this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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There is no incentive for US companies to improve their products when they are protected from market forces by import restrictions.
What US companies? Only three remain (GM, Ford, Tesla) and they make up a fraction of sales here in the US. The Chinese government is dumping truckloads of money into subsidies and development, control nearly all rare earth minerals, and don't shy away from environmental disasters and human rights abuses which is why they're the only nation on the planet that's able to develop this rapidly and sell their vehicles for way less than anyone else on the planet. Once they control everything you can kiss those low prices and rapid development goodbye, but you'll still buy from them because nobody else will be left standing.
If all that is true, then the US should subsidize US ev’s to the point where they are price competitive and open the market to competition where US manufacturers can market against the environmental and human right issues with their Chinese competitors. That would put competitive pressure on Chinese manufacturers to clean up their supply chains and consumers worldwide would benefit.
The US is battling the environmental and human rights issues that so agitate them about China by promoting 'clean coal' and rounding up brown people in concentration camps without due process.
It's almost as if environmental and human rights issues weren't their real concern 🤔.
Right there on the top of Mount should. But we've seen the self destructive nature of my country and elected leaders.
Who's going to build them though? GM and Ford have almost completely eliminated producing vehicles that aren't SUVs and trucks because nobody was buying them and Tesla is floundering with a Nazi leading the company. Most people are buying German, Japanese, or South Korean cars and they aren't able to compete against China either for all the aforementioned reasons.
The fact that nobody else in the entire world can match what they're doing despite hundreds and hundreds of collective years building and selling cars should clue you in to what's happening. It's like saying a city should subsidize their local general store to compete against Walmart and wondering why nobody is doing just that.
At that point you're having tax payers subsidize failing businesses that only try to collect profits over innovation. Giving more money from the poor to the rich.
Not to mention how hard you'd have to subsidize. Aside from the huge amount of money in constructing plants capable of building like China, you'd be subsidizing pay differences to a huge degree. Automakers in the US average around $30 US an hour. Chinese average $3.75 US an hour. Our two economies can't really play together that well because the differences are so massive.
Tax the fuck out of the rich on anything over like $1.5 million a year, and close all the loopholes and the problems fix themselves. The rich and the corrupt government our the problem.
A loss of overall competitiveness of the local companies is actually a well known and studied problem with using tariffs and import restrictions to protects said local companies.
So any competent government which desires for their local companies to survive and prosper will seek different ways to strengthen then which don't suffer from that problem. The Chinese government is doing just that, the US government is not.
By all indications, US politicians are spectacularly incompetent and/or are following a strategy of burning the future of US companies for a short term boost in the money they yield for current CxOs and investors.
But what about the majority of cars sold in the US which belong to foreign manufacturers, and what's your answer for why none of those nations are able to compete with what China is doing either?
Apparently no other government in the entire world is "competent" by your standards, or perhaps it's about one nation leveraging their position and influence in order to build a monopoly and not about competency at all.
I can tell you that, at least for Europe, they're doing pretty much the same thing as the US, only it's higher tariffs rather than blocking the Chinese products.
The effect of special protectionist tariffs on the competitiveness of local companies might not be as strong as for outright blocking of the competing foreign products, but it's in the same direction, which is why recently even Tesla (which are shit at the actual building cars part of the business) were wiping the floor on EVs with massive European car making businesses which had enormous expertise in actually making cars and decades to evolve EV tech and failed to do so.
Maybe stop selling garbage?
Don't forget Dodge, speaking of garbage....
They did stop selling garbage which is precisely why they've almost completely left the passengar car market in favor of trucks and SUVs, which sell like hot cakes.
Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep is owned by Stellantis which is based in the Netherlands. They haven't been an American company for quite some time now.
I really think the fact that China controls the vast majority of the rare earths is grossly understated when discussing the explosion of electric vehicles there. The US recently discovered a huge volcanic lithium deposit, but I suspect that there's a lot of gallium going into the Chinese batteries that the US just doesn't have access to.
China does not control the vast majority of rare earths because they're only found in China (or even because they're particularly rare, they're not.)
China controls the market because they were the only people who actually bothered to build extraction and refinement capabilities.
If the US invested half the money it puts into "clean coal" or oil and gas extraction into rare earth extraction and processing, it would have its own supplies. But that would be woke, or something.
They're fully in thrall to market forces. Those forces simply dictate that they lobby for protected markets. It's far cheaper to buy off a lobbyist than to build a cutting edge battery factory
"Burning the future of the company for extra personal upsides in the short term" is pretty much MBA-Age management strategy summarized in one sentence.
seems like western countries are rolling back ev development in favor of gas/ice cars.
Good. It will hasten their long overdue demise.
When carbon is added to the atmosphere every living being pays the price.
You do realise China also have very high tariffs? And pump hundreds of billions dollars in incentives into their industries.
Yes, of course. A larger point that I’ve tried to make is that when China interferes with the market, they do it in a way that improves Chinese products, lowers prices for consumers. Conversely, when the US interferes with the market they increase prices, reduce consumer options, and reduces the quality of products.
you saying the US government does not hand out billions to Detroit at the Federal and state levels?