The average American's longest-kept car is 8 years old. Therefore every eight years or so, Americans are forced to spend a significant amount of money on a car. The median price of a new car in the United States is ~$41,000. If we generously claim that a Chinese car with the same capabilities could be purchased for minimum $30,000 instead, then the number of money being lost to being forced to purchase a more expensive car, every eight years, is 11,000*350 million, or ~3.8 trillion dollars. Dividing per year, we get roughly 480 billion dollars per year that could be spent by Americans.

I'm not an economist nor a mathematician, so I will not claim that this is a good expression of the economic impact of these restrictions. But I will say that the average American does not care about which country his or her car originates from. They care about navigating our crumbling infrastructure through the only means possible, the car. We have no reliable public transport in 99% of this country nor alternative modes of transport. We are forced to buy cars.

It seems unfair to me that the average American, who is making less and less per year after we adjust for inflation and purchasing power, should be forced to carry the burden of a technologically backwards industry that is still pumping out millions of gas-powered vehicles, which are not only bad for the environment, but are even more expensive to operate compared to the cost of electric cars per mile.

Our country does not think ahead, all of our decisions just temporarily patch our longstanding issues. America is screwed.

What industrial base, most countries don't have competitive domestic auto and has the option of not being ripped off by western brans. For countries with domestic auto... this 2026, the that auto plant isn't building modern tanks and planes. Maybe you can retrain workers to make drones... or coffins and urns.