Why is Biden blocking the cheapest, most popular EVs in the world?
Why is Biden blocking the cheapest, most popular EVs in the world?
www.vox.com
Why is Biden blocking the cheapest, most popular EVs in the world?
101 comments
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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.
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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.
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Killing the planet so you can be ready for war.
God bless America.
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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.
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At this point, I'd say the consumer drone industry can switch over the fastest.
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Almost like the US are acting in their own interests.
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Well china is completely anti free market.so I'm actually surprised more countries aren't charging more tarrifs on them. Also, I don't think most major countries are completely protectionist free.
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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/
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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.
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Just a small correction: The sales numbers are 15 million, not 150 million.
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Like, if Biden is doing this to protect jobs, it’s protecting jobs that went to Mexico decades ago.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates about 1 million people in automotive manufacturing (including parts manufacturing) and 2 more million in sales (including auto parts sales, 1.5 million excluding sales) that's a lot of people concentrated in rust belt swing states who would see job instability by foreign vehicles entering the market at race-to-the-bottom prices and quality.
https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm#iag31cesnsaemp.f.p
If you expand the scope to all manufacturing jobs (because auto manufacturing doesn't exist in a vacuum and actions taken to affect the auto industry will also have some effect to most if not all manufacturing industries) that grows to about 13 million jobs
On an unrelated note, they also indicate about 200,000 unfilled job openings in manufacturing every month indicating the industry has a desire to grow but lacks the humanpower to do so.
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Ah yes, any country from the EU. Like the made in Balkan vehicles with those adidas stripes 👌
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The stripes add 10 horsepower.
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Prove me wrong that this has nothing to do with the fact that China became the world's biggest auto exporter last year and this is a desperate way for the US to try to protect their own auto industry.
Free market, my bottom.
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Well, it's more than that. China is actively trying to dump on the market. Selling things at a loss so they can kill and steal market share.
Sorta what Amazon did early on but on a global scale.
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You do realise that you have described just now what all startups are doing in the US. Like look at WhatsApp, Facebook, etc. they were working for years if not decades on a massive loss in an attempt to more or less monopolize the segment, backed by the deep pockets of their investors.
And I think it is only fair if you demand the same level of scrutiny to all companies involved in such practices.
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Just Amazon? lol
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Is amazon even much of a thing outside the US? Like here in Europe they have like 2 places they ship from and it takes a week to arrive and costs 10x as much as ordering from a local online store. I don't really know anyone who uses amazon regularly.
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This would be valid if... China was dumping. They're not. They're selling far above unit costs. In fact, their export models are often double or triple the price of domestic models of the same car.
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It's obviously protectionist who said otherwise? Let China sell their cars to friendly nations, oh wait...
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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.
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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.
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Every accusation a confession.
They accuse China of doing it because it's what they are or would do.
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You also likely have Michigan as a swing state this year, which means protecting the American auto industry.
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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.
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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.
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Fossil fuel production is the only reason he can say the economy is doing well.
We have record breaking production levels
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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.
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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.
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Boomer bad!
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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.
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That's such a naive bleeding heart take. If you look at the numbers, every American is making more than ever on average.
So problem solved, we're killing it. No need for a second metric or to think about the implications of that statement any further.
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because US can't compete with China
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Because China bad, obviously
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Racism and chauvinism with corruption and cronyism mixed in
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America numba one!
In oil production
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literally this https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6
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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.
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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.
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I mean we see their cheap shitty batteries catching on fire in bikes, hoverboards, phones, laptops.. Can you imagine their cars going up in flames?
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Yeah, that's and that's "reputable company" ... Just wait until it's RECOMBAXCKS or whatever hey will sell on amazing n.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Tesla car in Texas catches on fire overnight
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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Let me picture it... weird, it looks like a Tesla.
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BYD is excellent at making batteries, we have their cars n Australia and they're pretty popular, i think even beating Tesla now, We have more stringent safety protocols than in USA too. So this isn't the reason.
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Not surprised, considering the equivalent tariffs on the import of solar modules under Biden, Trump and Obama.
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Commence downvotes butthurt tankies.
I'm honestly confused about who the tankies are supposed to be at this point. Downvotes for what?
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It costs more to own because it loses value more quickly... You mean, like all EVs? Or were you talking about the car losing half of its value the minute it drives off the lot?
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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.
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Correct, the person who has the power to change this right now gets in the title, because they have the power to change this right now and choose not to.
Same with every policy Bush/Obama/Trump admins implemented yet Biden maintains, from torture facilities in foreign countries to blowing up children in Yemen to increased restrictions of Cuba.
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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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Well he is a politician, so its fairly likely this is something politicial...
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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!
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Biden has to lead an increase in charging infrastructure. By the time that was underway (and automakers made some realistic affordable EVs) I think things would change.
And trucks with clean diesel genny powered plug-in Hybrids.
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Because he's a neoliberal, beholden to mega-doners, career politician. He's also A-OK with genocide until it costs him points in an election year.
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Biden might do a lot of neoliberal stuff, but tariffs are not exactly the most neoliberal thing in the world.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/neoliberalism
A good example of neoliberal trade policies would be something that reduced or eliminated tariffs and encourages a free market race to the bottom for cheap labor.
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He’s also A-OK with genocide until it costs him points in an election year.
No, he's quite OK with genocide even when it costs him points in an election year, hence why he continues to facilitate genocide in an election year.
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They probably don’t meet US safety requirements?
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Because GenocideJoe is a sore loser.
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They title is reserved for Zionist genocidal maniacs like bibi
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Ah yes, I am pretty sure that China is dying to know where you go over the weekends.
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My dude they have been explicitly caught with hidden police departments in multiple countries on the planet. They cannot and should not be trusted with data collection. Neither should the US, the UK, or many other countries.
The world needs serious data collection reform, a fucking TV or car should not require a network connection or an EULA to operate.
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101 comments