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Comment by digdugdirk | Hacker News Reader

"Bonelli said that the Ojai is not affected by the U.S. government's regulations that aim to prevent Chinese cars from being sold to customers in the U.S."

How does this get around the regulations? That's a massive loophole that will absolutely get abused by both China and domestic companies. Trucking, delivery vehicles, etc. will all get slammed by this.

I'm not a fan of protectionist regulations like the ones keeping Chinese automobiles out of the US, but if you're going to have them, at least make them effective.

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They aren't selling them to American customers. The same how you see Xiaomi cars being tested in the US despite the ban, Xiaomi just imports them directly and lets select journalists use them, but they aren't actually sold there.

Is Waymo not an American customer?

Waymo can probably import them themselves, they just can't act as a dealer for customers in the US.

Waymo can import the base vehicles but none of the connected tech that comes with normal cars in China. Instead, they are specifically adding their own connected tech (after the car is delivered to the USA), so the ban is irrelevant to them.

Tariffs are an incredibly tricky system. Two things that look essentially identical can be treated very differently depending on exactly how they get classified in the schedule. Some shoe brands (e.g. Converse) will use fuzzy soles for their sneakers, because it causes them to be classified as slippers instead where the tariff rates are different. The technical words used also tend to drift quite far from their typical meanings. In post-NAFTA automotive, "domestic" included things from Canada and Mexico up until recent EOs re-redefined it again, as an example.

The difference here are going to come down to differences between an unfinished product partially assembled in China and a completed vehicle imported from there and get into very detailed minutae of their value to the production system and its intended usage.

Based on the past year, does the current administration seem resistant to being bribed into adding loopholes or turning a blind eye?

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