this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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This is one of the reason that the USA being heavy handed with Chinese is going to bite us in the ass. While in the USA, we bury our heads in the sand and GM, Tesla and etc. all crank out $95,000 giant trucks/SUVs, some companies in China are making very, very affordable vehicles. These aren't necessarily garbage either -- there's models available for almost any price point.
What WOULD be really smart and forward thinking is if in the USA, the domestic brands also make some affordable models to get EV more popular. However, they are addicted to fat profit margins, and thanks to all the protectionism, they don't need to worry about offshore models being "better".
While other nations either develop and/or import affordable EVs, we're effectively banning them. This is all going to end up with a giant wake up call for American auto-manufacturers when the protections/tariffs are ultimately lifted and they HAVE to compete.
I think it would be great if the tariffs came with huge incentives for domestic manufacturers and motivated them to be competitive. Instead, it's just letting them segment the market for a few years and make a killing. Who loses? The people...
These cars are passing EU safety tests which are generally more demanding than the USA.
They are definitely getting good, fast.
Not just people, the economy will end up paying the price.
Tariffs have horrible second order effects.
Every companies outputs is some other companies inputs.
American companies end up locked out of more affordable vehicles as inputs. That cost then gets baked into its output, which is some other company’s input. Then just keep following that chain.
The best broad blanket tariffs can hope to do is trade long term competitiveness for some short term price increase.
Americans will wonder why other nations eat our lunch in the coming decades. Well that foreign company could buy the cheaper machine to produce the widget, their raw materials cost less to deliver because the transit company that ships it in charges a better rate because they have lower vehicle overhead. Since they have 2 dozen suppliers for their components both foreign and domestic they are forced to compete on quality and price.
American companies will become even more bloated and inefficient
This is the real reason for tarrifs. Forcing citizens into paying ridiculous prices so biliionares can circle jerk about how much more power they can get. They're scourges and bottomless voids of resources and misery.
It was just like what happened to the American auto industry before. Instead of listening to the market, we tell the market what they should buy.
We are losing our edge. People don't want expensive cars. They want affordable, reliable cars. It was just like earlier Japanese cars. Japan is losing their edge too.
Honda is too unreliable. I won't buy Honda again.