Comment by softwaredoug
5 hours ago
This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking. Rent seeking in the long run is brittle. You get a little security now for loss of competitiveness in the future - once the rent seeking goes away, you’re screwed. You haven’t had to compete, so you haven’t adapted. Consumers flee because they’ve just tolerated you - they actively dislike being forced into fewer choices
Rent seeking is industry suicide. It feels like it helps, but it’s not solving the real problem.
At a certain level it can lead otherwise competitive companies to rest on their laurels.
On another level, it would be game over without them. For example, US shipyards would simply stop existing without protection. There is no management strategy or measure they could implement that could compete with Asian shipyards.
The theory is that in both cases (ie. with and without tariffs) shipyards are going to die sooner or later. It is better for the society to let them die as soon as possible and direct efforts to things we are better at while taking advantage of cheaper ships produced elsewhere.
just don't outsource your means of defense!
1 reply →
Sure I can see the argument for national security. And to balance out Chinese companies own rent seeking.
OTOH still strategically it’s not great. As the Asian companies have an actual market, this will lead Asian manufacturers to have better ships than comparable US ones.
So then why has china had tariffs on American cars? 15 percent before trumps 2nd term where it skyrocketed to over 125%.
If tariffs are so bad for America why do other countries have tariffs on American cars?
The way China approached their internal market for EVs is very different.
They didn't just put tariffs on foreign EVs, they poured a lot of money into their own industry to produce a lot of different companies that became fiercely competitive in their own local market.
Once they got a few big players they stop a lot of the subsidies which led to a lot of companies falling under but at the same time the process produced some really good, competitive and profitable companies like BYD which then were ready to take on the international market.
America, on the other hand, hasn't done much to increase the competitiveness of their own internal market for EVs. Hence, the protectionist measures will have the consequences the poster above described.
Tariffs are not "good" or "bad" they're an economic tool countries can use. It's how you use the tool and in conjunction with which other tools that can have negative or positive consequences for the industry they're applying it to.
It's like "america uses a scalpel to peel oranges" versus "China uses a scalpel in open heart surgeries". The scalpel can cut, but context matters to say if it was used properly or not.
Ok but this thread is about “all tariffs being rent seeking”. Now tariffs are sometimes ok - gotcha.
What has china actually don’t different than America? Was a 10-15 percent subsidy not enough? Were the carbon credits not enough? We’re the limitations on gas cars dependent on ev sales not enough?
As far as I’m aware both china and the us have heavily subsidized ev sales. What’s different?
> This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers. Tarriffs are rent seeking.
tarriffs are visible protective regulation, China protects its domestic markets through different type of regulations for decades.
And now Chinese people can buy higher quality products for cheaper than Americans can.
I agree, and it's also worth pointing out the EV market has been artificially buoyed by the use of state-funded incentives to buy electric cars, and we know this because now that those incentives are ending, EV sales are cratering.
In a vacuum, I don't hate the idea of paying people to switch to EV's who can do it, but the problem is especially in America, those benefits are going not to working class people who really need new cars (and who's cars are the most environmentally problematic) but to solidly upper-middle class buyers of incredibly large and impractical EV's which are either sports cars or suburban panzers, that rip through tires and consume vast amounts of lithium for their enormous battery packs, and beat the shit out of our already deteriorating roads.
Additionally we're finding that EV's have a major, probably unsolvable issue: they age much, much faster than ICE vehicles in one particular area: the battery. EV's have the same problem as cellphones effectively; their cells deteriorate with use, and unlike used ICE vehicles for which parts are widely available and usually cheap, it's not even remotely economically feasible to repair this issue. Replacing a battery costs so much you might as well just replace the entire car.
you're just repeating a list of tired anti-ev propoganda points, that have been debunked over and over.
- they're not much that much heavier, class-for-class. Substantially lighter than the ridiculous ly oversized trucks that people buy for suburban use.
- Theres nearly infinite lithium in the world, depending on economics of extraction. new battery chemistries dont even use lithium.
- battery degradation hasnt turned out to be a big issue. Real world tesla data shows ~80% capacity at ~300k miles, which is approaching EOL for a car.
working class people cant buy cheap EVs because the US keeps cheap EVs out of the market with import restrictions, tarriffs and legacy manufacturers that refuse to adapt and offer a product people want. EV sales "cratered" for the same reason. Meanwhile, EV sales in the rest of the world are accelerating fast.
Bezos has a cheap EV company that looks promising.
https://www.slate.auto/en
You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying "EVs are bad, stick with ICE." I'm saying EVs are not solving the broader issues of why car dependency is a bad idea for transporting people at scale, which is what they were proposed to do. Having everyone own their own car and drive themselves everywhere does not nor has it ever scaled properly, which is why we continue struggling with urban sprawl, lack of parking, smog and particulates, and all the rest.
EV's just shift the energy burden from the fossil fuel industry to the power grid. It's not a fix, it barely qualifies as a band-aid.
> buoyed by the use of state-funded incentives to buy electric cars, and we know this because now that those incentives are ending, EV sales are cratering.
Oil subsidies are so interwoven with the way the US works that this is easy to miss in these discussions, but if not for these subsidies ICE vehicles would be much more expensive:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...
>> This is just going to hurt US car manufacturers.
still don't understand why this is going to hurt US car manufacturers. Have the Japanese auto imports improved the US auto industry past 40+ years? Is Ford or GM more competitive? The US automakers are highly competitive in large vehicle/truck segments, protected under the Chicken Tax past 60+ years, but they barely have any presence left in small, cheaper segments dominated by the Japanese and Koreans. Farley recently said Ford has shifted its focus from affordable, mass-market cars because it couldn't compete against the Japanese/Koreans.
Just not convinced that allowing autos from another auto industry built on forced joint venture/tech transfer, illegal (export/local content) subsidies, or otherwise benefited tremendously from the very same rent-seeking policies themselves past 15 years is solving the real problem.
Japanese competition has absolutely improved US car manufacturers.
They have leaner assembly lines. More sophisticated supply chain. They now make a product that it turns out people want (reliable/economy)
One big one to consumers is the focus on long term reliability. This was a complete joke in the 1980s-1990s for US cars. Everyone knew Toyota and Honda would last 300k miles and an American car would crap out at 80k miles. We are in a completely new world of more consistent reliability with cars. Even if Ford is 90% Toyota - that’s a much better place to be.
Everyone wanted trade barriers in the 80s and 90s but without the pain of competition our cars would feel like the modern equivalent of a bad Eastern European shitbox - only optimized for power and not economy.
>> They now make a product that it turns out people want (reliable/economy)
Sure, Ford has always made cars that their customers want, F-150 for instance, for an unbroken streak of nearly 50 years. Again,
>> One big one to consumers is the focus on long term reliability.
Sure, I don't doubt the Japanese automakers' reliability, but, in the cheap, small vehicle segments they compete with the Japanese import, the American automakers are now more or less wiped out. Most of GM and Ford small vehicles are made in either Mexico or South Korea. So where is their "competitiveness" that otherwise wouldn't exist without the foreign imports?
In other word, the Japanese imports did not prevent the "loss of competitiveness in the future." And if the America's competitiveness is doomed either way, why allow Chinese EV imports to accelerate the industry's doom?
>> Rent seeking is industry suicide.
If it's as bad as you say it is, why turn a blind to China's rent seeking past 15 year and promote their industry, again which benefited tremendously from forced joint venture/tech transfer, local content rules, local sourcing, local production, high-tariffs, etc?