That's basically it. The Chinese government views the rest of the world through Hobbesian self interest, but in the late 20th century financial way. They want your money, but lawfully.
The US has turned into something much more vindictive and unpredictable, including threatening to invade Canada.
> Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
Probably about the same as the US when it was a developing nation. "How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright":
> From the time of the first federal copyright law in 1790 until enactment of the International Copyright Act in 1891, U.S. copyright law did not apply to works by authors who were not citizens or residents of the United States. U.S. publishers took advantage of this lacuna in the law, and the demand among American readers for books by popular British authors, by reprinting the books of these authors without their authorization and without paying a negotiated royalty to them.
Yeah, people forget that IP is a social construct, and there's no reason a different society can't simply have different constructs. Open source / Free software is a different social construct too; and Stallman would have us live in a world where nobody is enriching themselves with proprietary technology they exert unfair control over.
Problem has always been ensuring that people who have brilliant ideas get appropriately rewarded for their contribution to humanity - but not disproportionately.
Taking your China comment in good faith: the copyright term on paper has long elapsed anyway, even if there's Mickey Mouse drawn on the paper in question.
Japan did the same in the 70s/80s while growing their homegrown tech companies, over time it seems they've been forgiven. In the end we all benefitted with better products from Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, and many others.
"stolen" should not be used in conjunction with IP, "infringed" if you like.
To steal is to deny the original owner access to their property.
That is true for physical objects, if I steal your wallet or your car you no longer have it.
But if I illegally copy some of your IP you still have access to it.
Sure you may experience some financial prejudice from that but you still have it.
Their train industry was built on ripping off companies they forced into poor agreements. They have wrecked industries with technological theft. I suppose it’s lawful from the CCP perspective.
Intellectual property as it exists and is used today overwhelmingly is used to stifle competition and lock down monopolies. It's used to project power internationally by deputizing foreign countries to protect American business interests. It's a far cry from how it's popularly presented as a way for the "little guy" to protect their inventions.
No they don’t. Source: me, lived/worked in China for 6 years. There are two rules: 1) to the strongest (doesn’t matter how you get there, 2) make/keep the right connections (guanxi) that will “apply” regulations to your benefit. Most cut-throat place I’ve ever worked.
Well, I mean, the US is straight up demanding money from its allies (in the form of an "investment agreement" exclusively controlled by the Trump government), and threatening them with economic doom if they don't comply.
Stealing IPs from universities almost look quirky in comparison.
Probably around the same amount of IP that US citizens stole from the UK in the 19th century. We stole loads of inventions during the Industrial Revolution.
Does it surprise you to find out that a lot of old money families in the US made their money smuggling opium and other similarly unethical things? We are a nation of crooks and thieves and always have been.
I ask anyone reading this comment to please study history more frequently, it will help you understand the world better.
The Chinese can just request IPs from APNIC too, you know. Or are you referencing the shenanigans with AFRNIC? That still isn't stealing them from companies and universities though. Is there some ongoing mass BGP route hijacking I'm not aware of?
Fine, I’ll bite. What exactly did China steal in 2025, who did they steal it from, which authorities did the victims approach in China for redress, where did they report failing to get redress?
You would have to know all the above for it to be real.
>The US has turned into something much more vindictive and unpredictable, including threatening to invade Canada.
The thing about China is that they are basically hard on the up slope of their advancement as a society/economy/nation, just like US was post ww2.
US on the other hand, has flatlined to the point where we think stuff like trans athletes in sports are a drastic enough reason to elect a president who is a convicted Felon.
China is def gonna outpace US in the next 10 years as the strongest economy, but the interesting thing is gonna be is if they are gonna fall in the same trap as US does in 20 or 30 years.
The US definitely peaked a long time ago, and we're in the slow demise phase of its empire, but I think China has already peaked as well. They have the same obesity and consumerism crises that have plagued the US. Add to that a demographic implosion, and I think the best they can do is hope for 20 more years.
Next 20 years is when PRC will really start cooking. In that period, PRC going to be doubling/tripling skilled workforce more than they have now (currently slightly above parity with US), this is already baked in from past 20 years of birth and current tertiary trends. That workforce, the greatest high skill demographic dividend in recorded history, will hang around for another 40+ years. They will have 40-60 years of operating with as much high end talent as OECD combined within a coordinated system. Past 2080, unless they sort out TFR, things could go bad, but for relevant timeframes, i.e. most of our lifetimes, they're going to be peaking.
(Obama administration, although not personally his fault)
We could also discuss the provision of Armalite rifles to terrorist groups in the UK, Iran-Contra (an early accountability failure paving the way for pardon abuse), and so on.
The actual reason was lobbying from US companies that were completely losing the competition because of the much lower price for the same or higher quality. But of course, we can try to come up with stories that don't hurt the patriotism ego.
Yep. I don't know if anyone is interested in anecdotes, but looking from Europe, I will do my best to avoid any kind of US dependency until US has a) overhauled the legal system starting from the Supreme Court and b) gotten rid of the de facto two-party system. (No, one-party system does not count.)
The two-party system is fine. We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
The problems with the USA political system are: electoral college, senate being 2 votes per state, and the supreme court being 7 people for life. But nothing can be done about the last two now. Especially now that the Supreme Court made a decision limiting how amendments can be ratified.
> We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
The American two-party system gave massive power to a tiny fraction of the population, which the large Republican party then retconned into most of their members as their party platform. Now they're a large fraction of the population. I'd choose the approach where the small faction remains its own small faction, even if they occasionally get to pull the levers of power.
Is that the extent of your requirements (for now, at least) ?
As an American I keep trying to surmise what we're going to need to do to start repairing the damage from this massive self-own. It's kind of hard because we don't know where the bottom will be, but we at least need to start having these discussions on what constructive approaches might even look like - we can't have our milquetoast opposition party phoning it in yet again with entitlement as the less-bad option.
External context is key - one of the main goals of this hybrid warfare attack on the western world has been to disrupt our relationships with our allies, and also because other countries have developed Democracies that function way better than ours. So please know that at least some of us are listening.
As an American I'm rooting for everyone else these days. Good for Canada. I hope the EU builds stronger trade with China too and America gets left in the cold to whither and die. Trump, Vance, Miller, Noem, Musk, Bezos all of them just forgotten about and completely irrelevant to the rest of the world.
I feel the same way about the US, but China is even worse. It’s basically what the US is becoming but still further down the road of authoritarianism. So I’m not rooting for it. EU, Canada, Japan etc are a better allay this point.
You realize there are a lot people (who aren't in the administration and didn't vote for them) that would be significantly hurt if all that happened. These people are your family, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers. You hate Trump so much that you'd prefer to see all those people suffer than have him succeed?
I strongly disagree with most of what Trump says and does, but I can't root for an outcome that would make my kids' quality of life be much worse. I'd much rather see us right the ship.
I'm really into geopolitics, and it's clear to see what's happening from the US side.
America still wants to play hegemon, but since Bretton Woods 2.0 didn't happen, they're going to lock up the entire North and South American continents from Chinese and Russian influence. And it'll be fierce.
The next salvo is going to be US statehood for Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is already partisan support within those provinces, and Trump is going to offer money to push it. If that happens, Yukon and the Northwest Territories are next.
(Side note: these are Republican voters, which gives Republicans the Senate for years to come.)
Venezuela wasn't about drugs or oil, it was about China. And it wasn't Trump's thing, it was the career DoD folks. (Venezuela is within medium-range missile range of 50% of US oil refineries. The US doesn't want foreign basing there or in Cuba.)
The DoD is pushing Greenland too as it'll be a centerpiece of Arctic shipping in the coming century. And Cuba, as it's both extremely close to CONUS and a choke point for the gulf.
You can see the plays happening if you watch. The Chinese-owned Panama Ports Company being forcibly sold to BlackRock, the increasing trade and diplomatic ties between China and South American countries, etc.
My bet is that a Democratic president would continue this policy, just with less rudeness and more "cooperation". The Department of Defense -- apolitically -- doesn't want China to have the US within arms reach.
Trump is going to try to speed run it, though.
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edit: downvotes rate limit my account, so I can't respond.
> I would love to hear how you think Trump will manage to get Alberta and Saskatchewan to become US states within this century.
It's going to nucleate from within Alberta and Saskatchewan.
I kinda agree with you. The US policy won't change much. It is a set policy but not very well executed, simply because such a policy is not in the interest of existing power base, so someone new but crude has to be elected, and that's why he got elected not once, but TWICE.
