← Back to context

Comment by Tiktaalik

21 hours ago

The explanation that I'm finding more and more compelling is that this is because there's actual competition in China, whereas in the west conglomerates have been able to carve up the market into fiefdoms and feast, with increasing amounts of cash that they can funnel into dividends and buybacks.

From the NA vehicle POV it doesn't look healthy. Stocks of the major auto makers have done well this year, while product gets more and more expensive and limited. Barely seems possible to buy anything but a F150like anymore.

Western corporations optimise for share price. The way to do that is by pulling strings at the government level to block your competitors and by getting nice tax breaks; not by having the best product for the consumer.

China and Chinese companies still want to shake off the "China means bad quality" image, so they actually want to make a great product at a good price for the consumer. To-the-moon share price growth doesn't happen by giving your customers a good deal.

Also the CCP doesn't want corporations forgetting who calls the shots, so there is some internal pressure keeping things less "frothy" than Western markets (where most governments are running scared of the big global corps).

Outside of EVs and more broadly China rates near the bottom for market freedom

https://gfmag.com/data/economic-freedom-by-country/

If the broader market is rigged, investors don’t rush in for just one segment.

  • It's not so much that the broader market is rigged. It's that every major industrial hub funds its own player: BYD (Shenzhen), NIO (Hefei), GAC Aion (Guangzhou), SAIC (Shanghai), etc. It might seem "rigged" to a westerner because it's so subsidized but China has a LOT of industrial hubs and therefore a lot of competition.

    The US also heavily subsidizes EVs but the subsidies mostly only go to one company. Just take a look at the mind-boggling amount of subsidies we've given to Tesla both federally and on a state-by-state basis. Nevada's almost 2$ billion being the most blatant https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc

  • Interesting definition of freedom. The top three countries happen to be the places most permissive to international tax dodgers.

    • > produced by the Heritage Foundation

      > Twelve are the factors related to four key aspects of the economic environment that are graded from 0 to 100 and averaged to determine a country’s score: rule of law (and related sub-categories: property rights, government integrity, judicial effectiveness); government size (government spending, tax burden, fiscal health); regulatory efficiency (business, labor and monetary freedom); open markets (trade, investment and financial freedom).

      Quite the definition they made up.

      1 reply →

    • What do you mean by tax dodgers?

      The US allows much more tax dodging than Singapore, for example. Try not paying your taxes or violating any other law in Singapore any time, if you want to find out.

      1 reply →