Hacker News Reader

Comment by djcapelis | Hacker News Reader

Tariffs in a rapidly growing and innovative industry always makes the country with lots of protectionism end up with less competitive products because they’ve removed the competitive pressures from everywhere else in the world.

We were left behind because we shelter our own car companies in a gentle cradle where they don’t have to compete. Both parties did this while saying they wanted to “level the playing field” but chose rates that were protectionist and made competitive products prohibitive not rates that actually created a level field.

We were left behind because we tried to protect our companies from facing the future. People in this country expect that one can stand on the shore of a beach and vote on whether the tide should go in or out, and that’s just not how the world works.

View on HN

The role for protectionism is in the early stages of government subsidized and promoted industries, but it has to be matched by ruthless cutting of subsidy for the lower performers. And eventually there has to be competition with the global market to ensure performance.

Taking a mature industry and adding protectionism because of underperformance is a disaster on all fronts.

We were in the middle of a huge industrial investment buildout, absolutely untold of in modern history, for solar and batteries. But with the goal of undoing anything the prior administration has done, we are abandoning the good that a little protectionism could have for a growing battery and solar industry in the US.

We are toast without big changes. The world is leapfrogging us, and with every dozen GW of solar and batteries that China exports, it is permanently lowering demand for US natural gas and oil, which will eventually torpedo the industry, or leave the US with far higher energy prices than the rest of the world, both of which are disastrous for industry.

Yep, precisely. It really blows my mind to see so many people who normally support a free market suddenly forget (or ignore) what effect a tariff has on a market. Somehow it's now become a hammer and every problem is a nail.

I get that there are some real (or perceived) issues that are trying to be solved with these tariffs, but that doesn't magically make the realities of what tariffs do to a market go away. "Just do something" is a good way to get a "solution" that makes you worse off.

Especially people that are usually anti-tax!

Tariffs are the worse sort of tax, massive amounts of deadweight loss, and a burden specifically on the pooorest. Perhaps that second part is why they are so popular.

China has a hyper protected domestic market. There is no other major economy in the world as shielded from foreign competition as China.

How does that fact correlate to China's EV segment booming?

How are U.S. automakers "ruthlessly competing" in the global market otherwise? Can you name a single American car that competes well overseas? I know the F-150 did at one time but I don't know if that's even true anymore given that what was once Ford's workhorse has been turned into a luxury SUV for suburbanites cosplaying as blue collar workers occasionally.

Most American OEMs are now all but entirely in the SUV/pickup truck markets precisely because the Asian makes already kick the shit out of them in every other category. Several prominent brands have nothing on sale but SUVs right now! And they're STILL going broke.

> China has a hyper protected domestic market

When I was in China, I saw Teslas everywhere and iPhones too. It seems there are products that can still compete in China against strong domestic brands. The country hasn't really been hyper protected for a few years now. I mean, majority of the products from around the world are basically produced there so they are not even looking at tarrifs, besides that many industries no longer require joint ventures, much of Africa has tariff free access etc.

> China has a hyper protected domestic market

For B2B maybe (i don't know about "hyper", and services and software are outside of this protection for sure). For consumers/customers, China is freer than the US.

Many arguing in favor of tarrifs note that it is not a free market. China is definitely playing to dominate with government assistance deep in the supply chain on up.

There has been plenty of evidence that total government assistance to automakers has been at the same level in the USA, including the huge bailouts.

The scale is not even close to comparable.

Not remotely. It's fair to point out that it exists, especially given the bailout, but China's sponsorship of their local manufacturing is a whole other level. We're talking direct subsidies and grants to OEMs, consumers getting trade in subsidies, huge tax rebates and exemptions, financing, infrastructure support, and long term industrial planning. Similar things exist in the US, but the biggest thing though is that it's stable and not capricious, unlike the current US administration. China's support is enormous, like $230 billion over 15 years, and it's ongoing, not some random one-offs, like cash for clunkers.

Not disagreeing re: the impact of tariffs.

But our problems started before tariffs. If you look at the graph in the article, things started diverging around 2018. You can see all other countries taking off, leaving the US in the dust.

And the (small) US increase dropped even more around 2023.

But we were already behind.

EV infrastructure is terrible. I've been hoping to trade our second vehicle (that is ICE) in for an EV, so that both our vehicles are EV.

But until the infrastructure improves, we have no choice but to hold onto at least one ICE vehicle for anything longer than a daily commute.

And US makers can't sell EVs when most Americans are still dealing with range anxiety due to lack of infrastructure.