My understanding is that US is going to shrink back a bit, takes care of its neighbours first, but keep its probing bases intact, so that it can slash some costs and be more flexible in next decades. China is going to reluctantly expand its power base gradually -- but I think it's going to be a slow expansion because any rapid one would either fail, or create a new power group within China, that may threaten the existing players.
Not sure about EU though, it better gear up quickly.
It's not bad analysis, I upvoted you, but what you're forgetting is that nothing ever happens. Venezuela was just typical American meddling, Cuba might happen (I'd bet against it) but neither the Canada nor Greenland thing is going to happen because it would be too dramatic for narrative continuity.
> neither the Canada nor Greenland thing is going to happen
Greenland is happening, and will be underway soon. It's just a matter of how much international support it will have initially, and how the USA will strong arm support.
Canada is on the back burner after the realization that a country with a leader who was the Governor of the national banks of two major countries might know a thing or two about economic warfare.
Our official delegation left the Greenland delegation IN TEARS, and we pronounced 'it's happening' afterwards. These aren't shit posters on Twitter, these are our officials and our President ACTIVELY working to take over Greenland.
If Greenland was happening, what's taking them so long? The military could take it without a fight tonight, or last month for that matter.
They want it, but can't take it because it would be too shocking for the public (aka violating narrative continuity.) If they can prepare the public to accept it then it might happen, but most magas I talk to treat it like a joke, trolling the Europeans to make them invest in defense or something. I don't think the American public earnestly believes it will happen, and for that reason I think it won't happen.
Time may prove me wrong, we'll all find out eventually.
It is not trolling when OUR OFFICIAL DELEGATION left Greenland's in tears. This is OFFICIAL POLICY, OFFICIAL DIPLOMACY and has nothing to do with MAGA, memes, jokes.
If I asked you 2 months ago 'do you think Trump will steal tankers of Venezuelan oil using the US military, sell the oil, and deposit the funds in accounts setup offshore in the middle eastern country that gave him a free jumbo jet?' would you have said 'there is no way that will happen'?
I'm sick of the 'it's just Trump being Trump' when no one would treat any other politician that way. No, it is the US President, who sent an official US delegation, which, when it left (after reducing Greenlands official delegation to tears) continued to say 'we are taking Greenland'. Fuck off with 'it's just Trump being Trump'. It is the United States President.
I agree with your assessment. But I think the leaders pulling these strings are not fully appreciating the costs of this security.
Controlling all of these foreign lands is pointless if the country collapses then Balkanizes. The past decade has brought so many events that nobody thought could ever happen that we need to be rearrange our beliefs. It's very possible that those of us around in 10 years will see this time period as being part of the Second American Civil war.
The only thing keeping people almost pacified is the economy is not total dogshit yet. But that's tenuous at best.
There's going to be a post-trump power vacuum. It will likely be much more bloody than our current situation.
I live in a bubble in Calgary, and am from Montreal originally. Despite that, I saw lines of people waiting to sign petitions for separation in smaller cities. People who were happy to have their photos taken while they are signing petitions for separation from Canada.
There are some cultural factors in Alberta which draw it closer to the US than to Ontario and Quebec. Libertarianism, pro-fossil fuels, differences wrt firearms, differences in attitudes to crime and punishment, etc... The perception is that previous compromises around these items are slowly frayed to appease voting blocks in other provinces (mostly Quebec).
Then, the dirty reality; the Canadian economy has never been "great", at least in my lifetime. Nearly my whole class at university wound up going to the US, because one couldn't get a decent paying job in Canada in a lot of fields. Even our current prime minister did a ton of his work abroad. If separating (IE: joining the US) was only an economic question, only a tiny elite would support remaining a part of Canada.
The question Alberta separatists wish to ask is much less dishonest than the Quebec separation question in 95, which leads me to believe they are much more confident about their success. I wouldn't rule it out.
That might be the rhetoric, but separation means joining the US. The experience of landlocked country would be one of getting taken advantage of by every country around it.
There is a good 20% of people in Alberta who would vote for separation today. Take a close look, they aren't voting to be an independent country surrounded by a hostile country around it and a superpower that hijacks oil tankers to the south.
It is a stupid idea because the level of changes that would have to happen to everything would be much, much more than people realize. But Brexit has shown us that people will vote for stupid things if they are sold by trusted-but-dishonest actors
Then Danielle moved the goalposts to make it easier for the Independence folks:
Signature collection period: January 3 to May 2, 2026
Number of signatures required for a successful petition: 177,732
(10% of the total number votes cast in the 2023 Provincial General Election).
There is some small amount partisan support but not public support, massive difference. It might cost them the next election.
They aren't republican voters - there is sizable difference between the Canadian right and the US right. I think many Americans make this mistake (and Canadians too) - the republican positions on many things aren't that tenable to center of right (Canadian spectrum).
Also - There aren't many more things that are more toxic in Canada politics than Trump and Annexation. He single handedly handed the Federal election to the Liberals - it was the Conservatives who were going to win until he but his thumb on the scale.
> Also - There aren't many more things that are more toxic in Canada politics than Trump and Annexation. He single handedly handed the Federal election to the Liberals - it was the Conservatives who were going to win until he but his thumb on the scale.
Watching these discussions from the outside are statistics like four in ten (43%) Canadians age 18-34 would vote to be American if citizenship and conversion of assets to USD guaranteed [1]. I don't think the political similarities or differences between the American right and the Canadian right are what can result in one or more Canadian provinces joining the US; I think it's economic discontent.
You are thinking about this in terms of today. To put it in perspective, the same question polled 17% in the 55+ age group. Canada has serious generational problems, and as the boomers die the number of Canadians who vote that way naturally declines.
Well, I downvoted because I think your views are ill-informed and stupid, not because I think you're advocating for this. You fundamentally don't understand Trump and his ilk - he's petty, vindictive, vain, greedy and a bully. Everything runs on narrative and personal dealings, NOT any sort of rational goals or strategy. Ascribing these things to him is like pretending my cat is scheming about something when it jumps on a window. No bud, they're much simpler creatures.
Venezuela happened because it makes him look good on TV, that's it. There's no grand strategizing, it's a petty, vain person doing shitty things to make himself look great. He believes he is entitled to rule as an absolute monarch and acquiring territory (Greenland, Canada, etc) is just a way for himself to make himself more grand. Sorry, no grand strategy there either. I'll go further and say that part of what makes him so successful is that there's a large contingent of people that can't see him as he is and instead engage in this strategy larp like your various theories.
"Canada recorded 45,366 new zero-emission vehicle registrations in Q3 2025, accounting for 9.4 per cent of all new vehicle registrations in the quarter, according to the latest report from Statistics Canada."
"Of the total, 26,792 units were battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), while 18,574 were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). "
So this would represent about 1/4 of current annual EV sales.
There are some theories of negotiation that say it's good to pick an overly specific number like that specifically to imply that you've given it thought and aren't willing to change it without getting something in return.
I once had someone at a store ask me what something cost, and then got a blank stare back when I said "$90". I had to 'correct' myself and say "$89.99". We all live in very different worlds.
It’s a complete sea change. I feel Canada only set tariffs on cars out of some deference to the US auto industry. I don’t want to use slippery slope thinking, but this to me smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US.
For the average family, being able to spend significantly less on a car is a big deal.
Keep in mind that the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one. A lot of Big Three stuff happens across the border in Ontario.
But all the policy support that would have let North American automakers build up a competitive position with China is gone, so this is more about just acknowledging reality now.
> Keep in mind that the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one.
As someone who's worked in the auto industry (in Canada) I have to 'hard disagree.' The big three have proven time and time again that we (Canadians) are second-class citizens when it comes to how they operate the facilities built here. Even before any of this nonsensical tariff nonsense, billions in government money has been given to the likes of Stellantis and GM over the years in an effort to keep jobs in Canada, with them putting in the bare-minimum effort to satisfy people in the short-term and thanking us by continuing their movement of production out of the country. Instead of trying to talk the president down from his pointlessly harmful tariffs, or doing what Toyota/Honda have done in pivoting to building worldwide models beside the domestic ones, the big three are gleefully taking the opportunity to expedite the closure or downsizing of facilities here.
Outside of the chuds who 'need' a pickup truck to satisfy their fragile ego, sales of "American" vehicles are starting to drop, with buyers choosing domestically-produced where possible (like the Toyota Rav4, Lexus NX/RX, or Honda Civic/CR-V).[0]
> billions in government money has been given to the likes of Stellantis and GM over the years in an effort to keep jobs in Canada, with them putting in the bare-minimum effort
You could replace "Canada" with the "United States" and it's equally true. They aren't treating you any different than us.
