We can’t let stopping climate change get in the way of capitalism!
That’s protectionism, not capitalism.
Tomato, tomato. The free market is a myth, there is no part of the economy that goes without manipulation. Anytime business owners can’t directly manipulate the market themselves they bribe governments to do it on their behalf.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that a pure free market exists.
Having a capitalist economy doesn’t mean that you have a pure free market anyway.
Although there are libertarians that would like to have a free market like that, every capitalist economy has regulations in place in an attempt to prevent monopolies and/or businesses having too much power in one area.
That’s no true Scotsman.
No, protectionism exists outside of capitalism and even somewhat goes against the idea of capitalism, especially the free market kind.
That’s theoretical capitalism, in practice there is no free market.
That’s no true Scotsman.
Bait or brain damage. Call it
Ooh, good point.
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These go right against our goals to increase use of solar and EVs. ☹️
Really important for world emissions for the US specifically to transition to EVs too, considering it has the highest per capita road emissions in the world.
Most of that is because we truck everything and trains only get used for extreme bulk like coal
We can thank the US oil and auto industries (the same ones dictating these green energy tariffs to their political puppets), for that too.
The big pickup trucks and large SUVs dont help either.
Don’t forget overloading them with hazardous materials, only to eventually inevitably crash and cause another social, economic, and climate disaster!
Edit, guess I was wrong
Most east Asian countries are fairly low down on the list. They have excellent public transport, the world’s best high-speed rail networks, and a significant number of road vehicles are already electric.
China has a lot of capita. Most of them dont have cars.
China is mostly building rail to solve its transportation issues, so this is completely unsurprising.
Cope lol
EVs are expected to reach 45% marketshare in 2024 in CN. Also I guess you haven’t seen their high speed rail network expand over the last decade (pressuring their car market in general). Then you have a lot of capita. So yes the numbers make sense.
It does sadly. On the flip side, China seems to be trying to capture car manufacturing markets by subsidizing their producers. This would probably be a bad thing in the future if allowed. Hopefully the US government does more work on making it easier to purchase electric cars in the US(specifically the price) while also reducing the need for driving.
What exactly is wrong with a country subsidizing green energy products? Not only that, but making them available cheaply to other countries?
The US Government doesn’t want US automakers to lose market share so that they have plenty of manufacturing capacity that could be retooled to make weapons in case of war.
Makes sense. Also petro-profits.
When a trillion dollars a year doesn’t commit enough warcrimes :(
I’m not precisely sure where I stand on this, but I understand the primary policy arguments for this decision would be something like this:
The problem comes later, when a specific actor has an outsized market share and then exploits their trade advantage for other concessions.
It also prohibits domestic competition for those products, especially in countries with high standards of living and wages. This negates competition and innovation, since most corporations don’t have the ability to compete with an entity with the capacity to eat cost like the Chinese government.
The point of trade decisions, is to import products you don’t have enough domestic production to cover the demand for.
We know that the US auto and oil industries have no sincere desire to build EVs anyway (or any green industry whatsoever), because they did their best to kill their domestic production of EVs in the 90s, and there’s no US industry for solar panels.
This is all just part of the US’s trade war with China, that is prioritizing the profits of its auto and oil industries over the wellbeing of the environment, and the desires of its citizens for electric vehicles.
I can’t say I disagree with anything you’ve said. It really is silly, given the US auto manufacturer industry’s continuous fuck ups, and pulling out of EVs. But hopefully this makes risk taking more likely in other countries’ car industries to move into the US market. Tesla seemed close to really catching on, but then again EVs have always been seen as “elite” here.
But I suppose the question is whether there is that much demand for EVs? This could protect what demand there is, to at least make an even playing field for US or US ally made EVs.
Speaking to your first point: users of Lemmy aside, I don’t think there’s that much demand for pure electric vehicle yet across the US. We so routinely travel such long distances here, and charging infrastructure just isn’t quite there outside of urban corridors to facilitate the easy usage of fully electric vehicles.
So hopefully this can protect domestic or other countries’ industries until the idiots that comprise the US consumer market catch up to global realities.
it undermines any less subsidized green energy industry which can lead to monopolies in the long run.
They’re oversaturating the market with low-quality products. This can be a significant problem when there are safety implications.
I’m sorry but this argument doesn’t make sense. Don’t you have safety rules in the US? If the Chinese cars aren’t safe to drive nobody should be authorized to drive them in the first place. If they are safe, no need for tariffs then.
This decision has absolutely nothing to do with alleged poor manufacturing quality. It’s protectionism, pure and simple.
Why can’t they just certify cars based on safety and ban unsafe ones instead of blanket ban the entire segment of them. It certainly helps the adoption of EV among masses.
This is what the NHTSA has done since its formation in 1970.
It sounds you’re still stuck in the 1990s. Where do our iPhones and other smartphones and our laptops come from? Where do many of the parts in our cars come from? What country has more high speed rail than every other combined? What country has its own space station?
The Chinese cars are probably much safer on the road then the huge pedestrian killing machines built by US manufacturers.
Truck SUV moment:
Also no US auto-manufacturer is going all in on EVs, they’re all mostly building gas-guzzling oversized trucks and SUVs. US automakers intentionally killed EVs in the 90s, and hoped no other country would start building them.
Also no US auto-manufacturer is going all in on EVs
Tesla? Rivian? Lucid? Faraday? Fisker?
To be clear, yes, of course I understand that those are all luxury brands, but that doesn’t make your statement any less false.