Needing an app for every different charger's owner is terrible. They're shooting their own feet with that one. It should be as simple as a gas station. Drive up, swipe credit card, and pump watts. (To their credit, some of them are now.) What I think is a bigger problem though is that the non-Tesla options just aren't well integrated. Tesla doesn't let you use Android/Apple integration, and they have their own navigation . This is annoying to some, but their built in navigation accounts for the battery level. It tells you how much charge you've got, how much you'll have when you get there, and if it's not enough, it guides you towards all possible charging options along your route, and, knowing that, preconditions the battery for being charged when you get to the charger. This makes what infrastructure there is, way more useful. Because charging takes longer and is more sparse than gas stations, it's a necessary integration. My limited experience with non-tesla EVs says they don't have that level of integration, which is a whole problem, but I'd love to hear other's experiences there.

Yeah, 100% to this too. My wife won't even charge our EV away from home due to the issues we've run into with the various apps.

Not only are they all different, they sometimes just fail. And this is sometimes an app issue, but it's also often a charger issue. We had to literally drive an hour away, with only about 15% remaining, to get to a working charger one time, because we couldn't get either of the two chargers working at the place we often stop by.

Not only was that a big inconvenience, it was stressful not knowing whether we had enough charge to make it to our backup. If we didn't have a backup close enough, I'm not sure what we would've done.

The obsession with apps is a huge problem with all these.

It needs to be as easy as a gas station. Pull up, plug in, tap credit card, done.

> Needing an app for every different charger's owner is terrible. They're shooting their own feet with that one. It should be as simple as a gas station. Drive up, swipe credit card, and pump watts.

The EU now requires that for all new chargers installed. Like, this is a problem easily solved with regulation.

What? Government can be used to help ordinary consumers like me? Are you sure that isn't, like, communism or something?

Consider making the kind of EVs that they would want to buy, even if they’re not the kind that fit some compliance profile or exist as the dominant “option”?

I’d not mind something akin to a modernized take on the Crown Vic, or something that has a decidedly American shape and non-luxury price tag to it.

What tariffs? Are you referring to EV subsidies and general protectionism like export restraints on Japan? Or blaming all of this on very recent changes?

We've had protectionist tariffs for the auto industry for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

The US didn't have electric vehicle protectionism until relatively recently? Not more than any other type of vehicles. The NHTSA and crash testing standards limit what cars can come to our shores, often to our detriment. Americans are dumbasses and have allowed government to way over-regulate the auto industry. Just look how much of the price of a car involves government mandates these days. It's obscene.

So...China. They have zero standards for anything. The cars probably do poorly in crashes. The industries making the batteries pollute the shit out of everything. The batteries probably don't last as long as indicated, probably half as many cells as was advertised. The tires are thinner, the glass is thinner, the paint is barely applied. Is this really what we want?

There has to be some middle way.

Too much of the debate is taken up by regulations are good vs bad. The focus should be on drafting regulations that make sense. The US doesn't allow small trucks due to EPA classification so didn't make any until this recent crop of EVs started popping up.

RE China: They also make the cheapest and best qualities Telsa which are shipped around the world. They can make the best and worst quality depending on your price point.

I dunno, the Chinese cars available in the UK seem to do ok in crash tests and in reviews too, e.g. 5 star crash rating for the byd dolphin https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/byd/dolphin/50011 MG EV4 gets 8/10 review while VW id3 gets 7/10 https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/mg-motor-uk/mg4

I've driven a MG ZS EV for a month a year or two ago and it was an equal in terms of "feel" to my current to VW id3, but way better equipped. The tyres are just normal bridgestones or michellins etc.

Can't comment on the paint or if they're lying about the battery capacity, but they genuinely seem like decent cars, at least the ones in the UK. I am sure there are cheaper-made ones for the domestic china market, but the export stuff seems good.

> They have zero standards for anything. The cars probably do poorly in crashes

That might have been true a decade+ ago, but in recent years, nearly every car coming from China makes it to the top of the Euro NCAP rankings [1]. The current top 10 standing for 2025 is:

    1. Model 3 (DE)
    2. Firefly / Nio
    3. Smart #5
    4. Lynk & Co 02
    5. Polestar 3
    6. Zeekr 7x
    7. Togg T10x (TR)
    8. IM IM6
    9. Audi A6 (DE)
    10. Voyah Courage

7/10 are from China. The list goes on with even cheaper models from BYD/Vinfast/etc outperforming most of the classic automakers. The Nio ET5 from 2023 is still one of the safest cars ever made, and it was evaluated right at the time the EU introduced much stricter safety regulations.

[1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...

I think there's a balance to consider. Not having protectionism destroys industries locally which is why manufacturing in the US has declined significantly since the 80s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com