The expensive cars sell well in the us - customers are not that price inelastic. Those who are prefer a used car with all the high priced features of 5 years ago to a new car with no options
Agreed, that’s exactly what i did. But I wonder how much of that culture is because the new cheap Chinese cars aren’t here.
If all you have in town is a target, that’s where people will shop. If you open up a goodwill there might be some handwringing and “I would never” rhetoric. But many people will go to the goodwill even if they don’t admit it.
Having previously owned a Chinese car (Great Wall H5, bought new), I'm on the fence about buying Chinese cars. Initially it was a great car -- lots of features and they used high quality OEM parts (e.g. a Mitsubishi engine). However, I found that it didn't hold up well* and was missing some of the touches that come from engineering not coming from a car culture. As one example, the tensioner for the accessory belt was a single 14mm bolt. Technically it worked, but it was not fun. Meanwhile, even my '85 Ford Escort had a half-inch square opening in the belt bracketry that accepted a half-inch socket driver/breaker bar for setting the tension. I don't think this is uniquely a Chinese problem, as I heard similar complaints from owners of early Nissan/Toyota full-size trucks. Toyota was able to eventually improve, but Nissan had to pack it in on the Titan.
*To roughly quantify, I'd say mid-to-late 80s Ford/GM car, not 70s Ford/GM car. It never stranded me, but it did break a few times in inconvenient fashion.
> Yeah thee was never any competing with china, our industry just relies on our market using different values to purchase a car.
This is patently false. The US could have competed with China if it had maintained investments spinning up battery manufacturing and downstream systems to build EVs at scale, while subsidizing EVs (fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year [1]) and increasing taxes on combustion mobility. The US picked legacy automaker profits and fossil fuel interests instead, simply out of lack of will and short term optimization over long term success.
China is building under the same rules of physics as everyone else. You can choose not to, but that is a choice.
(I believe in climate change, so I am thrilled China is going to steamroll fossil fuel incumbents out of self interest [2] [3], regardless of negative second order effects; every 24 months of Chinese EV production destroys 1M barrels/day of global oil consumption at current production rates, as of this comment)
I've always gotten the impression that China is becoming a technological manufacturing powerhouse because of massive investment by the Chinese government, whereas America is falling behind because the government giving grants to corporations is incredibly unpopular because of the belief that the investment is just going to get pocketed by the CEO and board of directors and spent on stock buybacks rather than the development the people and the government wanted to see.
Even if the money is spent properly, it's still highly criticized. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people complain that Tesla was only successful because of massive government grants.
In fairness to the US system, it’s certainly better than the European system or pretty much all but a few around the world. Yes, there is corruption, inefficiency and the largest subsidies are often for huge corporations that obtained them by buying politicians, but! The US government still manages to fund the cutting edge in 2026 in countless fields, to fund real American manufacturing, if you want to get grants you have a real shot at real money regardless of who you are, etc. In China you’re not getting a dime without the right political opinions. In Europe you have to be part of a very specific academic-professional class. In the US you can be anyone.
The thing about China is that they’re more strategic with their money and have longer timelines and clear, achievable visions. If you read the Wikipedia page for Made in China 2025 you’ll get the wrong impression that their success is due to more recent pushes; the vision is far more universal and has existed for far longer. You don’t get to the forefront of advanced manufacturing from nothing in ten years. Look at the 5th and 6th Five-Year Plans, into the seventh… you see the groundwork laid for present day China. The US rarely does that sort of long term thinking or planning these days, and it’s not even about the political winds changing or short-termism as much as that we lack one unified vision. Without that unified vision you can’t plan long term and you also can’t correct glaring problems. For example, if we had a unified vision on manufacturing, an obvious issue would be the lack of an American JLCPCB. You could create one with a stick and carrot approach, tariff assembled PCBs, new rule that any imported assembled PCB has to prominently display “electronics made in China”, smart subsidies for US board houses that encourage scaling and cost reduction. But that level of cohesion and vision rarely happens in the US and so we get a chaotic hodgepodge.
Nope, you are spot on. The broad argument is "Engineers are in power in China, lawyers in America." I see the US as no different as when Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged; everything about making and building takes a back seat to line go up. Well, you can't eat, live in, build with, or go to war with line go up. The stock market is not the economy, nor your industrial and manufacturing base. But it keeps going up, so everything must be fine, right?
This is a bad argument because you're assuming that the US needs to compete with China on EVs or that not competing results in somehow "losing". A car is a car, at the end of the day. Frankly, the best car is no car, but I'll leave that for some other discussion around transit.
China has gone all-in on EVs because over the years they smartly built up the world's best rare earth refining capabilities and immense manufacturing prowess while the United States has undoubtedly secured the global oil supply (remember tanks and fighter jets to fight wars aren't running on batteries) which, even amongst the doomiest of doomers will last quite a while.
China was never going to be an oil-producing powerhouse, but it did have the ability to leverage alternative energy sources so that it wasn't quite as beholden to the petrodollar institution, so that is what they did. And of course running cars on batteries and doing so at a very cheap cost makes sense there.
Meanwhile, the US can obviously produce good cars at a good enough price and with cheap oil for the foreseeable future it's hard to argue in favor of EVs as a national policy. What, we're going to switch to EVs? Who is going to build them? Tesla? We don't have access to the rare earth refining capabilities to meet demand. It's just physics. And if China is using less oil, that means more for the United States and others.
As you said, China has taken these actions out of self interest, but the self interest isn't "clean environment" or anything like that, it's just down to being not as reliant on the US for energy. Though that's a nice benefit. I do own an EV and I think the driving experience is superior but geopolitically things seem to be trending in a different direction.
> Meanwhile, the US can obviously produce good cars at a good enough price and with cheap oil for the foreseeable future it's hard to argue in favor of EVs as a national policy. What, we're going to switch to EVs? Who is going to build them? Tesla? We don't have access to the rare earth refining capabilities to meet demand. It's just physics. And if China is using less oil, that means more for the United States and others.
This is false. The US has chosen to produce expensive (average new vehicle price is $50k), fossil combustion vehicles to the detriment of its population. I want a cheap EV. I will buy a cheap EV from a US automaker. They do not want to sell cheap EVs. The US won't allow me to buy excellent, cheap Chinese EVs. The US population is being held economically hostage for legacy automaker profits and the fossil fuel industry. Why should the US consumer collectively have to pay more for these low quality decisions? I am incentivized to root for the destruction of US legacy auto so that I can eventually get a high quality, inexpensive Chinese EV, because that will be all who is left building them. China sells more EVs than the US sells entirely. It is only a matter of time as they continue to spin up manufacturing.
Whatever it takes to get cheap EVs with the sharpest deployment trajectory possible, I am not particular, regardless of the harm it incurs on US automakers or the US itself (if unwilling to build EVs, which appears to be the case). Climate change does not care about nation state boundaries. Certainly, if you don't believe in climate change, or don't believe it to be pressing, there is no discussion to be had.
It's not false. See Honda, Toyota, &c. many models are made in the US by Americans even if they're Japanese companies.
> The US has chosen to produce expensive (average new vehicle price is $50k), fossil combustion vehicles to the detriment of its population.
The US industry regardless of reason isn't going to be able to make a cheap, high-quality EV because it doesn't have access to affordable refining capabilities due to various reasons. So the actual situation is, sure the US could let China ship in a bunch of awesome EVs, but then the US automakers will suffer and some will go out of business and then the US just won't be making cars and those union autoworker jobs will be gone. Some people are fine with that I guess, but strategically it doesn't make a lot of sense for the US to allow the domestic auto industry to be crushed. Same thing with Germany. The EU is already starting to roll back EV mandates [1] for the same reason the US is focusing back on oil and natural gas.
> Whatever it takes to get cheap EVs with the sharpest deployment trajectory possible, I am not particular, regardless of the harm it incurs on US automakers or the US itself
On the other hand, as an American voter and even an EV driver, I disagree with these actions. EVs at all cost isn't a goal that makes sense or that I'm interested in. A better argument is to just do away with cars entirely. EVs still create c02, require toxic processing of materials and components, and while they're better for the environment, they're not as good as walking or transit.
> On the other hand, as an American voter and even an EV driver, I disagree with these actions. EVs at all cost isn't a goal that makes sense or that I'm interested in. A better argument is to just do away with cars entirely. EVs still create c02, require toxic processing of materials and components, and while they're better for the environment, they're not as good as walking or transit.
Well, you're arguing this in the wrong country. You might check your priors. I regret to inform you that only about 5% of Americans use public transit [1] [2] [3], and that is unlikely to change unless there is a sea change of migration towards urban areas from the suburbs and rural areas.
