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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Electric vehicles may become a new front in America's tech war with China after a US senator called for Washington DC to block Chinese-made EVs to protect domestic industries and national security.
Sherrod Brown, senator for Ohio and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, penned a letter to President Biden, claiming "there are currently no Chinese EVs for sale in the United States, and we must keep it that way."
He warned that "Chinese EVs, highly subsidized by the Chinese government, could decimate our domestic automakers, harm American workers, and give China access to sensitive personal data," insisting the US government must ban Chinese-made EVs as soon as possible, calling it "a matter of economic and national security."
The move comes as the dispute between the two economic superpowers over technology rumbles on, with the US last week sanctioning four more Chinese companies, claiming they were involved with providing chips for accelerating AI to China's military and intelligence users.
Among those added to the Entity List maintained by the US Department of Commerce was Sitonholy (Tianjin) Co, understood to be one of the largest distribution channels for Nvidia's datacenter products in China, thus cutting off supplies of Nvidia GPUs to many Chinese companies.
[...] The number of Chinese cars purchased by US customers is understood to be very low as these are subject to an extra 25 percent tariff on top of the regular 2.5 percent import duty that DC applies to imported vehicles.
However, Senator Brown notes in his letter that BYD already sells an electric hatchback named the "Seagull" for the equivalent of less than $10,000. This compares with the $28,140 that has been reported as the starting price of the current cheapest electric car available in the US, the 2024 Nissan LEAF S.
There is also a national security twist as Senator Brown claims that data collected by the sensors and cameras in Chinese EVs could pose a threat. "China does not allow American-made electric vehicles near their official buildings. To allow their vehicles freedom to travel throughout the United States would be foolish and highly dangerous," he stated.
Senator Brown also claims in his letter that nearly 20 percent of all electric vehicles sold in Europe during 2023 were made in China, citing this as a cautionary example.
The European Commission last year announced an investigation into subsidies in the Chinese EV industry, but there are said to be misgivings in Germany and elsewhere that a ban on Chinese EVs could backfire, with Beijing retaliating by locking Western carmakers out of the lucrative China market entirely.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bussdriver on Wednesday April 17, @07:19PM (11 children)
Sanity needs to return to tariffs and this free trade BS needs to stop. Subsidies are not secret, they can easily be undone by tariffs and most importantly human rights standards need to be penalized in the tariffs. The race to the bottom has gone on far too long in the open!
Allow China to make factories in the USA like the others to avoid the tariffs but their imported parts still need tariffs. It's NOT fair to out right ban them (though it makes for good starting politics for negotiation and campaigning) and will certainly prompt a strong justified response.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, @01:32AM (10 children)
Where's the evidence of subsidies? Lots of China stuff is cheaper than US stuff. Low/lower quality perhaps. They can't be subsidizing everything.
Facts are lots of US workers are and have been complaining about cost of living going up while their wages haven't gone up at similar rates.
Many of those costs are linked to property costs.
So if property costs in China for factories, apartments, etc aren't as high as the USA then they can undercut the US by that alone. The workers don't need as high wages (for rent/mortgage), the factories don't need to make as much profit (to pay the loans etc). The workers' fake starbuck lattes don't have to be as expensive either if the rent is lower.
It's all a result of decades of successful rent seeking and corporations trying to turn more and more stuff into "rent"/subscriptions. Do you want to do the noncapitalist thing of confiscating some stuff from the "landlords"? In many cases the "landlords" collecting "rent" are actually "pension/investment funds" for "normal people". Or banks that the normal people have got their money in.
China might go through a similar thing too (increasing property costs: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1325915/china-average-price-of-residential-housing-sold-in-shanghai/ [statista.com] ). After all lots of people/corporations want to be a landlord and collect rent without working as much. Heck I want to be one too.
But is it really a good thing in the long run? Stuff becomes more expensive "just because".
A Government could force certain property categories and locations to be low. Some countries do that for residential stuff.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @02:17PM (9 children)
And a few generations of "I've got mine" voter-controlling zoning.
