[Barrin92]

Any country, including the US, would do well to not swallow up the propaganda of the big tech PR departments, using foreign nations as an excuse to prop up national oligarchs.

What's best for any country is creating a healthy ecosystem that is long term competitive. We already went through 20 years of shitty cars because of Japan scares in the 80s, wasn't that enough?

[pininja]

I wasn’t alive in the 80s, what are you referring too?

[Barrin92]

in the late 70s/early 80s fueled by the oil crisis initially, the American car industry went into pretty steep decline and together with political fears of a rapidly growing Japan the US started to cap the imports of Japanese cars (also motorcycles and punitive measures on other industries) given that they were fuel efficient and appealed to consumers. The American auto industry became more profitable short term but generally up until the late 90s continued to stagnate or decline in particular in quality and efficiency.

American cars had a bad rep internationally (and domestically) probably until the mid 2000s when the industry started to become more competitive again.

Today Tesla is probably one example of an American carmaker that is innovative and I doubt you'll see them demand protectionist measures. International competition remains one of the best drivers for better products.

[MagnumOpus]

> Today Tesla is probably one example of an American carmaker that is innovative and I doubt you'll see them demand protectionist measures

For certain values of "American carmaker". It already manufactures more cars in Shanghai than in Fremont, it is controlled by a South African who is certainly not beholden to US interests, and whenever convenient can do a tax inversion to move abroad easily...