A majority of US miles are driven in rural areas or areas without mass transit [4], and the sun belt, where there is limited to no public transit, holds roughly half of the US population. I certainly agree to destroy demand for light vehicle passenger miles in urban areas with robust public transit and other non vehicle options, but the rest of the US will require EVs of some sort. Most of the US does not have mass transit infrastructure, and won't for the remainder of most of our lives (as of this comment).
China buys and deploys more robotics for manufacturing than any other country in the world. Automate or die as a business [1] [2]. It's not "cheap China labor" vs "expensive union labor"; it's labor vs automation.
And, to be clear, that does not mean you need to get rid of union US labor. It just means the existing folks can do more with the same number of folks they have today, and the pipeline for new workers can shrink while maintaining productivity (and we're going to need those folks for other jobs automation cannot do; trades, electrical grid and renewables infra, nursing and care, etc). This does require both unions and corporations to partner in good faith and share in the gains from this operating model, versus the traditional "squeeze labor as hard as you can for shareholder gains and management comp." If we get to the point where a just transition is needed (like coal mining and generation), that is a policy problem; make good policy, be humane to the human, package them out appropriately if we scale automation faster than expected.
This is simply smart policy as the world reaches peak working age population and heads towards depopulation over the next century [3] [4]. Labor will only get more expensive over time as demand exceeds supply [5]. The capital is there, simply look at annual legacy auto profits; they choose profits over investing in the business, and that is a choice.
This is one half of it that's correct, but the other half is the US is in a late stage capitalism death spiral.
On a huge number of products in the US there is little to no US competition. Instead of using product means (build it better) they use capital means (use your size to get loans to buy up anyone that looks like they could compete in the future).
Lots of US companies minimize actual competition via civil contracts. Cola companies are a great domestic example of this. You give them all the space they want and crowd out competition or you get 'standard pricing', which is way more.
A sizeable portion of the large US companies moved away from making products to printing money via becoming a financial institution. Car companies are a notorious example.
Simply put making products is a side gig, rent seeking is the primary goal. Until we kill that off, we're in for a worsening level of hurt.
Wrong, unless you can prove otherwise. EVs cost a little more emissions to build but are widely regarded as breaking even with a gas car in 1-2years after production. And even shorter as grids decarbonize.
I would love to see a thorough, agreed upon study comparing ICEs and EVs. If you have hard data (say, from a reputable journal, not just the news), please post.
It was. Then the U.S. turned into whatever the hell you call all that.
Now we have U.S. automakers who are derefential to the current regime's leader and are pulling out. The Federal and Ontario government both tried to somehow make them happy, but you can't make that kind of monster happy. So it's time to move on.
It'll be interesting to see how the Chinese EVs compete "fairly" in Canada. North America has had a lack of choice in automobiles at least as long as I can remember. There are so many cars that are available in Europe or Asia that I wish were available here. But at the same time consumer choices are also very different. So will be interesting to see what the uptake of Chinese EVs are like.
> The tariffs follow a May announcement by U.S. President Joe Biden of 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.
> Trudeau said on Sunday night that he had discussed China and other national geopolitical issues with U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan.
> smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US
The last federal election was almost entirely decided by which leader made the best pitch to Canadians on who would be better equipped to handle Donald Trump and to make the economy less dependent on the USA as a whole.
Nothing to do with “unfair, non-market policies and practices […] and China’s intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards”? I suppose that doesn’t even register anymore to the average selectively outraged parochial Canadian.
You'd be surprised the stink people can put up with when you have a leader to the south of us that is engaged in the kind of regressive behaviour that he/his administration is.
Not that I'm condoning this at all, I think China is a very concerning actor on the world stage. But I can certainly understand the mindset of many Canadians to reflexively seek out alternatives to more USA interdependence, short sighted as some of that may be.
Using the government propaganda press release is certainly a choice.
China has been engaging in "unfair, non-market policies and practices and intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards" for decades, but Canada only changed their minds when Biden told them to.
"You know, there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar" -- Justin Trudeau
Yeah, I'm sure he did it because he gives a fsck about human rights and fair markets.
It’s just the beginning is my guess. If BYD or CATL commits to a factory /assembly in Canada I would expect limits to be raised on this as progress is made. Or if this goes well we could see limits raised as China drops Canadian product tariffs further.
My gut reaction is there is no way China is setting up vehicle manufacturing or assembly in Canada because the American President would go absolutely nuts. Canada is increasing ties and joint ventures with Canada but manufacturing would be a bridge too far for our little man in the White House.
If you're selling 49000 electric vehicles, and the tariff reduced from $CAN 50k (estimated cost of a new electric vehicle; 100% tariff tax) to 3k (6%), saving your customers $2.3B, that seems significant to me?
I'm only trying to give a feel for them numbers, I did check the average selling price for a new BYD
> In 2020, the Automotive Industries Association of Canada (AIA Canada) reported the average age of Canadian vehicles was 9.7 years, though many industry experts believe that number is closer to 10.5 years today.
If the average car on the road is 10.5 years old, and you assume a flat demand, it is consistent with the lifespan of all cars being exactly 21 years.
(if you look at a random sampling of 100 cars, 5 will be from this year, 5 from 2025, and so on until you've counted the 5 cars from 2005 ; the average age will be 10.5 years)
If you assume that there are more cars sold every year (due to demographics: way more humans are alive today than in 2005), then this is consistent with a useful lifespan of 25 years or more per car since the "10.5" average is skewed younger because of the age pyramid bias.
It's poorly worded, but the rest of the article implies that's average lifespan, not average age.
“The average car lifespan now is closer to 322,000 kilometres, which works out to around 10 to 12 years for most drivers.”
“While the average vehicle in Canada may be designed to last around a decade, there are several factors, some of which are within your control and some of which are not, that can impact how long your car lasts.”
My last two cars were scrapped at 13 years due to rust effects.
> One final factor that can impact how long your car lasts is good, old-fashioned luck. Unfortunately, luck is one factor completely out of your control. You have control over the way you drive, but not the way others drive. Even if you are a defensive driving expert, you can still find yourself involved in a car accident.
So the numbers are calculated including traffic collisions in the life span calculation.
I wonder what the actual number is if you exclude traffic collisions? "How often should I expect to have to replace my car" and "How long should I expect a car to last" aren't quite the same question.
Recent CATL independent battery testing has demonstrated 1.25 million mile longevity for battery modules produced. While EV uptake may take time, the EVs that are built will be with us for some time. That equates to 62 years of service life assuming ~20k miles/year
Plenty of 30+ year old cars in Candida show rust isn’t that much of an issue. It’s increasing maintenance costs per year that take most vehicles off the road.
~25 years isn't the average when you account for accidents, rust, and useful economic life of a car. We had 200+ car crashes due to weather in a single day this week in Waterloo, Ontario.
The average car in Canada is 10.5 years old, in a steady state you double that to 2 * 10.5 =21 years lifespan on average. However the country isn’t in a steady state in 2005 there where 33.5 million people in Canada in 2025 that hit 41.5 million.
So because the number of new cars purchased each year is increasing the average age is significantly below 1/2 the average car’s lifespan.
The thing I am wondering is if there was an unwritten agreement to build Chinese BEV plants in Canada. This would give China access to the US market without tariffs and would give Canada manufacturing jobs.
Shitty napkin math says china is saving about $1-$1.5B, so I agree, I'm not seeing the needle more here. What _does_ make sense is that this agreement will continue to evolve over time. What _doesn't_ make sense is the 10-40% battery capacity loss because of temperature, for EVs in canada. I think newer EVs manage temperature issues like this better than older models, but I am unfamiliar with chinese EVs so I can't speak to them.
How many chinese EVs are in canada right now? If the answer is close enough to zero as to be insignificant, how is this saving canadians any money on chinese EVs?
If it helps, we can say something like: this adds $1-$2B gross revenue to china selling EVs to canada. Profit, probably less than a $1B. Needle still not moving.
Good. Carney also remarked our relationship with China is now more predictable with our relationship with the states (wild shade coming from him) just to really make it clear to certain parties why this is happening.
Cheaper car options in this country will be nice, and I say this as a certified car hater who's yet to own one despite pushing 40.
Who wants to be a trade partner with the US these days? I honestly ask people who aren't fully indoctrinated or already have ties established?
Its a dependency that I have to think almost all countries/businesses are evaluating. How do you do business and set up long term supply chains in a country can't trust that the economic policy of today exists in 3 months, they are actively trying to undermine their currency and the system of law is under heavy pressure to the point of failure.
