Explain to me like I'm 10 years old: Is the Biden tariffs on electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels coming from China motivated 100% by politics (and maybe racism), or is there some other (more legit) reason to do it?
I grew up in a steel town ages ago and watched how tariffs and subsidies affect industry.
I don't support Biden's 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars, but examining one trade regulation in isolation may not be all that helpful.
China provides subsidies and levies tariffs too, we should not simply unilaterally disarm.
I don't care much about GM and Ford, and I sure as shit don't care about Elon Musk, but I hope we make room for some truly innovative American manufacturers to thrive.
@davidho Politics. The United Auto Workers (UAW) is throwing their lot behind Biden, and the US EV market would struggle against cheaper Chinese EVs, so there’s a case to be made for supporting American, especially union backed, manufacturing.
You absolutely can argue that tariffs are not the way to go, that prioritizing this in place of a potentially gentler environmental impact via faster transition is wrong, but I don’t think raising the prospect of sinophobia is valid here.
It's not just "politics", it's !POLITICS!. Protecting, subsidizing, and nurturing the automobile manufacturing industry has been central to American (and many other countries) government policy for many decades. Lots of money, lots of jobs. That it's soon going to come to an abrupt end due to climate change is something they're not yet ready to accept.
@davidho I don't think we know. If China is dumping cars below the cost of manufacturing them, then tariffs are completely justified, and appropriate.
But is that what's happening? China claim not, but they then make it hard for anyone to confirm or refute their claims.
@davidho Not a fan of the tariffs, but this is a good explanation / rationalization. Wouldn’t need them if U.S. automakers had gotten their heads out their big, fat SUVs
If it were racism you would expect new tariffs on South Korean cars too, right? None to see.
You can start jumping through logical hoops to paint it as racist but there's plenty of evidence to support exactly what Biden said, it's protecting markets. A very specific market no less, contrasting to Trump's blanket tariffs against Chinese anything.
China shipped 3x the number of EVs to Europe last year than South Korea shipped any kind of car to the US. China shipped over 4 million EVs to Europe, SK shipped just over a million cars total. They're flooding the markets in Europe so much that ports are becoming parking lots. Those cars aren't going to get bought, and China is going to leave Europe to deal with them as trash.
@davidho The charitable interpretation is that it's a desirable end goal to build up a domestic industry to manufacture these things but the Chinese are willing to sell their products to the U.S. at below cost to prevent that. Thus, some combination of tariffs and subsidies are needed to level the playing field.
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