• Ech@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Aside from the fears about their government and car software (whatever side you’re on, you’re probably not being convinced otherwise), Biden wants to encourage domestic production. Hard to do that when China is undercutting the costs and prices here. Just look at the collapse of the US steel industry to see similar situations.

    • paysrenttobirds
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      9 months ago

      Domestic producers seem to be actively hostile to this type of car (small, cheap) no matter who produces it. This isn’t Biden vs China, it’s domestic car companies vs their own customers and Biden is just another member of their team.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        Domestic car makers are making the same mistake now that they did in the 1970s. They’re making giant, wasteful cars and as soon as they start competing with foreign carmakers they’ll have to scramble to make small cars, make terrible ones, and then we’ll have to bail them out again.

    • mommykink@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Encourage domestic production

      As if the domestic makers aren’t 90% Chinese parts anyway.

      It’s because the domestic makers know that people in America want better cars but want to keep their profit margins. So they collude with one-another to make it so that every automaker makes a fuckhuge AWD, CVT, $29,999 starting MSRP (plus dealer tip) crossover POS so that there’s no competition and the only choice is what color logo you want on the grille of your planetkiller freedom machine.

      These corporate socialists are terrified of an actually free economy because they know how much we hate their product

      • Ech@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        As if the domestic makers aren’t 90% Chinese parts anyway.

        Hence the steel production collapse I mentioned.

        There’s something to be said about subsidizing corporate profits, but there is a limit to how much they can compete with production from places like China that have notoriously cheap production. Especially if we also take wage issues in the US into consideration. It’s not cheap to pay affordable wages.

        As for the type of cars built domestically, I can only imagine that local ev competition would help crib the “planet killers”. Foreign cars are hardly going to change that.

        • mommykink@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          There’s something to be said about subsidizing corporate profits

          There’s everything to say about this. Taxpayers have bailed out the Big Three how many times now? Ford, GM, and Stellantis should have gone bankrupt 10x over. Maybe we could’ve actually had a pro-consumer domestic market and not the hostage situation we have now with their lobbyists fixing congress for the past century.

          As for the type of cars built domestically, I can only imagine that local ev competition would help crib the “planet killers”. Foreign cars are hardly going to change that

          Kinda like how the domestic makers handicapped EV adoption at every step for the past three decades? They have absolutely no interest in providing good, reliable, and sustainable cars for people. The profits are in massive, energy inefficient, loaded with who-asked-for-this? ‘‘features’’ and they know full well that the only way to sell these to people is by making fair competition illegal.

          • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Taxpayers have bailed out the Big Three how many times now? Ford, GM, and Stellantis should have gone bankrupt 10x over

            Um… Ford never was bailed out. GM was bailed out once. Stellantis / Chrysler was also bailed out once.

            Finally, the US Government made money with the bailout. Hard to criticize the situation when we made a profit / removed some of our debt over it.

            I’d do it again, frankly. Sometimes people need a loan, the loan terms were good and beneficial, and we made money from it. What is there to complain about?

            https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-of-bailouts-of-automakers-and-wall-street.html

            In all, through TARP and other efforts, taxpayers injected $426.35 billion into banks and auto companies. The sale of stock and interest payments brought in $441.7 billion.

            • mommykink@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              So two full “we cant even hide this one, its a bailout” bailouts? Plus, however, many times that the Big Three should’ve gone bankrupt if not for lobbying Congress? Look at how scared they are over affordable EVs entering the market because they know how quick they’d go under if they had some actual competition.

              The second point is intentionally misleading. The source shows that “we” (not me) made a profit (3% over six years isn’t a profit, it’s inflation) off auto and bank bailouts. How much damage has been caused by the Big Three since they learned they could run their companies directly against the desires of the market and get away with it?

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        every automaker makes a fuckhuge AWD, CVT, $29,999 starting MSRP (plus dealer tip) crossover POS

        That’s not true. They also make fuckhuge SUVs and trucks, but those start at $50k plus dealer markup.

  • dan1101@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    We need control over what all cars transmit and receive, not just Chinese ones.

    I’m all for Chinese EVs, they are the only ones affordable enough for me to try one without going into major debt.