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Comment by rafaelmn | Hacker News Reader

Europe is already talking heavy tariffs to protect it's automakers, with Trump winning and his stance on the issue - doubtful they will let this happen.

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Don’t think it’s going to work. Even with 100% tariff on EV imports they will still be financially competitive with locally produced vehicles.

Or they build local.

they go thru the soft underbelly of mexico. And with that method, entrench mexico's economic interests with chinese manufacturers, and by indirection, give the CCP soft power over them.

Yeah. Well it's CCP or USA and as an outside observer I'm not sure which one is worse at the moment.

take comfort in the fact that with the USA, even the worst politicians gets removed from office after 2 consecutive terms.

You might be thinking of "POTUS" rather than "politician".

eg:

    Mitch McConnell, senior United States senator from Kentucky since 1985, the longest serving senator in his state's history. McConnell has been the leader of the Senate Republican Conference since 2007, including as majority leader from 2015 to 2021, making him the longest serving Senate party leader in U.S. history.

> after 2 consecutive terms.

Even for POTUS it's a two term, under ten year total limit, doesn't have to be consectutive terms.

I stand corrected - it is indeed only the POTUS that has a term limit.

Assuming the incumbent doesn't push through legislation to change that. Not sure how enshrined in constitution that is so can't comment on the feasibility of it.

I have to give it to the CCP at least they're not Christians.

That ignores the rest of the world though. Trump can’t prevent China from selling to Africa, South America, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, … many of those countries (Aus) don’t even have domestic auto producers to worry about. Yes, the USA, South Korea, Japan, and Western Europe can protect their own markets, but the world is huge and China can easily dominate EVs everywhere else.

What EV markets outside the US/EU? Australia and maybe Thailand? Otherwise, it's difficult to find infrastructure that supports EVs elsewhere.

BYD is already in Japan, but it's quite limited. China has shadow-banned Korean automaker Hyundai/Kia since 2017 (THAAD) and battery makers LG, Samsung, SK since 2016 -- not sure if China would be warmly received there.

> What EV markets outside the US/EU?

south americans, the african continent, just to name a few.

> it's difficult to find infrastructure to support EVs.

sure, but it doesn't mean it won't get built. What if china goes all in, and do the belt-and-road initiative v2, and build out those countries' infrastructure (and conveniently eliminate the soft power that the US would have there, such as financial power)?

China has no real "defense" against financial power of the US (vis a vi sanctions), but they're surely doing something about it. And given the CCP's long term planning (for which they can, since they're authoritarian and don't need to cater for an election every few years), they can press for policies that play out long term.

There is a huge market outside of the US/EU. Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia, etc…all they need is to provide a better value and they’ll own the market, nothing the US can do about it.

EV infra and is a lot easier to realize than importing/refining oil. Electricity can be generated in a variety of ways and, oh, hey, China is exporting that also.

EV infra is also lot more fragile as we can see first hand in developed countries, while for ICE you essentially need a jerry can to fill it up.

I don’t know. There are plenty of places where you don’t have gasoline to fill up a plastic bottle (which is how they do it in most of the developing world), but a water wheel generating electricity from glacier run off.

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