Comment by ZeroGravitas
1 day ago
Selling that many cars despite intense competition at home and trade barriers abroad seems the more natural way to express that story.
They instead focused on how in evil communist China you need to continue to make better cars than rivals in order for your business to succeed and grow.
What a strange system they have over there. If only they were capitalist like the US and being an incumbent connected to the regime was all you needed to keep extracting money from the population despite product stagnation.
Two things can be true at once:
1. BYD has rapidly surpassed many western companies in terms of product quality / desirability
2. Chinese automotive industry is a strategic threat to Western military capabilities. If they are successful in usurping European / American auto manufacturers, it will be a death blow to an already hollowed-out industrial base that is critical to any sustained military engagement.
So, yes, western companies have stagnated, and yes, the West needs to keep these dinosaurs around through subsidies (which Chinese manufacturers also receieve from their regime).
Re #2 -- locking Chinese vehicles out of the market will also lead to the downfall of our industrial base over time. In general, Americans (including those who work in US manufacturing) do not understand that Chinese vehicles are very competitive. At some point, those vehicles are likely to surpass domestic capabilities (they are already there viewed through a price/performance lens).
All of this is down to the simple fact that essentially no American has ever driven a Chinese vehicle and does not know anybody who has. They are not even getting secondhand reports. This is worse than the '80s when the Japanese makers arrived in the sense that in the '80s everybody could see the quality of the Toyotas and assess quality/performance for themselves. It's much worse to not even know how good the competition is.
From a business standpoint, it's especially bad for the domestic industry because the majors actually do need to be competitive in fast-growing regions like Latin America, Asia, and Africa. It's not a viable strategy to depend on protectionism at home while ceding countries where most people live.
Everyone's take on the 1980s has been perverted by an internet viewpoint written by a bunch of weeb fanboys projecting the state of the car market in 2006 onto 1985. The actual cores components of the cars themselves are basically within spitting distance for Japan vs Domestic. These were not high quality cars. They were all low quality cars. But Japan was making the king of low quality cars that people wanted. (And by 1990 all these early 1980s platforms from all makes were all comparatively trash).
In the late 1970s early 1980s if you tried to buy a compact american car it was like buying the burger at a fish restaurant or the vegetarian option at a steakhouse. It was there to check a box. It wasn't well thought out or a core product they gave a shit about and they were almost always last to get any innovations. You want power widows AND an automatic, sorry we'll have to special order that, we don't stock those on the lot.
In contrast, the Japanese gave a shit about those product lines. So someone making "In better times I'd be buying a bigger car from Chevy" money could go to them and get something configured how they wanted without being told no a bunch of times and the sales guy trying to get them into something bigger car didn't want like would happen at the Chevy dealer. Toyota or Honda or whoever literally didn't have those products to upsell you into. Yeah I guess they could sell you a landcruiser but people didn't buy SUVs then. That would be like trying to sell an Econoline to some rich woman who's shopping for a 3row Landrover.
At the end of the 1980s the domestics were basically back with their own new "modern" FWD platforms (e.g. Taurus) and new larger stuff (minivans, midsize SUVs) which made money hand over fist for 10yr or so. The Japanese were basically on the sidelines for all of this. Like yeah they had the 4Runner and Pathfinnder and Passport and stuff but no amount of 2020s fanboyism is gonna make those sales numbers any less of a joke. What the Japanese did do very well though was give a crap about their smaller cheaper offerings, Rav4s and CRVs and small and midsize sedans which the domestics neglected. So when the SUV craze came to an end with the high gas prices and bad economy of the mid-late 2000s they were there ready to be bought. And it's this great success from the mid 2000s that every idiot on the internet seems to want to project back into the 1980s when the 1980s were far different.
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If the US had a competent government they would react by pulling the same playbook as China to compete. Heavily subsidize and incentivize production of EVs by new companies to replace the rotten core of existing US automakers to produce price competitive and quality competitive vehicles, then let the old guard burn down.
Subsidizing the rotten core of corrupt US automakers will not produce a new or functional industrial base. It will simply maintain the illusion of an industrial base until anything of importance needs done. But that’s basically the MO of any “mature” industry in the US.
What you’re proposing is basically the EV subsidy, which got gutted because Americans got pissy about lifting a single finger to benefit anyone slightly more fortunate than themselves
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So the free hand of the market isn’t quite as free after all
If the 20th century was a repudiation of soviet communism vs capitalism, the 21st century seems to put capitalism on the backfoot
we keep saying these things while industry-after-industry gets disrupted by the chinese
Next industry to be disrupted is housing, because seemingly the entire western world has is not even trying to provide housing (a necessity) to everyone.
Subsidies are dangerous in the long term
Housing in the US is labor constrained. When I talk to GCs, subs, etc., they'll say that materials a bit more expensive, and labor is a bit more expensive; but what the complain about — and this can be for hours, if I get one going — is the complete lack of labor in all trades. This isn't a new problem; the "old hands" (GCs in the 60s and 70s) noted the labor drop out even 30+ years ago. The only saving grace we had was a strong trade force incoming population (immigrants); but, we've cut that off.
It wouldn't surprise me if our industry is also labor constrained? I know my brother had a machine shop to make aftermarket titanium parts for (motor)bikes, some cars, etc. He had a policy of nonstop looking for new machinists, even if he was fully staffed, because a machinist could just wander off at any time. With only 4 employees, he could find himself at at 25–50% loss of ship time in just a few days, at any time. It's not even like the machinists were getting more money. They'd just leave, because the new shop was 5m closer than his.
Fixing the labor pool issue is a decades long issue. More money in that pool won't fix things. I don't even know what's going on. Maybe I can just blame modern financialization for the issue? That seems easy, if wrong.
But, for sure, the complete lack of social safety net for labor can't be helping. Maybe if we guaranteed child care, 100% round-the-year safe spaces (we could use the fantastically expensive schools which are empty 75% of the time?), 3-free-meals-per-child, and free education through an associates degree? None of those are particularly expensive, even at the national scale.
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Chinese party members reading this thread, please get into modular housing construction in a form that can be shipped to the USA and acceptable to the average person (so not mobile home/trailer park style stuff).
If you hit us with sucking funds from the housing market you will gut our economy even more, and there is zero support in the US to protect homebuilders right now when the two younger generations can't afford their product. If you offered a bad ass modular housing system that could quickly/cheaply build decent homes (current US Spec grade or higher) that might get really interesting.
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