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by tooltalk 751 days ago
It's called predatory pricing -- you buy cheap now, pay later when they come to recoup their cost. It won't drain their bank if they end up undercutting/destroying all local competitor and we become dependent on them.

This is not necessarily a problem if we can all peacefully coexist. China has a history of weaponizing their dominant market position to settle geopolitical/market disputes -- eg, rare earth metal ban against Japan in 2010; China's recent graphite "export control" to protect Chinese EV companies' business in markets abroad.

The fact that China practically banned all foreign EV battery makers from local EV market and forced EV OEMs to use locally made batteries by local battery makers to dominate the global battery market since 2016 under Xi's Make-In-China 2025 adds to the view that this isn't purely about saving the planet or making affordable EVs for the rest of us.
1 comments
pjc50 750 days ago
Their "made in China" policy is Bad while our "made in America" policy is Good?
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tooltalk 750 days ago
No, I think they are about equal.

The US already has been countering China's every anticompetitive, discriminatory policy measure by more or less equal response: for instance, eliminating all subsidies on EVs with critical minerals sourced from non-free trading nations and banning Chinese EV/battery companies, and so on -- or otherwise known as Biden's IRA (vs Xi's Made-In-China 2025).

I'm not necessarily taking sides, but if you feel that the US's policy is bad, that's probably because China's original policy was also bad. If you were ok with China's exclusionary EV policy since 2016, you probably shouldn't be crying about the US's policy today since it's designed to mirror China's.

Do note however that, in March, China did file a WTO complaint accusing the US (IRA) of doing what China has been doing past decade under MIC 2025 -- misusing subsidies to force local content, local production (aka, in international trade lingo, it's called "local/domestic content requirement"). So I'm a bit troubled by China's double-standard.

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