EU to hit Teslas imported from China with 19% tariffs

Regardless of the employment counts, it's smart policy to require domestic manufacturing capability, both knowledge, personnel, and equipment; given world events in Russia and China pulling away from the west.

> EVs require less humans to manufacture

Absolutely, and I've pointed this out a bunch as well.

Yet why should host country accept foreign imports that are subsidized?

Either put CapEx in the host country (and this stimulate the broader economy) or don't participate.

The jobs aspect is rhetoric, but the real issue is CapEx and taxation.

South Korean, Japanese, and Western manufacturers have gladly built domestic manufacturing capabilities in host countries, and even become critical players in those countries (eg. Honda, Toyota, VW, Hyundai in America; Suzuki and Hyundai in India; Ford and Tesla across the EU).

Why should Chinese companies get a pass? This is why Geely (via Volvo and Polestar) and now BYD have been investing in European capacity, and this is why most countries are now forcing Chinese companies to transfer IP to domestic players (just like China did 20 years ago).

Exactly. This is the fundamental problem with Europe. I would understand the protectionism if it were part of a geopolitical strategy to weaken China, whose government is not aligned with European values. Or maybe as a way to bolster national security with local manufacturing. But if it is for economic or labor reasons, this is at best a short-term strategy to appease voters that doesn’t fix the underlying issue, which is that Europe lags in innovation. Fixing that is hard, and I don’t think governments that chase votes for election with populist strategies can also have the right policies to fix the underlying issues.

Not exactly.

It's an issue of misaligned incentives - the Standing Committee sets some high level KPI, and every functionary tries to hit that KPI.

This leads to a tragedy of the commons, which is further exacerbated by how devolved China has become since the 1970s, because now individual provinces are heavily invested in companies directly competing with each other, but cannot downscale or shut them down because laying off thousands of employees at SoEs is politically untenable.

Everything from overproduction to over-compliance of COVID Zero policies to BRI can be attributed to misaligned incentives between top level policymakers, mid-level decisionmakers, and businesses.

2016-End of COVID your average Green politician in Europe in a TV debate was an ecology priest who could effortlessly reprimand any party that wasn't strong enough on ecology, with approval from host + audience, and was the voice for authority on whether irreparable damage to the environment would be by 2032 or by 2027.

>There was never a "net zero at any cost" policy

Look at what the German greens and Habeck cooked up so far. And they have been restrained by the fact that geopolitics made a comeback.