There’s No Easy Answer to Chinese EVs

The US has had all the time in the world to develop electric vehicles but decided to self-sabotage multiple times in the name of profits, from GM trashing their EV1s in the 90s to the current trend of the auto companies lobbying for tax credits and then jacking up EV prices to eat up that whole credit and then some. Outsourcing manufacturing wasn't an issue when US companies could pocket huge profits, but it's suddenly a problem when it could mean customers get lower prices? Fuck that, bring on the cheap vehicles. Restricting Chinese EVs will do nothing but keep US companies complacent with jacked up prices.

We can't compete with China on price, but do we need to? I don't think it matters if our cars are more expensive than Chinese cars, what matters is: can Americans afford to buy American cars? If Americans can't afford to buy American made products, our industrial renaissance will fail.

Labor is usually one of the biggest costs of making things. Our laborers need to make more than Chinese laborers because our cost of living is higher. We went from a country that made stuff to a country that generated a lot of its growth from inflating the value of assets and charging rents. As a result, the cost of living, especially housing, has gone up considerably, relative to wages. If we bring down the cost of living, housing especially, it will prevent labor costs from ballooning out of control. But, while this will help with affordability, it won't be enough on its own. We'll have to find other ways to cut costs, as well.

There is a lot of waste and bloat in our economy, we need to streamline. We need to eliminate inefficiencies wherever possible. We need to eliminate needless middlemen who just jack up prices, and we need to allow consumers to buy directly from manufacturers. We also need to reign in executive pay, and we need to get rid of shareholders who do nothing but sit back and collect passive income. We need to boost productive work and reduce, or eliminate, all of the non productive, rent seeking behavior.

So maybe giving a ton of subsidies with little strings attached to what essentially is only Tesla was not a good move. Maybe if those subsidies were targeted just a bit better to steer them towards more societally beneficial goals might have made that instead of giving a ton of money to Musk to buy and fuck up some random social media website, they could have given that same money to battery manufacturers.

This wound is more self-inflicted if anything, it's just that the US actually believed its own kool-aid that they are the best at innovation because of "capitalism", and other places are just never going to be able to compete. Tariffs won't help either. The US will either catch up or be left behind. It will hurt either way, but isolating will only let the wound fester.

BTW, as a European, this is how it feels like to be on the receiving end of Big Tech. Any attempt of trying to curb the influence of what essentially is a foreign power pouring limitless resources into a key industry is going to be taken as anti-competitive protectionist idiocy, and you will just be chastised that "well, you are just envious of China, because they don't have the low-growth policies that stifle your innovation and growth!"

Maybe free trade should include Union protections and shouldn't be extended to places where workers aren't allowed to orginize and strike?

I'm surprised the article didn't go into the other factor in this dilemma: the National security angle. As we can from the past few years that car companies are becoming tech companies and tech companies become advertising companies. Mozilla released a report not too long ago that new cars these days are constantly collecting data. It would be like TikTok all over again. Allowing a hostile foreign country free rein to collect data on Americans and to use that information against us. But unlike TikTok, you just can't ban a physical object like you can software.

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