It is tough to be supportive of the United States under this administration or that the future state of the US will be more sound. Having their formally closest trade partner looking over to China for trade is a massive signal.
The trade off is the market is large and strong financial (availability of capital) foundation - but I fear thats changing.
I think the niche for EV's in Canada will be regional-ish transportation... I would love to see a network of chargers that fully cover the Trans-Canada Highway, but there are still some pretty significant gaps, for example Hwy 17 - If even one of the stations goes down you'd be stranded.
But in that niche I can really see cheap EVs taking off. I know several people who live in Toronto whose cars have never been more than ~80 KM from home, and rarely been over 100 KM/h. That's a perfect EV user.
And a huge plus would be to get rid of the monster American trucks & SUVs that take four parking spots and two lanes at a time...
As a Torontonian that last part is honestly what I'm most excited about. Massive American cars simply do not belong in most of our streets in this city, and if this starts the long process of getting them out that's going to be amazing. I've seen Cybertrucks zooming down streets that are about a Cybertruck and a half wide and it's an untenable situation.
The issue on massive cars comes from your own government not it being american and chinese. Look at what ford builds in europe: same style of cars as the europeans because tax and regulatory environment favors smaller cars.
No, trucks are useful, but a massive modern pickup truck is much less useful in the urban context than a standard pickup truck from 30 years ago. The bed size has remained the same, the outside envelope of the vehicle has ballooned massively.
> You should get better transit so less people have cars.
Toronto has a very high (for north america) transit mode share
It provides a deep-dive video into the history of how we got to the situation we're in today with American cars exploding in size. It actually has its origins in Obama-era legislation for emissions standards that made an exception for "light trucks". SUVs are legally classified as light trucks so the industry has massively pushed these tanks onto the consumer promising more safety.
It has led to a dramatic decrease in public safety and pedestrian deaths that is unique to the US. One contributor to these deaths is literally parents running over their own children in their own driveways. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS HAPPENING IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
The video goes over the visibility issues with these trucks, how our safety regulations fail to account for them (light trucks only need to be tested in collision with other light trucks) and also covers how modern trucks have the same carrying capacity as pickup trucks from 30 years ago (the main thing that's increased is the hull and cabin size) while being harder to use for actual work since the bed is higher offer the ground
This is a much longer running issue than the Obama administration.
Market distortions favoring heavy trucks include:
* The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), enacted in Congress in 1975 under the Ford administration in reaction to the Arab oil embargo, with its tiered structure on passenger vehicles vs. trucks.
* The "Chicken Tax", tariffs on light trucks enacted by Lyndon Johnson as a reaction to French / West German tariffs on chickens. While much of this trade war was repealed, the light truck tariff never was.
* Section 179 tax deductions, which are biased in favor of heavy vehicles. As I understand it, this particular deduction was inserted into the tax code via the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 under Reagan, for the purpose of aiding small businesses that might rely on such.
So it's been, from my perspective, a fairly non-partisan desire from all of US politics, with protectionism as perhaps part of the goal, but perhaps due to other goals that had unintended effects.
Personally, I think that government regulations can only explain so much. Even with the market distortions, trucks tend to be rather expensive compared to smaller vehicles sedans, and that's before factoring in the bad gas mileage. My presumption is that America's vastly more rural landscape contributes just as much to the preference for trucks as government policy.
I do surmise from articles, though, that the above US policies have impacted the ability for lighter pickup trucks to entering the market. I suspect that some smaller pickups, like the small "kei trucks" that seem to have a bit of a following in the US even with all the regulatory hassle, would be much more present if a lot of these protections were removed.
I wish I could buy a cheap ford ranger from 1990 just to have for home improvement things. Go pick up furniture, sacks of dirt, lumber. These massive trucks are just so expensive and gigantic.
Massive trucks are useful for construction when they are used for construction. The ones that are used for leisure are the trucks the poster was likely referring to.
If you need to use a truck daily for work an F-150 is an awful choice. The beds of these things are the same size or smaller as pickup trucks from 30 years ago while the bed is also much higher off the ground making it more impractical to regularly load on and off. The bed is only 37% of the truck! The main thing that's increased the size of these trucks is an increase in hull width and cabin size.
According to this study, most F-150s on the road are not used for work
I wish I could examine your brain to understand how you think "Massive trucks are useful for construction" is a good counterargument to people using them as daily drivers.
No city ever builds transit infrastructure to tempt people out of their cars, they make the experience of driving shittier and shittier to force people off the road, all the while lambasting drivers for making the city dirty and dangerous.
Not really... Most F150s have a 5.5' bed which is pathetically small. You can't fit a sheet of plywood or a 2x4 in there without having the tailgate down. You can only really buy full-sized long box trucks if you're part of a fleet program.
Most professional builders drive big Savannah vans, which can not only carry full sheets of plywood, but also keep them dry. Plus, the front blindspot is less than one meter.
> You can only really buy full-sized long box trucks if you're part of a fleet program.
This is why the folks I know personally who are actually in the position to need to haul dimensional for work all seem to drive white pickup trucks that they bought from resales of leased fleets.
The _useless_ short bed trucks are driven mostly by young men who were too eager to pile on the personal debt in a show of vanity.
I bought my first car in SF, a 2016 Spark EV. Tiny subcompact, 135 km range, perfect for our family of 4 (including dog + daughter).
I literally can't buy any subcompact car these days in USA or Canada, since Spark (petrol) was discontinued in 2022, Prius C (subcompact hybrid) discontinued, and Bolt EV (bigger but still small) discontinued and will be replaced with something even bigger.
Looking forward to inexpensive BYD Seagulls flooding Canada and hopefully encouraging dealers to bring in existing subcompacts that they sell everywhere else in the world.
A bit of nuance: yes, Carney said that but he didn't just offer up the opinion unprompted - it was in response to a direct press question about if China or the US is a more predictable partner right now.
And even then, he didn't lead with "China is!" but wandered his way into offering the assessment.
The context makes his comment on this seem less nakedly provocative (not that it'll matter either way - the headline will be the headline, and the Trump admin will use it however they see fit as usual).
Great news indeed. Canada sends money to help ukraine with their Russia problem. Canada then sends money to Russia's communist partner China on the other side.
I find it bizzare that liberals in Canada are happy about doing anything with China considering they are anti liberalism, anti west and have many examples of large scale human right abuse.
I mean Canada's largest trading partner is the US, which also has many examples of large scale human right abuses.
As a Canadian, it's not really relevant to me that a country we trade with isn't liberal, and I don't agree with the premise that China is inheriently anti-west. Anti-western values, yes, but China does not threaten west violently in anyway that I can see. They mostly threaten western dominance economically.
IMO, Canada should just do what's best for its citizen, which is get good trade deals, and ensure that our values don't morph into something unrecognizable. What other countries do in their own borders is largely irrelevant.
> in the US, which also has many examples of large scale human right abuses.
Excuse me? Citation is needed here for present day human rights abuses in the US.
> Canada should just do what's best for its citizen, which is get good trade deals, and ensure that our values don't morph into something unrecognizable. What other countries do in their own borders is largely irrelevant.
It’s extremely relevant, if you believe in personal liberties and democracy you should to do business with societies that uphold personal liberties and democracy it’s that simple.
Its only the first 50K that get 6%, still pretty interesting as being physically so close to the US could cause people in the US to get their first look at Chinese cars.
Chinese car companies face far more ruthless competition than western ones so could end up making better cars as a result, imo.
There are over 100 brands in china selling electric cars
I suppose you realize the people running those manufacturing companies won't be hurt much at all, everyone who scrapes by trying to making a living work for them will hurt a lot when they get fired.
The vast majority of US auto jobs have already been lost to automation yet I don't hear you asking for those to come back in exchange for twice as expensive cars.
This is these companies own fault. These companies have grown cozy rent seeking with little competition and have completely missed the electrification of cars as a result. Cheaper cars will hurt those workers, but all of society will be better off when one of their largest expenses decreases.
The UAW endorsed the guy currently threatening to invade and annex Canada. Why would I care about them? They can all rot. No Chinese autoworker ever threatened me with invasion.
This is entirely incorrect. You cannot permanently import or register a vehicle which has not undergone homologation. None of these vehicles have been certified to meet US safety standards and they cannot be imported permanently.
Nice ackchullay there, thank you for your contribution to the discussion. It is pretty clear that OP is referring to new cars based on context but hey who cares about context.
