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I'm hoping Mexico can pull off a similar trick wrt the US's ongoing anti-Chinese protectionism.
"No no this EV didn't come from China, it came from our maquiladoras! Totally different."
In Brazil people go to Paraguay (or used to, idk) to buy stuff from China, they have less taxes on imports, and because of Mercosul it's possible to cross the border, buy stuff and come back, mostly not being taxed. I'm imagining people traveling to mexico, buying a car and coming back, even though that wouldn't be possible, for many reasons
I'm imagining people traveling to mexico, buying a car and coming back, even though that wouldn't be possible, for many reasons
I think it would be possible. People can legally enter with their cars registered in Mexico and not sold in the US through the land border. The only thing is you'll probably need to keep it registered in Mexico because the US may block you from registering it here, if you're trying to bring one over to use permanently. So, if you can keep one registered there but keep here, then it may be possible.
Anyway, Mexicans will be able to drive them over more than likely. US doesn't block Mexicans driving 'Mexican' cars. I've seen cars with Mexican plates all over the US. We'll soon be taken over by superior, affordable Chinese EVs driven by Mexicans.
That would be really fucking funny not gonna lie
It's not practical. I looked into it once on a related matter and unless you're a US state dept employee or member of the military, the fees and taxes on importing and registering a car bought outside the US are astronomically high, like the cost of the car all over again, tens of thousands of dollars. The US has very specific and nit-picky safety standards. It's not a matter of meet or exceed, it's a matter of meet and don't exceed the limits imposed by law or regulation so you can't buy and bring over a European car that has better safety features if they don't meet US standards, so in that case you have to pay a specialty mechanic to adapt your car to US standards. And even if the standards are met exactly there are huge taxes and fees on it to discourage people importing cheaper cars. This is not the first US rodeo with protectionism for US car companies, they did this whole thing with Japan in the 90s and the Japanese eventually just did bulk importing and then later set up US plants for making the cars to get even lower costs.
Those for whom it might be practical would represent a few hundred thousand, maybe a million or two people who live very close to the Mexico border and don't just not registering in the US and dealing with the Mexican paperwork regularly.
Wow, that's so much worse than what I thought would be just not worth the hassle. I guess if they ramp up the taxes on other things, maybe it'll be worth buying them there instead, but cars are not easy, yeah
it does look like that's very likely to happen :)