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Comment by tylerhou | Hacker News Reader

> It's not a good sign for the US

IMHO this isn't necessarily true. A weaker dollar could mean stronger exports.

Exports of what? iPhones? These are all made in China, and with the dollar dropping against the Yuan, anything the US imports from China (and also from Europe) will be getting more expensive. And with the dollar dropping, bonds in dollars will be less interesting for investors. Basically, the article suggests that where Trump is aiming to MAGA, the entire opposite seems to happen: the rest of the world accellerates where Trump hits the breaks. Take the example of solar panels: what good will this do to the US? It will make solar-companies doing less research as the Chinese competition is gone. It will impact consumers, and the environment. But it will hardly impact the Chinese - their export will be used internally and in Europe.

Edit: yeah - the Europeans make cars... Volkswagen is the second largest in the world, after Toyota. Daimler (Mercedes) is fourth. Apparently, the top-16 based on revenue includes only 3 American companies...

Do you make any cars which are viable in Europe?

There are plenty of brands common on European roads that are American brands. Opel and Ford being the non-luxury examples.

Oh and if you take the "but designed and built in ..." standard, then there simply is no European car anymore. Most components are Chinese, Indian, or at the very least Eastern European (outside of EU)

a) Opel is owned by PSA.

b) That's simply not true. Automotive supply chains indeed are quite global nowadays, in this regard you could say there's simply no <insert nation here> car anymore, for any given country/region. But - in contrast to other sectors - the automotive industry (including parts industry) is HUGE in the EU, including actual manufacturing.

I'm not sure who "you" is here but, yes, lots of American cars are sold in Europe.

"lots" would need to be quantified. Mentally scanning the garage at work, I do not think I saw one American car (France, very large company).

I casually glanced through a few Google images matches for "traffic in Paris". I do not know much about cars but all seemed to be European or Japanese.

I shared some links with the other guy, but anyway about 8% of Europe's market is Ford and 4% GM. FCA (sort of a joint Italo-American venture) is another 7% if you want to count them. So that's almost a fifth of the market if you add all those up.

What do you mean? I only know some people who own a Tesla, otherwise, that's it

For instance, Ford still makes up something like 8% of Europe's market (http://shareholder.ford.com/~/media/Files/F/Ford-IR/events-a...) -- maybe not the unstoppable juggernaut of the continent, but a lot of vehicles. And there are a number of European Ford models not even available for sale in the US (mostly hatchbacks). That's just one maker.

Perhaps they sell better in the UK than continental Europe or something, I don't know, but tens of thousands of cars sold per month is not nothing.

Another chart shows that even the largest maker, VW, only has like 23% of the market: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263421/market-share-of-s...

Okay, forgot about Ford. You are right about them

No. Even better. Exports of America's best product, which is our information economy.

We give the world informational products and they send us physical goods. Seems like a good deal to me.

Might change quite quickly depending on Microsoft v. DoJ

Weaker dollar could fuel housing bubble, too.

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