There are two ways to do that: 1) rent control which is a universal mess and doesn't incentivize anyone to fix problems, or 2) get out of the way of the people who build more housing and other real estate. Land isn't being created any more, but what you do with the land can create more housing, commerce, offices, etc than at present.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 18, @04:14PM (8 children)
>2) get out of the way of the people who build more housing and other real estate.
To an extent... Given their 'druthers, developers will target maximum ROI for every project they take on, meaning: the developers focus on projects that sell to people able to pay large premiums for them and neglect "affordable housing" most of the time.
I'll just flog UBI for another minute here... in today's economy the poor frequently have nothing to give, zero input to the economic system. In a UBI based economy, even the poorest have a guaranteed minimum income, and their housing - while modest - can expect to receive much more reliable income from the housed when they have UBI than in today's "I might have a job next week" system. Business hates risk, reliable income reduces risk - at dramatic marginal rates when you start talking about the poorest segments of society - which, thanks to our pyramid structure, is nearly 40 million citizens.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @04:30PM (7 children)
"Given their druthers". When they're not given their druthers, then other things happen. Here, the problem is more the people who angst over property value and how living near a preventable affordable housing situation can affect that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 18, @04:41PM (5 children)
>Here, the problem is more the people who angst over property value and how living near a preventable affordable housing situation can affect that.
Here, the problem is overbuilt unoccupied premium housing standing empty and unsold while affordable housing is full beyond capacity.
But yes, angsty Karens (of both sexes) will crusade endlessly to "keep undesirables out" of their precious little neighborhoods. The argument is usually "property values" but if you get to know them a little bit, the truth is usually that they're terrified of people with darker skin than theirs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @04:45PM (4 children)
It's a market. Knock out some of the stuff that inhibits market corrections. For example, not allowing banks to sit on repossessed housing. You want to put a real estate valuation on your folio? Then rent or sell it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 18, @05:55PM (3 children)
>Knock out some of the stuff that inhibits market corrections. For example, not allowing banks to sit on repossessed housing. You want to put a real estate valuation on your folio? Then rent or sell it.
The banks that operate in Florida have pretty rigid guidelines about disposing of repossessed properties, basically a decreasing minimum offer limit over time. We ran into a crooked broker who was "playing the system" with an investor buddy of his, the minute we came in with an offer on a bank-owned property it triggered his investor buddy to make the (known to them) minimum offer required to get the property. I suspect if we hadn't wandered into the deal they would have waited X time and gotten the property for a few dollars less...
Banks 'round these parts are not landlords.
The unsold premium housing is owned by developers, they'll hang on to it hoping for a market rebound for a long, long time - they can afford to.
Another problem in this market is Zillow.com - they bought up a bunch of houses on spec to resell at higher values and basically cornered the market for middle-class real-estate for over a year. Houses were getting five and six offers above asking price on the day they were listed for many months - triggering the overbuild reaction.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @06:20PM (2 children)
So what? I speak instead of the value of that property on the books not what price the bank will try to sell their property for.
They are in your parts huge holders of property.
Sounds like the overbuild shouldn't have been consider "over", if it was that easy to corner the market.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 18, @07:17PM (1 child)
>They are in your parts huge holders of property.
Not by choice, they tend to lose money on repo operations.
>Sounds like the overbuild shouldn't have been consider "over", if it was that easy to corner the market.
Read for time sequencing and try again: First Zillow corners the market, then developers overbuild.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @09:52PM
You just confirmed what I wrote. Market corrections are reactive.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18, @04:42PM
Having said that, I have over the years come across tourist trap towns (including some local to where I am now) that utterly fail at providing affordable housing. It's usually a combination of mad demand for the region and extremely restricted supply - often surrounding land can't be developed (say because the town would lose its tourism industry and/or doesn't own that land). Then it becomes a choice between building apartments for tourists at mad money, or for would-be employees at a fraction of the profit.
But when you're not in a heavily constrained situation like that, it shouldn't be that hard to make affordable housing profitable.