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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

“China is at 50 percent EV penetration already,” Ricardo C. Rodriguez, the chief financial officer and treasurer of Aspen Aerogels, said on the call, saying the shift to China was a “no-brainer.” “In North America and Europe, we continue to dabble in this 10 percent to 15 percent level. So, you do start wondering, right, is that progress?”

All this "trade war" stuff to "combat" china would be like some kind of battle where your soldiers all do seppuku and call it victory.

Like the 49% tariff in south east asia to "combat" china influence. Really? You jack up the price by almost 50% and they'll like you more and not look elsewhere? How does this work?

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The USA had a great opportunity to recognize the competition with China and invest more to win the competition (as it did with USSR). Instead, they decided that, as the top dog, the "best" option was to play protectionism and try to block China. This is the path of economic destruction for the US.

There's this weird idea many Americans have, as if they're 80% of the world and nobody can live without them.

They don't travel abroad, can't point to other countries on a map... The level of international awareness is staggeringly low.

These policies only make sense under that common delusion

This is exactly the delusion that US media (news and entertainment) has enforced for 80 years. It is difficult for Americans not to believe in something that their media and politicians repeat daily.

US is 1/4 of World GDP, so that is (was?) a pretty big deal.

So 3/4 will rearrange accordingly. It will take time and will be painful but for 96% of global population a step in right direction, there is only so many attacks and bullying one can stand.

I wish it didnt have to come to this, but here we are, direction is clear. No point waiting that next election cycle will be much different, it won't be.

Not only but now the trust is broken

Let's say this was SomewhereElsistan and they elected someone who just cancelled contracts, backed out of treaties, refused to pay balances, fired entire departments and maybe even arrest your international colleague working there and sent them to a foreign concentration camp.

Afterwards they elect Johnny Reasonable who doesn't do this.

Would you go back with any kind of assurance it wouldn't happen again? Nobody stopped the first guy.

The US reputation in international markets is hosed for decades unless some dramatic reversal and patching comes in, by both Congress and the courts or some wild thing where the states override the federal government somehow.

Otherwise the trust is gone for decades, perhaps forever.

He basically cleaned whole route for world dominance for China. All they have to do is to be more friendly to Europe, rest of Asia and literally rest of the world, thats enough. Just a bit friendly, nothing more.

Once oil starts trading in parallel in RMB, the only thing going for US will be waning momentum and its military, while China will be in reverse situation.

Just like putin being arrogant and aggressive about Ukraine wanting to join NATO, causing Finland and Sweden to join (which they wouldn't do otherwise), he is causing what he is causing. I am fixing my floating mortgage on monday, we have currently 0.2% SNB rate but the risk of it shooting up is massive.

less than 50% of Americans even voted for this crap so maybe avoid the generalism.

Even without the recent MAGA wave, Americans on both sides of the party line have always thought that. Even in the corporate world the domestic market is always the primary target and international is an afterthought

The idea that voting Americans are more ignorant of international news, geography, history, and politics has been strongly and robustly quantitatively demonstrated repeatedly over decades.

The savvy international graduate student can't vote. We're talking about people who fill in ballots.

Voters are more likely to speak only English, not have a passport and live in less ethnically diverse neighborhoods. No reputable numerical survey disputes this.

There's substantial empirical evidence here. Maybe it disagrees with your optimism and vibes but sorry, that's not how the world works

I personally think if you claim to be a global superpower than even people in other countries are a stakeholder and should be allowed to vote in your elections but that's another topic

Not voting was saying OK to Trump, fully knowing what's coming. This "less than 50%" argument doesn't stand, especially because the winner got proper majority of the casted votes.

especially because the winner got proper majority of the casted votes

This is actually untrue. 2024 was one of those elections where both candidates were so bad, that the winner didn't even need 50% of the cast votes. More and more of those lately, but there it is.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024

You'll not that Trump and Vance got 49.1% of the popular vote, and Kamala and Walz got 48.3% of the popular vote. They, none of them, could even muster 50%.

Yeah..

it was that bad.

That's somehow even worse.

The inability of the broader citizenry to stop it, and the "leadership" in the Democratic party to even mount any kind of opposition or build an alternative to where things have gone ... speaks volumes about the "other" 50%.

"Not All Americans" is looking like a pretty shit response at this point. Especially when major chunk of that 50% still underscores some of the major talking points of the Trump people even when they oppose Trump.

Trump is leaning on the fact that US consumers are the golden geese of consumers. Which is in fact true. So he will go to the EU and ask them if they would rather sign new currency and trade agreements or lose the top 20% of their buyers. The currency and trade agreements will pretty much be "Let us weaken the dollar, and equalize trading tariffs, ideally at 0%. In return you will get continued military support and preferential future trading terms"

On the surface this actually isn't too terrible. But the problem is that Trump is an idiot and he is the one who has to navigate this.

> preferential future trading terms

There is no point in making a deal with someone who will not respect any deals. Remember the deal with Mexico and Canada in the first Trump mandate? They made a new agreement and that's what they received as payment. Any country or block that deals with this administration is basically lunatic or in deep despair.

>But the problem is that Trump is an idiot and he is the one who has to navigate this.

I mean I totally agree here. The goal however will be a deal that lasts decades and hopefully trump will be a rekoning and we will see a return to more stability in the future.

It seems we are boarding this bus no matter what, and Trump is driver. If he flies off a cliff, then we can all say "told you so" to the right on the way down, for whatever that is worth.

Also that assumption is changing dramatically. Globally maybe 15 countries are on substantial upward trajectories that will last decades, similar to South Korea's transformation.

If you could travel to 2075 you're likely to find places like Vietnam and Nigeria rising economic stars.

People will be traveling around Africa in an HSR network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_high-speed_rail_by_... to bustling metropolises in places like Kenya and Ethiopia.

South East Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia will have valuable international companies.

The customers in Columbus Ohio won't really be relevant.

Most Europeans have this crazy idea that the US is as large as their country. They think traveling from France to Germany is international and a bid deal - people in the US travel farther than that all the time while remaining in the US.

That was the point of TPP which the US withdrew from in 2018.

Trump pulled out on his first day in office.

The rest of the countries carried on without the USA and to add to the irony, China applied to join it in 2021.

His claimed anti-China stance is one of his most effective lies.

Just got back from China, it's insane. EVs with green plates literally everywhere, not just in T1 cities like Shenzhen but even in smaller ones. The infrastructure’s on another level compared to the US.

Here in Sweden, 63% of new cars sold are electrical or PHEV. Still, unfortunately we still see a lot of fossil fueled cars on the roads... you immediately notice them because they're so damn noisy - and when you get used to the silence of EVs , it's hard to not notice them and be a bit disgusted.

The adoption of electric scooters is phenomenal. It's like Vietnam but all electric.

It's just self-imposed sanctions in addition to severing ties with American allies.

On top of this, Russia has no sanctions, and we know that the US will cancel Russian sanctions too.

Again, it doesn't matter if Trump is some manchurian candidate. His behavior is 100% in line with him, and the behavior and policies are what do the damage to the USA.

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