Simple and legal are different matters. There's a BYD parked in my neighborhood pretty often (Central Texas) with Mexico plates. I have no idea how "permanent" it is, and yet there it is.
exactly this - once people realize how far ahead Chinese manufacturing is, they'll put pressure where it's needed to either a) allow more to be imported, because people want nice things, or b) bring the manufacturing process over, like they did with the japanese cars
Chinese EVs are already way ahead of most western EVs - really, you need to see some of the cars the likes of Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Denza and Xpeng are releasing.
In the case of the Xiaomi SU7[1]: you name it. Pretty much every conceivable way. Performance, comfort, electronics, styling, build quality. Xiaomi is on par with Apple for electronics and they actually followed through on making the car Apple wishes they made. Sells for around 40k, so on par with a Model 3, but absolutely embarrasses anything Tesla makes.
Their world leading battery tech is much cheaper and last longer, as they bet on the right tech compared to basically every western car company. Their cars overall are much cheaper for equivalent or better quality. Their car companies are desperate to stand out given there are over 100 of them so produce wide ranges of extra features and designs.
The US government has really handled this poorly. Let's take one of our closest allies and push them into the arms of our biggest rival. All while helping boost that rival's total exports to record numbers. And boosting their universities to top positions in world rankings. Just brilliant, guys. "Make America Great Again" sure seems like it was intentionally tongue-in-cheek.
US has thrived economically for 5 decades after becoming an import economy.
This whole export/import balance is such a lame reasoning...yes you've spent a certain amount of $...and got plenty of stuff in exchange. In the words of some economist I've read "by Trump's reasoning my barber is also taking advantage of me because I cut my hair every month and he never buys anything from me".
Last but not least, services are never included in these trade balance arguments. How much money flows to US through their financial and IT services alone...?
The trade deficit argument is mostly nonsense, but it's being made disingenuously anyway so the actual merit doesn't really matter to the people making it. Trump is a big fan of tariffs because they give him negotiating leverage to make deals beneficial to his own interests and those of his cronies. There is no national interest involved, this is an administration devoted purely to grift. Any benefit to the country is purely accidental.
The trade balance as a number shouldn't matter, but offshoring critical manufacturing capability and production ecosystems does.
China has at least 2 key advantages in manufacturing -- cheaper labor and laxer regulations. If the US were to embrace and extend robotics and automation more vigorously that first point could become moot. Also the second point as far as labor regulations go, and if environmental regulations were properly priced then that too would be moot.
1. The US industrial output has been growing for decades[1]. US manufacturing is doing very well, it's US manufacturing jobs that aren't due to automation.
2. Manufacturing as % of the population has long been declining globally including China. Labor cost is a very minor expense in modern manufacturing unless we talking something like clothing. I don't think Americans miss the millions of jobs they had 60 years ago sewing shoes.
3. Car industry isn't critical manufacturing capability by any means. I can understand ships, or steel or even chips, but cars?
The battle is already lost as far as China owning the future markets for EVs and probably energy in general. It doesn't seem conceivable anybody else could match their scale, efficiency and technology advantages.
If you're going to fight economically, might as well do it in areas that aren't (a) a lost cause (b) going to hurt you economically since you'll have to settle for worse and more expensive products and (c) the alternative supplier's country isn't threatening to literally invade you and surrounding nations.
This is exactly why its so hard to compare though; government contracts, emission credits and direct subsidies are all quite different and weighting them is highly subjective.
While Americans very frequently complain that the Chinese state subsidizes various industries, I am astonished that they do not see any similarity with the fact that I never heard of any really big investment project in USA, e.g. the building of any new big factory or new company headquarters, that was done otherwise than after receiving very substantial tax reductions of various kinds from the local government of the place chosen for the project. In many parts of Europe those kinds of tax reductions would be illegal, being considered a form of state aid for a private company.
And yet virtually all European lawmakers get $ from governments threatening to cut jobs.
Many countries actively lose money for those jobs, Serbia is an example. They go to extreme lengths to underbid competition for stellantis factories and get a net negative impact.
If you can't survive without taxpayers paying the bills, just die ffs.
PRC slashed tariffs on Canadian ag in reciprocation, which unlike Canada on PRC EVs is uncapped. Meanwhile EV cap only raises based on PRC auto investments and plenty of ways US can throw cold water on that. Either way, this more bargaining chip for Canada vs USMCA renegotiation next year. Like it would be nice to get chinese EVs, or even shoring some of their manufacturing in CA to keep auto sector going, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it being geopolitically sustainable. Imagine US flexes, PRC pulls out, and early adopters get screwed.
I'm also curious to see if we will see more "no drive zones".
We see this in other domains: I recently talked to someone from an asset inspection (think flying around bridges to check for fractures) company. They can't use DJI drones because of security concerns.
What has astounded me about all this is the extent to which so much of our industry fall crisply into one of two groups: 1. Chinese stuff is cheap incompetent rubbish anyway, anyone near it is by definition a loser, so who cares? 2. Chinese stuff is perfect, amazing and we should just stop doing everything and buy what they're selling. They'll totally open factories here and give us jobs too!
The actual reality, which people like your asset inspection firm are dealing with, is the Chinese have leapfrogged the west in so many important respects, but to preserve security we have to live in an expensive technological backwater since the leaders of our society are so resistant to internal disruptive competition that may result in other people displacing them.
Besides which Canadian manufacturers have been extremely reluctant to make EVs, so I really don't see that there's a domestic "EV market" we should be protecting.
Yes, it's a modest step, but my guess is that those BYD cars will sell like hot cakes and demand will go through the roof. By popular demand, the government will have to lift that limit. That's all China needs to destroy american car manufacturing.
The announced limit doesn't seem like enough volume for BYD to roll out a dealership network, but maybe they do it in anticipation of higher limits in the future.
Volvo could be an immediate beneficiary. The Canadian EX30 was going to be cheaper because they could make them in China, but after the 100% US/Canada tariff was announced they had to switch to ones produced in Belgium iirc.
edit: Something I just read that I haven't seen reported elsewhere is that the imported EVs have to cost $33,000 or less. The EX30 currently starts at about $54,000, so... maybe not.
North American manufacturers are not serious about making electric vehicles for the non luxury segment. The one exception is the Bolt and it's not being made in canada.
Fuck em they are fighting EV mandates while complaining that Chinese manufacturers will undercut their EV sales. They can go to bankruptcy for being liars.
I live in Ontario and support auto workers but not their lying employers.
> That's all China needs to destroy american car manufacturing.
I don't think China can be held responsible for America voting for Donald Trump, one of whose main goals in life has been the destruction of every trading and soft-power partnership that the US has built over the past 80 years.
The Mercosur-EU trade deal, the India-EU trade deal and this China-Canada trade deal. A pattern perhaps? A frantic search for reliable trade partnerships, or just random noise?
Sure the details were negotiated in 2019, but it isn't even in effect yet. It still needs to be approved by legislative bodies on both sides of the Atlantic. Which will probably happen sometime this year.
In case you're not aware, Chinese cars have the same or even better quality than US, European and Japanese cars. Their electric vehicles are cheap and high quality, it's really impressive.
I expect that this relatively small quota is a good faith opening the door to Chinese product but the main core goal will be deeper, comprehensive Chinese investment, such as securing BYD/NIO/etc car factories in Ontario.
Others have covered the problems with this. However if you live in certain US cities that are close to Canada there may be a work around.
Actually move to somewhere across the border and live in Canada. As a US citizen living in Canada crossing into the US for visits, even fairly long ones, has little or no hassle and you can bring your Canadian car.
For example if you are in Detroit, move to Windsor, Ontario. Outside of peak congestion times it is 10-20 minutes to get to or from Detroit. That's quick enough that this could work out even if you do almost all of your activities outside of your home in Detroit.
BTW, there are also cities on the south border of the US where this works (with Mexico, not Canada!), but in many of those the cities on the Mexican side have somewhat of a crime problem so you would have to be a lot more cautious in picking a place to live there.
> As a general rule, motor vehicles less than 25 years old must comply with all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) in order to be imported permanently into the United States.
Without homologation there is 0 chance you'd be able to import and register one of these.
Maybe the same way Steve Jobs did the no plate thing. Maybe he just keeps cycling them. Might even send them to the labs at Ford for destructive analysis after each one is legally done.
Assuming they don't conform to US safety standards (and aren't easily made to conform), your best bet is to aim for this provision:
> Nonresidents may import a vehicle duty-free for personal use up to (1) one year if the vehicle is imported in conjunction with the owner's arrival. Vehicles imported under this provision that do not conform to U.S. safety and emission standards must be exported within one year and may not be sold in the U.S. There is no exemption or extension of the export requirements.
