US car prices have risen massively over the last few years. Dealers just openly list $5000 markups on the sheet.

things are ripe for disruption so the empire is really going to have to ramp up the protectionism.

Perhaps the Big Three deserve destruction; after all, they hooked us on S.U.V.s in the first place and then fell behind in the E.V. race. But letting them die is not a tenable political option for the Biden administration.

but wait I thought "mArKeT fOrCeS WiLl pRoDuCe tHe bEsT oUtCoMeS"??

capitalism only works on paper

There are already very high walls of protectionism keeping lots of potentially disruptive imports out of the USA, so I don't expect these to have the impact that NYT thinks they will.

Do we really want America to become a backwater of bloated, expensive, gas-guzzling cars?

yes

Who needs competition when you can just make dubious claims of national security risk and ban BYD et al. like they did with Huawei?

The enemy is both weak and strong

I'm curious to hear all your thoughts but, will protectionism be immediately necessary with the powers that be not building up the refueling infrastructure that is necessary for electric vehicles? I might be wrong on this, though, so it's always good to hear the input of others.

I can see them doing restrictions on Chinese vehicles for the usual nat-sec justifications or just to score cheap political points through appeals to xenophobia, like with the Tik Tok ban. Maybe they'll have a whole week of news coverage dedicated to it to rile up the boomers before they do it.

Ok, I want that to happen, but why aren't Chinese EV already dominating in Europe? BYD has been there since 2021.