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Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

Are BYD cars specifically banned or do they just not comply with all the US regulations?

100% tariff and political threats -- implying that they'd find a way to mark them as "unsafe", despite the fact that Canada and Europe tend to have higher safety standards than the US and already have BYD presence.

You can see the political groundwork being laid here.

https://homeland.house.gov/2025/05/21/homeland-republicans-p...

If these concerns are so pressing, why do we allow any electronics at all from China?

It smells like air cover for a de-facto ban on BYD. To force US consumers to buy from politically blessed car makers instead of letting us choose the highest quality car available (at a given price point).

Some level of protectionism is in the best interest of national security. How is the local electronics industry that you referenced in the US doing? What is the ramification of eliminating the job market for engineers or discarding all of the US manufacturing know how? The CCP knows the answer to that question

The reason I called out Lada in my original comment is because it's a counterpoint to what you just said. The Lada was the result of too much protectionism. Produced from an empire that was too inward looking and feared interacting with the rest of the world on equal terms.

BYD keeps performing well in the rest of the world. If we hold US consumers hostage to prop up companies like Tesla, we risk allowing them to stagnate.

I prefer to take my chances on stagnation vs Chinese industrial hegemony

what has become of America where we are now scared shitless of China... oh well, i is what it is... America our ancestors built would have been like bring it on bitches and here we are "oh please, lets not let China in, our companies are subpar and we stand no chance against such a foe...

When the accountant is sweating at the prospect of having the books reviewed by outside auditors, no explanation is necessary.

American exceptional used to be “we can do this no one else can”

Today it’s “everyone can do this but we can’t”

America was always like that. The posturing of "bring it on bitches" does not imply reality of it. Ameruca had that attitude when it was more developped then competition. Ot was protectionist when it was less developped.

And always used diplomacy and superpower status to push other countries into buying more american.

Perhaps but how did America get “more developed than competition”? Bangladesh cannot “use diplomacy and superpower status” to push other countries around…

   Let me tell you a highly stylized version of the American story.

   In the beginning, there was a startup called the United States, which we’ll refer to by its stock-ticker symbol, USA. It was young, scrappy, and hungry and needed to figure out how to deliver value to its citizens users.

   So it did a bunch of things: It created a central bank. It expanded its territory. It established mass communications (the postal service) and roads and public education. Eventually, it took the painful step of expunging slavery.

   This startup grew in size and productivity and market cap. Its user base became enormous. After about 160 years, USA became the biggest company on the planet, at which point it achieved a bunch of important network effects. Because USA benefited from free trade, it developed a military that could enforce a globalized system of free trade. Capital—both human and financial—flowed into USA. People—both users and clients4—loved USA. And for another 70 years it delivered good results for both. Its stock couldn’t have been higher.

   But then USA went down the road toward enshittification...

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-enshittified-states-of-amer...

> stagnation vs Chinese industrial hegemony

I don't think we get to be stagnant and fend off Chinese industrial hegemony. It's not a symmetric bet.

So you prefer to avoid the competition entirely because you expect to lose? Not very confident in American industrial competitiveness, are we?

Global automakers typically make small modifications to vehicles for different markets. Cars, like most engineered products, are built to a list of design criteria. BYD, like every large automaker that does this, has capable engineers that can target any regulatory specification you give them. They already do it for all of the other markets they sell in, just as every global automaker does.

Chinese cars don't exist in the US because of laws specifically designed to prevent their sale here. The tariff for Chinese EVs was increased to 100% a couple of years ago when it was rumored that BYD was going to move to the US market. And currently, there is a bill circulating to ban them entirely.

I could see them going the Huawei (pun intended and apologised for)

I cannot answer your question but I visited China last year and the amount of different EVs they had was staggering. And really nice vehicles, I was very impressed with that.

> Are BYD cars specifically banned or do they just not comply with all the US regulations?

Whatever the stated reasons are is one thing.

The biggest issue is that a network of BYDs in the US would be a massive intelligence coup.

It will never be permitted unless the intelligence aspect is addressed… if it can be.

That's the focus of the yet-to-be-passed bill that is circulating congress.

The patterns of aggressively tariffing foreign automakers for protectionism in the US long pre-dates any sort electronics in cars.

Lobbying forces in the US care deeply about the latter, not so much the former.

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