Comment by ceejayoz
6 hours ago
> The reason we can't buy BYD cars is because if we allowed it without restrictions, it would utterly and completely destroy the United States auto industry. That's terrible public policy, and we should not allow it.
Yeah, that was the argument against Japanese car makers, too.
A shitty system needs destroying sometimes. Competition from Toyota/Honda was critical in making US auto makers up their game.
It is terrible public policy to fall decades behind making expensive shitty versions of what the rest of the world has.
It's not like I don't understand the argument on the other side of this. I've heard it my entire life. It's been dominant since the late 1970s and 1980s.
It's just that it's wrong.
We need a competent industrial policy and support for skilled labor and policies that encourage domestic production.
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but our country has become fucked, overwhelmed by financialization, scams, monopoly rents and extraction, and all of the wealth accumulating to a handful of people, while we've become less resilient and, at this point, almost certainly have lost our place as the most dominant economy and industrial power in the world.
> We need a competent industrial policy and support for skilled labor and policies that encourage domestic production.
Yes!
But "tariff/ban BYD" is not that.
Of course it is part of an industrial policy. It is, however, not nearly sufficient, and if it's the only thing we do, it will become increasingly untenable and eventually fail.
But it's an essential first step to prevent our audio industry from just being summarily destroyed. Other steps are also needed to encourage domestic manufacturing and homegrown successes.
Also, I'm not sure why this is even controversial. Why do you think there's BMW and Hyundai plants in the American South? Tariffs are already heavily employed by us and every other industrialized country.
IMO the problem is that we've been given the excuse of market fundamentalism for the past several decades on the way down, as most everyone lost their middle class jobs, wages stagnated, etc. Now we're supposed to accept some last ditch attempt at protectionism based on directly blocking choices for consumers, when the US manufacturers aren't even really competing? It just seems like open hypocrisy. At this point the reasonable protectionist policy would be based around subsidizing American industry so that they become competitive options, not merely trying to keep the better foreign options out.
Every single load of bullshit shuffled into our faces has been presented as a benefit to consumers.
Google gives away their search and Gmail for free, don't you know? So it can't possibly be a monopoly.
And so on. It's just propaganda. It's bullshit. That's not the way that you determine whether firms have excess market power, and this fraud (called "the consumer welfare standard") was the deliberate choice of right-wing policymakers who were bent on dismantling antitrust policies and succeeded.
More: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-secret-plot-to-unleas...
automotive platforms are a key military asset it's not like the pokemon dildo industry, if you stop building jeeps your abolity to bully third parties is diminished
Pokémon dildo factory should retool easily into a track-and-destroy-jeeps drone factory
> automotive platforms are a key military asset
All the more reason not to save companies that can't compete in the global space. What good is a jeep that the Chinese laugh at?
You think people laughing is an important metric versus having an integrated industrial facility capable of producing vehicles in large quantities?
Maybe start at the beginning. Where do you think power comes from in the world? I'll give you a hint. It's not the ability to construct narratives.
10 replies →
it is not anymore, because US doctrine has changed after losing war in Vietnam.
US can no longer sustain massive motorized and armored forces, because it implies heavy casualty rate.
The doctrine changed to shock&awe and lobbing standoff munitions from far away, which we all saw in Iran (and how it turned out).
US strictly protects boomers at Big Three and their regional dealerships and the entire supply chain that makes money off of financing, extended warranty, selling overpriced parts, overpriced heavy vehicles, etc