There's certainly a question of if it's personal use if your canadian friend leaves their vehicle at your place and you drive it around. But your friend can certainly get it over the border and I don't know how much enforcement you'll get after that. You will want the vehicle to return to Canada before the year is up.
> Assuming they don't conform to US safety standards (and aren't easily made to conform), your best bet is to aim for this provision:
Canadian and US car safety standards are very closely aligned, other than some pretty minor differences. (e.g. DRL required in Canada, TPMS required in the US, etc.)
Sure. If you want to pay the 247% tarriff, there’s nothing stopping you from doing this. US import duty applies when you cross the border, calculated on the vehicle’s origin (China), not purchase location.
I think the way this would work is you would have your Canadian friend/owner drive it across and then return via another mode of transport. It's entirely possible you could get away with it pretty much indefinitely (especially in an area where folks are used to seeing Canadian plates), but I could also see someone checking a list of "foreign vehicles that entered the US and never left" at some point and one or both of you having some explaining to do (i.e. being ruled inadmissible).
This is only correct if you're not planning on ever registering the vehicle. And good luck with the paperwork to prove that during import. This is a great way to waste a bunch of money and get your shiny new car crushed
If we've learned anything from the last year, it's that Elon doesn't base his decisions on facts or reality. So I doubt that this will have any effect on Tesla.
I don't think it will change anything for Tesla, unless it lowers their costs through lowered tariffs somehow.
TBH, Tesla is in a tough position with their EVs in NA. They can't really build a cheap enough crossover/suv to compete directly with ICE RAV4, and virtually anything they do at >$50k would negatively impact their existing product sales. The base Model 3/Y are too expensive compared to ICE and have met tepid reviews because of their slightly odd mix of price and features.
So they've chosen instead to focus on autonomy and car hiring. I can't blame them for that. There's a huge potential for recurring revenue in that space and they've been positioning themselves to be in an excellent position to capture a lot of it over the next five years.
> They can't really build a cheap enough crossover/suv to compete directly with ICE RAV4, and virtually anything they do at >$50k
Doesn't the Model Y start at 40K? That's more expensive than the base model RAV4, but the Tesla is probably aimed at a slightly different market segment too. My guess is they could compete head-to-head on price if they needed to, but they don't think the math works out better that direction yet.
They can only compete with a subsidized product with their own subsidized product. The car company that exclusively makes EVs went all-in on the party that promised to destroy EV subsidies. Who's he going to beg to, California? They hate him too.
Tough part with China is that Tesla could fully replicate all chinese EV businesses and still be more expensive without government subsidies and currency devaluation.
BYD quite literally matched their prices here with the Seal and both brands offer equally stupidly good deals vs the current interest rate here in Poland.
They just can't compete with luxury brands that don't sympathize with fascism. People just don't want to advocate for their own demise.
Wouldn't them creating artificial scarcity be just another way to keep prices at the same level as tarrifs, but with the huge margins going to the private sector instead of the public?
This is for about 50k cars a year that are priced about 35k CAD or less. It's a small amount compared to Canada's 2mil car sales a year, but it is quite significant in the message it is delivering to the world about Canada being willing to diversify their economy in the wake of hostility from conventional partners. It'll be quite interesting how normal partners react.
This feels like a poor long-term play for a short term political win. Canada has a robust automotive supply industry to US auto manufacturers, and this industry could be in long-term risk in an attempt to hurt relations with freer, traditionally more conservative nations. It’s not a shock but it is always disappointing to see major political decisions made for the benefit of the next election cycle.
> in an attempt to hurt relations with freer, traditionally more conservative nations
I don’t think those are the salient characteristics of the US from Canada’s perspective in this development, and because of that I don’t think of your analysis of this as motivated by short term political considerations is correct. Instead, the current US government’s unexpected decisions to turn the thumbscrews on Canada exposed Canada’s economic dependence as a vulnerability, and the Canadian government is at least trying to signal a capability to become less dependent in the future in the hopes that reduces their vulnerability as perceived by the US government. That vulnerability existed before and will outlast the current US government.
I largely agree, but there are conflicting goals which makes it hard to evaluate if this really is a bad long-term play. Canada has environmental commitments, and giving the population access to cheap EVs will help meet those goals. I don't think this decision is just a short-term political win, there is potential for it to help with the longer term vision of Canada. But I do agree, this is bad for the local automotive industry in Canada.
The message here is that western Canadian agricultural & energy interests are of potential more strategic value than a dying technically backwards auto sector led by three moribund regressive manufacturers who have shown their willingness to show their belly to Trump anyways.
As an Ontarian, I'm saddened. But I don't think the Big3 deserve anymore state support. They've pushed it too far.
Just earlier this week they were running editorials against the gov't on EV mandates. Again. Ok, here you go. Don't want to make EVs? Only want to sell giant Canyoneros?
It's ok. China will service that market. Have fun becoming irrelevant. If consumers really don't want EVs, like they said earlier in the week, then there's nothing to fear. Right? Right?
More that Ontario auto is projected to have no value since Trump has explicitly signaled he wants to kill Canadian auto and reshore to US. If Ontario auto is going, no sense in losing also agriculture especially if oil also going in 5-10 years if VZ ever works to US favor. The only hedge is to save Canadian auto is hoping for some sort PRC JV where Canadian plants keep some jobs and grab some margins, possibly a lot of margins (i.e. no truly cheap EVs) since PRC inputs cheap. Best case scenario is Canada has meaningfully cheaper EVs, but not Chinese cheap, get to hold onto some auto work, have access to worlds largest ag buyer, maybe free up an extra million barrels of oil to export since US will want VZ heavy instead of WCS from Alberta. Although US has many other ways to punish Canada.
I think that Canada has to de-leverage trade with the US is what the take away should be. Not that this trade deal itself is going to change all the balances -- its that there are other players who can start to trade - reducing dependence on the US. The compounding effects are damaging as are switching costs.
The laughing party is the person taking the tariffs and living large off them. The American consumer is suffering.
In reality, the vast majority of Canadian exports are energy and potash, neither of which have any kind of tariffs applied.
Because if they did, Trump's supporters would lose their shit completely. Gas prices would go through the roof and farmers would be in big big trouble.
- I'm still not over how great it feels to have confidence that Carney has a strong understanding of the economics of these political manouvers. Not only is he not a !@#$ing moron, he's a deeply experience economist more than he's a politician.
- Stratification of trading partners is nothing but good.
- This feels like safe toe-dip. Both sides have agreed to terms that are temporary, meaning there is no surprise rug-pull moment. Which is something the Americans are using more and more to keep everyone so !@#$ing wound up.
- This could be a long-term play for China: establish a presence in the North American auto market. The U.S. is right there. (Watch the Americans ban Chinese EVs from border crossing)
- Even better long-term play: establish North American manufacturing. How about Ontario builds Japanese and Chinese cars, turns CAMI and others into a Roshel or other military vehicle plant, and says good riddance to the American auto makers that have been rug-pulling long before Trump got into politics.
- A great opportunity to start improving trade lines for Canola. Possibly a trial balloon for other primary and secondary resources?
- Canada cannot stand on its own geopolitically. We must be closely tied to a major power. Intuitively that choice is the EU But I fear that China can move much faster and we'll find ourselves de-facto in their sphere while the EU is still debating this and that.
I don't love that Carney is relatively conservative-leaning for being Liberal, but I do really appreciate the fact that he's professional, competent, and stable. He speaks like (what I see as) a regular person and he's not there to whip supporters into fervent chanting.
I'm absolutely relieved that Poilievre didn't win the election (or his original seat). Setting aside just how far to the right he is, I've heard him described as an idiot both by another MP and by someone (who is himself pretty conservative) who met him at some social event.
Canadians are incredibly pissed at Trump and his criminal TechBros. This change here is largely due to that.
Trump threatening invasion of Greenland is also aimed against Canada; the USA would have more and more military bases threatening Canada, so Trump's anti-Greenland policy is heavily aimed at threatening Canada rather than China or Russia. One can see how he helps Putin versus Ukraine - one can not trust Trump.
I get that this is seen as a "practical" move north-of-the-border, but understand, this is the kind of move that guys like Trump, Putin, and Xi all require. They want this kind of thing to happen, because it shows the real issue was never one of democratic values and human rights. If Canadians valued that then their PM wouldn't be inking a deal with China in response to what Trump is doing. There would be some sort of deal with Europe, perhaps, but not China.
The next time the Canadian government brings up some sort of issue with the treatment of Canadians by ICE or some other kind of issue, you can bet that the horse trading will involve a reference to the fact that this deal happened.