No, the major auto manufacturers aren’t going all-in on EVs, but that are all getting deeper every year. There’s no reason to expect that progress to slow down, as they’re all quite entrenched in the technology at this point.
Average new car cost is $55,821, and average cost of ownership is $12,182.
The American manufacturers do not want lower prices. Dealerships don’t like electrics because there’s less maintenance.
Tesla? Rivian? Lucid? Faraday? Fisker?
To be clear, yes, of course I understand that those are all luxury brands, but that doesn’t make your statement any less false.
I mean, of course the explicitly EV-making startups are going to be all-in on EVs. The distinguishing feature that makes them not count compared to [established] US auto manufacturers isn’t that their stuff is luxury, it’s that they didn’t exist before and have no previous internal-combustion product line to pivot away from.
What companies have gone all in on EV making that isn’t a relatively new company/startup?
While true, the cost differentials go much deeper, and they affect all products & services.
Michael Hudson: America’s Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China’s Industrial Socialism
I’d rather we ensure higher standards of safety and quality for our vehicles, which are already terrifying death machines, but the hit to solar is a real step backwards.
That’s a cop out. Cars aren’t getting registered without meeting safety requirements.
That’s not how you ensure America leads the world in them. That’s how you ensure corps feel safe not doing shit to innovate anymore. This is just another form of a bailout.
Didn’t they do the same for Japanese goods back in the day? Not sure it helped the American automotive industry.
Yes- it’s the United States
Doesn’t China subsidize what they export on top of having cheap labor? In that case a free market argument cannot really be made. The innovation in the US or elsewhere would have to be extreme shifts to compete.
Interesting word choice. China wants to “dominate”, the US wants to “lead”.
You can’t say the quiet part out loud.
I mean, of course there’s loaded language in all this. Are you also surprised at the language and rhetoric used by Chinese government and media sources when they talk about the US?
I don’t tend to see that stuff, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
these actions already admit defeat
Are iphones tariffed as well? It’s also from China
Technically. However, the end product is sold by a US company, so from the gov. POV it is fine.
Banning chinese manufactured products would mean banning a huge portion of the domestic market.
So US companies will buy things those from China, slap a logo on it and sell American Made goods at a h huge markup
Technically yes. However, most of the time, they just outsource manufacturing. Research and developement is still usually done in house. Apple for example, wrote the software and designed the hardware for the iPhone but assembles it in China because of cost.
Wow, does that mean we are ramping up domestic production for these? No? Oh…
US EV companies are canceling production
Classic Ronco politics
The rest of the world will get cheaper solar panels and EVs, that’s quite nice.
Cheap panels are tanking European competitors, but it’s probably too late to intervene at this point. Can’t compete with work camps and cheap slave labor.
Correct… using work camps and cheap slave labour was only acceptable when US companies shipped production to China and pocketed the profits… now that China is doing it directly, it’s certainly a problem we all care about
It’s certainly a problem the US government cares about when dealing with a hostile nation (from the US perspective).
There are parts of the world not EU and US. They would all benefit from cheap panels.
But EU and US are not really important: https://www.statista.com/statistics/668749/regional-distribution-of-solar-pv-module-manufacturing/ they account only for few percent of solar photovoltaic module production.
You want Amerikkka to lead maybe subsidize EVs as well?
Why can’t we all win? (Ide rather bus/rail and walkable cities)
The government does subsidize EVs.
Additionally even used EVs are subsidized.
Between federal and state tax credits, as well as utility company rebates, my folks just got over 5k back for a used Nissan leaf. They were able to trade in their old clunker, netting a profit of a few hundred dollars to upgrade to a practical used EV.
America can’t compete with China and American corps cried for daddy.
The free market in action.
The free market inaction
FTFY
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Oh we could but then the executive class would have to forgo their 8th Yacht.
so u cant because the “executive class” (capitalist they are called capitalist) control everything, u theoretically COULD if u had a revolution but u CANT.
Swiggity swooty the oil lobby is coming for your booty
Funds raised will be used to offset further increases in subsidies to the domestic oil industry
In all honesty they could use this tax and an extra oil tax to subsidise the shit out of solar and EVs
Yeah, except everyone has had it beaten into them - nobody fucks with gas prices.
Every news outlet in the country runs the same news segment practically daily - “Let’s complain about gas prices”. We’ve somehow made it the subject of basically nonstop discussion.
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Every time someone brings up gas prices I’mma just be like: “you know where the cheapest gas prices are? Electricity.”
I mean, there is a case for discussing gas prices since it’s the price of mobile energy for everything from tractors to trucking to electricity. The gas price, specifically crude oil price, used to be synonymous with energy prices so any increase in oil price would mean a major hit to cost-of-living increases.
It’s outdated as hell.
Heezul Schneezul, the future is diesel.
Disease-al
Also medical supplies, including masks, because COVID is Joever.
Edit to add: There is necessarily a lag between tariff imposition and indigenous production, and we’re left to fill that gap with our own wallets individually. Worse, the prices will almost definitely never come back down as they might in theory, because this is late-stage capitalism.
It’d be really funny if those raw milk drinkers started a bird flu pandemic during a medical PPE shortage 😂
We should just be buying solar panels as cheap as we can, as fast we can who gives a fuck if they “dominate” the net positive is worth it
What a bell-end. Maybe instead of tariffs the US should begin vesting in education, job training, and research into these sectors so it can compete instead of trying to hobble the competition in the domestic market. This is just protectionism by a different name
That takes too long, Ford wants money now
This is the trumpiest shit ever.
Repeatedly stomping on my collection of rakes to own the commies
