
So why dont we have tarrifs on the ones that are produced in Mexico too?
Mexico is not China.
It is in our best interest to have a stable and economically improving neighbor on our southern border.
Your all or nothing / black or white view of the world is extremely childish & naive. Simple solutions to complex problems are just how politicians manipulate those who don’t want to think to hard. Stop pretending that global trade policy is a simple solution arena & try thinking a little harder.
No it makes sense…
Neoliberals care about executive pay, not worker pay.
So they make up bullshit reasons about why American job less is only bad if it’s executives losing profit, not about workers losing jobs.
Everything makes perfect sense except when youre trying to explain about how it’s for the best interest of American workers, most of whom aren’t auto workers.
Political extremists, such as yourself, are exhausting.
It’s like talking to a religious fanatic, there’s no reasoning with someone who’s made a decision based on emotion instead of logic.
Yeah, shit like that.
Calling someone “an extremist” for caring about average Americans more than billionaires.
It’s got to be exhausting constantly flip flipping. Trying to act like Republicans are the worst thing ever, except progressives.
Somehow if people get more help than you think they deserve, it has to loop back around and be worse than republicans.
You can lose to republicans all day every day, but if progressives beat you just a few times, you’ll never get political power back.
Did you read my full comment or just the first sentence, cause I did go on to explain why I think manufacturing in Mexico is better. Ideally cars would be manufactured in the u.s. but I’m not going to let the good be the enemy of the great.
Also along with the minimum wage as part of the USMCA there is also better union provisions for Mexico in it as well which allows the UAW to try and organize Mexican auto workers with independent unions to raise wages.
https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/uaw-reaching-across-border-support-mexican-auto-workers
You can’t do that in China because there’s only the CCP associated state run unions with little negotiation power by the workers to raise there wages.
Just a small correction: The sales numbers are 15 million, not 150 million.
Ah yes, any country from the EU. Like the made in Balkan vehicles with those adidas stripes 👌
The stripes add 10 horsepower.
I think the new Chinese made Volvo is one of the more interesting cars coming out this year. It’s $35k… AFTER the 27.5% tariff on Chinese made cars. Meaning, Volvo is actually selling this for $27k. The car is super minimal inside, but manufacturing in China is clearly allowing them to reduce costs a shit load.
US auto manufacturing would be so screwed if these things could be sold without the tariff.
Edit: also worth noting, they’re going to be leasing these direct in many states. No dealer markup.
US Auto manufacturers have screwed themselves and the US public with their current production values.
Happened in the 1970s, and Honda and Toyota ran wild. Unfortunately US automakers are more important, it seems, than those that bought their cars.
Fossil fuel production is the only reason he can say the economy is doing well.
We have record breaking production levels
It helps that we’re still ran by geriatrics that literally have no stake in the world beyond the short term.
And American geriatrics largely despise the generations that came after them. Most not only don’t want to plant trees whose shade they will never sit in, like those in a decent society would, they want to burn the trees they sat under out of spite and vanity. This tree is theirs, and all those trees over there! Make your own trees, filthy taker future people!
This is where encouraging greed and selfishness, oh I’m sorry, “rugged individualism and rational-self-interest” as our core cultural values leads, oblivion.
We also can’t understate the amount of lobbying that American “manufacturers” do even when their vehicles are assembled outside of America.
Corporate profits count for GDP, so cheap foreign cars that are good for consumers makes “the economy” look bad. Because it’s all about how the wealthiest are doing, not how an average American is doing.
Whenever I hear the economy is doing well I generally just think that they mean the stock market is doing well. The economy of the working class’s standard of living, health, and persuit of happiness is awful.
Not surprised, considering the equivalent tariffs on the import of solar modules under Biden, Trump and Obama.
Almost like that’s part of how he won over the UAW and that Chinese EVs are a threat to US industry and our own migration on the industrial side from petrochemical to electric based manufacturing and infrastructure. I’m not saying that i agree with everything Biden has done in this space, but this is much more complex than Biden saying “I like the environment but hate China” and this article seems to oversimplify a bit.
Also it’s not like Chinese vehicles are banned, the Volvo EX30 is starting sales soon at 35000$, which is extremely cost competitive with current options in the US market despite being affected by the tariffs and not benefiting from US subsidies.
Here’s an article I read yesterday arguing the opposite side and pushing for even more stringent bans on Chinese EVs https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/opinion/gm-ford-electric-vehicles.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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Racism and chauvinism with corruption and cronyism mixed in
If people want something they should be able to have it. If they are good enough for the EU they are good enough for the US.
The EU also protects its manufacturers by taxing Chinese cars, but the tariffs isn’t nearly as punishing as America’s.
I’d love for the US to start by cutting the tariff to something more reasonable.
America numba one!
In oil production
literally this https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6
Yes Trump imposed the tariff but since Biden didn’t cancel it he gets the title of the article. What 🤡 shit.
Also as another commenter pointed out, these vehicles would never pass NHTSA standards anyway.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And it’s just one of many BYD electric cars on offer, from the compact e2/e3 hatchback and sedan (think a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla) to the full-size, luxe Han EV, a more expensive option nonetheless selling for under $33,000 in China (it costs more than double that in Europe).
“There’s almost an across-the-board apprehension about Chinese EVs, even though they would make an important contribution to [lower] CO2 emissions,” Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a veteran trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says.
They took the “opposite of the Tesla approach”: starting not with luxury vehicles but ultra-cheap cars fit for taxi fleets and not much else, and constantly improving their early inexpensive prototypes.
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the Biden administration is formulating rules that would limit US sales of Chinese-made parts, even if they’re in vehicles ultimately assembled in the US or Mexico.
As Frank Foer detailed in his book The Last Politician, this faction was brought into the Biden coalition partly through his now-National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
During the Trump years, Sullivan forged an alliance with the trade-skeptics and “broke bread with Elizabeth Warren disciples, labor union officials, and intellectuals from left-leaning think tanks.” Sullivan is also, notably, a major China hawk — Foer describes him as agreeing with Donald Trump that China is “eating our lunch” — leading to a hostility to trade with the country that meshed easily with that of trade skeptics who have for decades opposed exposing US manufacturing workers to foreign competition.
The original article contains 2,617 words, the summary contains 254 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I made it too late to this thread and now all the top comments are corporate shill posts for the big 3 American OEMs who already outsourced the hell out of their production lines meaning none of their points about protection or votes has been valid for at least 15 years.
Even if Mexico magically invented their own cheap EV, you better bet the USA will have that blocked or at the very least smacked with a huge tariff for no reason beyond protecting some megacorp profits.
They already lobbied for all these stupid rules against JDM back when Japan proved it could make superior cars for cheap. Then, it took them decades to enter the US market locally by building factories and whatnot.
Biden is blocking because China bad and muh lobbyist profits, not because there’s an actual issue of safety or security.
Same with Huawei, they blocked their phones and telecommunication equipment and never managed to show any proof that the Chinese government is actually snooping on their equipment.
And it is not like the US doesn’t have a proven track record of pushing American suppliers to put backdoors and pretty much doing exactly what they accused Huawei and indirectly China of doing.
Every accusation a confession.
They accuse China of doing it because it’s what they are or would do.
Well he is a politician, so its fairly likely this is something politicial…
Because GenocideJoe is a sore loser.
because US can’t compete with China
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