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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> The best argument I liked so far to what's happening is that this flooding of Chinese EVs is due to the internal slowdown of EV sales.

They're dumping on external markets. Tariffs will put a stop to this.

We'll likely want tariffs if we want to give our domestic auto manufacturers time to adapt. And domestic automotive industry is important to maintaining a manufacturing base for defensive purposes during wartime.

> They were just busy building inside but now that they need new export markets and have mostly finished building inside, they are looking outward.

Their domestic market is saturated and experiencing economic headwinds.

They're looking for external buyers because their internal economy has slowed. There wasn't enough real domestic consumption to prop it all up.

> They can out build the West, the developing world and India.

For a while. India, Mexico, Vietnam, et al. are ramping up.

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>We'll likely want tariffs if we want to give our domestic auto manufacturers time to adapt.

Also known as "<Country> First" policy, wasn't too long ago (and presumably still is) that such policies were/are heresy.

Note, I agree with protecting domestic economies; I am all for America First, Japan First, UK First, France First, et al.. I'm just amused the same people who screamed "Orange Man Bad" turn on their heels to advocate the same policy just under different words.

The reason the world largely went away from high tariffs are many. In the first place they're redistribution scheme from consumers to industries that have the political influence to lobby for tariffs. Secondly they make the domestic industry lazy and increasingly noncompetitive (not just in pricing, also in R&D and market fit). After some years of this, the foreign competition will be so far ahead that they're able to out-compete the domestic industry while producing in-country (see Japanese/German car makers in the US).

Regarding cars specifically, which group do you think is bigger: car buyers that would get a $20,000 gift from the Chinese taxpayer (and likely spend those savings in the domestic economy) or people employed in car manufacturing?

Tariffs only apply to countries that make cars really, so don’t expect Australia to care much if BYD is selling below cost. America and China already have mutual tariffs in each others cars, China has those with most car producing countries (put in place originally and ironically to protect the Chinese car market)

> put in place originally and ironically to protect the Chinese car market

Patrick Boyle has a fantastic essay on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZgaj0jScOI

There is a 10% tariff in cars from China into the EU (I’m sure that’s reciprocal).

> Europe levies a duty of 10% on cars imported from China. That compares with duty of 27.5% in the United States, and China's manufacturers have taken advantage to carve out a significant and rapidly growing foothold in the European

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/cars/europe-china-electric-ca....

Of course, Europe is more than just the EU. And I don’t think the EU will shy away from protectionism, since China does the same. But in that case I’m sure BYD will just open up a factory in one of the cheaper EU countries (if they haven’t started that already).

> Of course, Europe is more than just the EU. And I don’t think the EU will shy away from protectionism, since China does the same. But in that case I’m sure BYD will just open up a factory in one of the cheaper EU countries (if they haven’t started that already).

Yes, already happening in Hungary.

https://www.byd.com/eu/news-list/BYD_to_Build_A_New_Energy_P...

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