[churchill]

Western cope never gets old. Western automakers had the chance to dominate international markets, but they stayed back at home, making overpriced cars for their captive audience of local buyers.

Whenever competitors showed up, they laughed at them, before panicking when those upstarts starting challenging their market dominance. It happened with Japan, Korea, and now China.

So, if you feel China competes unfairly, close off your markets. Countries without a local auto industry will accept Chinese EVs readily. BYD & co. will snatch American & EU automakers' foreign markets before they come home to swallow you alive by building factories in low-cost countries like Bulgaria, Mexico, & Brazil.

Basically, the Toyota cycle will repeat itself because Western (esp. American) automakers spent hundreds of billions on share buybacks instead of R&D.

[echelon]

That is a vast oversimplification that discounts the incredible geopolitical changes over the past 40 years.

But at the end of the day, we're protecting our own interests.

[churchill]

I understand - I'm not wishing evil on the West. I want prosperity for all humanity. All I'm saying is that it's shortsightedness and hubris that even got Western automakers (and businesses at large) to this stage. Rest on their laurels, not learning from history, assuming the good times will continue unabated.

Just like Jack Welch and General Electric: financialize companies to the max, optimize for quarterly share increases, and earn billion-dollar bonuses. When the company inevitably collapses/shrinks after you retire, it's no longer your business.

Whether it's China's foray into nuclear, wind power, carmaking, solar, etc., they simply copy existing Western designs and keep developing them diligently while the incumbents optimize for quarterly earnings.

[IncreasePosts]

These complaints seem orthogonal to the question of China using dumping as a tactic to dominate a market. Even if you thought the US auto industry was very healthy and well run, it could still be existentially affected by a huge actor with near infinite money like the CCP dumping

[churchill]

Only one country can print the world's reserve currency from thin air and it's not China nor the CCP. Why doesn't the US counter-dump then? Spoil the rest of us with affordable EVs and hasten humanity's transition away from ICE vehicles.

[IncreasePosts]

How would you limit the blast radius to china? And still remain on good enough terms for all of the other trade that happens above-board?