Comment by cogman10
5 hours ago
The US could have had a competitive manufacturing industry, but we traded it for cheap offshore labor.
That destruction has been ongoing since the 90s. We've hollowed out our ability to make things.
We basically focused on the exact wrong things which has put us in a pretty vulnerable geopolitical position. Rather than trying to bring resources into the US to aid manufacturing, we tried to bring finished goods into the US at a lower price.
China has done basically the opposite. They've focused on bring raw resources into china while centralizing manufacturing. That's what has turned them into the global powerhouse they are when it comes to producing everything.
For the US to turn this around, tariffs would have been in order, but they needed to be pretty focused and with internal plans on building out the industries we wanted to grow.
Doing tariffs first without building manufacturing was just dumb.
US car companies became banks that happen to make cars.
How much would you like to pay for that 80k new truck? Sure, we can give you that monthly payment, lets just structure it as a 10-year loan where you end up paying twice that on a rapidly depreciating asset. Boom, we've just sold two cars and only had to manufacture one.
We have manufacturing capacity here! Some of this is simply down to US automakers choosing high-margin SUVs and trucks over cars (most US auto brands do not offer a single car).
Basically only Tesla offers any car that is even similar to the extremely popular Toyota Camry. No US maker offers a compact car anymore.
Honestly, I don't think the immediate impact of dropping tariffs on Chinese vehicles would be as dire for the US automakers because the Chinese vehicles largely sell into noncompetitive segments. I don't doubt that the F-150s and Silverados can coexist with BYD sedans.
Yeah, the US auto industry appears to have shoehorned itself into pickup trucks.
Fine, so let BYD come in with compacts, sedans, electrics.
It'll be interesting to see if US auto manufacturers were right that Americans only want trucks and SUVs.