That's already more-or-less the rationale in Trump's dealings with Europe: for all of the complaining about Russia as a threat or the sanctity of NATO and how the Greenland affair threatens all of that, there was a solid 15-year-long run where the continent was more than happy to buy petroleum products off the Russians while ignoring escalating human rights violations in Russia along with incursions into South Ossetia and the Donbas.
He picks up on these sorts of deals as hypocrisy based in realpolitik, and will exploit it.
Trump doesn't care about values at all, he cares about money more than anyone else does. I find it laughable you can even talk about values whilst having that main in charge of your country.
And so what if he turns around and goes "ha your values are worthless". Trump is a literal paedophile and a literal rapist. Why should we accept being brow beat by such a man? So? We're moving on without you.
No, not of the kayfabe goals that serve as rallying cries for his dwindling band of cultists. But rather success of the goals of our adversaries who helped put Trump in power and seem to primarily inform his policy.
(edit to answer the question below, as throttling has set in: China, obviously)
I’m assuming this is downstream of trumps move in Venezuela? Canada suffers the most from US access to Venezuelan oil. On top of all the prior rhetoric and moves by his admin.
What concerns me is why does the west think China is trustworthy? Why are we all fighting one another? Culture is important. China knows this, and is unequivocally Chinese relative to the Europeans.
It has nothing to do with Venezuela, and the move has been long time coming. It's not 'on top of all the prior' rhetoric, it is _ALL_ the rhetoric.
Let me be clear: here in Canada, the idea we are ever going to have anything like the same relationship with the United States again is held by a small and shrinking minority. And with every day, with the shit show that's happening down south, this becomes more true. The old adage is true, trust takes years to build and seconds to break.
As for China, I doubt anyone among the Canadian leadership, and most people here, "trusts" China, but it has nothing to do with trust but with cold hard calculus of who we can sell our stuff to. China is a big market, and speaking of trust, China has not threatened us with annexation. Words matter, as do deeds.
Culture is important, but has relatively little to do with geopolitics. Europe had thousands of years of shared history and values, and 2 world wars.
well, the president of the united states of america and the human slimeball he sent as an ambassador to Canada have been threatening our sovereignty for a year. Hope this helps.
Up until a while ago, I'm pretty sure that the consensus was that China not trustworthy. And then, Trump plays his cards and the consensus is now that the US are even less trustworthy. So here you go.
> Up until a while ago, I'm pretty sure that the consensus was that China not trustworthy. And then, Trump plays his cards and the consensus is now that the US are even less trustworthy. So here you go.
But that doesn't make China trustworthy, which this move implies.
It seems like there's some "narcissism of small differences" kind of thing going on here. Trump may not share Canada/Europe's values to the same degree of prior US presidents, but China does not share those values at all and never has. It's really questionable judgement to throw your lot in with China if you're not happy with the leadership of the US.
We do trade with plenty of people who we don't think are trustworthy (Trump's US, for instance). I don't see that this move implies that China is trustworthy at all.
Why would this move imply anything about China's trustworthiness? Canada has forever been USA's lap dog. They say "jump" we say "how high?". Those tariffs we had were mostly to be in solidarity of the US.
Yes, it was also to protect car manufacturing in Ontario, but Trump has sent a clear signal that as long as Canada isn't a US state, this industry is going to die. So, why bother with a tariff at all?
This has nothing to do with China's trustworthiness.
> Why would this move imply anything about China's trustworthiness?
Per you GGP: China was previously considered untrustworthy, so its products tariffed to exclude them. It implies more trust if now those tariffs are being removed to allow them in. And it's especially off of the motivation is some evaluation of the US's trustworthiness, because those two things are completely independent.
> Yes, it was also to protect car manufacturing in Ontario, but Trump has sent a clear signal that as long as Canada isn't a US state, this industry is going to die. So, why bother with a tariff at all?
If that were the motivation, it would make way more sense to partner with the Europeans. IMHO. There's a better alignment of values there.
I don't see where you're going. We trust europeans and I very much doubt that we had any tariff on their automobiles to begin with. We're talking about removing a "artificial" stopgap tariff specifically targeting Chinese imports, not preferring China over Europe.
European cars can't compete here because they're not cheap enough. Chinese car are. They're the one disrupting the global market now.
Because of the Chinese/Russian asset that got into the highest leadership position of the western world, and is now using that position to create and inflame fighting amongst ourselves. We had it too good, for too long, people got too entitled, became out of touch with what actually made our society great, and our adversaries took advantage of that.
As an American, I am truly sorry to all of our allies and friends who didn't even get to vote on the matter.
While we (Canadians) certainly aren't happy with Trump's attack on Venezuela, Trump's threats against Canada, reneging on deals with Canada, threats against Greenland, and attacks on the US's domestic rule of law probably all carry more weight in this decision than that.
Despite the issues that Trump has caused Canada still does more trade with the US, on more favourable terms, than China...
We're generally against warmongering. We're definitely against invading another country with the purpose being to steal it's resources, and that's what explicitly what the attack was. We're weary of the military of our neighbor violating their own constitution, and their own laws, to invade another country without authorization from the appropriate civilian authorities because that sort of lawlessness doesn't tend to turn out well. We are concerned by the blatant murders and violation of the rules of the sea, and the rules of war that lead up to the invasion including the sinking of ships nowhere near the US posing no threat to the US and the murder of shipwrecked people. I'm sure the list goes on, but those are some headline concerns that come to mind quickly.
The actual operation was a military invasion of another country resulting in 3 figures worth of deaths - not merely a "capture" of someone - though the capture itself is concerning for the aforementioned reasons.
There are a massive amount of new EVs in Quebec, which isn't exactly tropical. Part of it is subsidies, $2K for new EV, and $600 for charging. The other thing is the crazy scale of hydroelectric production in that province, some of which gets exported as far as Baltimore. So electricity is very available and reasonably cheap in QC.
We'll see how BYD's handle the bone chilling Montreal winters... Unless they're an absolute flop, I can see some fairly solid future prospects.
(I live in Ontario, but I've been to Le Belle Province quite a bit ;) )
As an EV driver from Ontario it's amazing crossing over, or even getting close to the border, the EV situation is just so much better.
That said, while hate Tesla the company ... I'll take their chargers over the patchwork of various apps & cards I have to install in order to make use of things there. There's a notable absence of Tesla stations there, but a lot of variety of other things and I had bad luck installing half the apps and it was not fun trying to set that all up while standing in the -20C cold in a gas station parking lot while just trying to get to the ski hill.
The vast majority of Canadians live near the US border. The weather is not tropical but it is quite normal compared to a lot of US states and northern Europeans.
EVs and cold climates are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, if you want to road trip with snowy 30 mph headwinds, the charging times will be meaningfully worse. Not impossible, but definitely noticeable.
On the other hand, the traction control is fantastic and they tend to have the best preconditioning features so that you never have to get into a cold car for your commute.
For a lot of people, that second paragraph is far more important than that first for at least one of the cars in their household inventory.
One of the more popular locations for the Ford Lightning is Toronto. They seem to do fine. Canadian politics echoes American politics a bit, but they are not quite so ideological about EVs as we are.
I (Canadian) drive a Polestar 2. Chinese manufactured car by Chinese company Geely (tho with Volvo DNA).
It's the best winter driving car I've ever owned. A set of Michelin X-Ices on it's amazing. I've been driving for 35 years and I've never driven something with better winter handling, including Subaru I used to own, etc.
Chinese EVs are not what you want flooding the global market.
Every Chinese business big enough to play at the global scale has the government in it's power structure. They don't necessarily dictate business decisions but every bit of data collected is by default accessible by the government.
Having a significant fraction of a country driving around in Chinese EVs gives an insane amount of information to the Chinese government for free. It's not just direct information either like the driver's identity and personals, with millions of cars on the road a lot can be inferred, like if the parking lots at military bases suddenly fill up on a Tuesday afternoon or traffic between a high value person's home and an airport gets unusually slow.
These correlation attacks are not just theoretical, Strava leaked the location and layout of a military base in Afghanistan, accidentally, by showing the most commonly jogged routes by users on their public map.
These cars have cellular modems, they will have wifi and bluetooth hardware, if a particular person's device was identified at, for example, a political meeting or business conference then that person could be trivially tracked by the dozens of Chinese cars that they pass in a day. The information could be smuggled home along with all the normal diagnostic, update and service info that streams out of a modern car.
This could be done today by the American government, and it is to some extent, to identify, and locate, protesters and criminals by their mobile devices but it takes time, access to equipment/logs that the government does not always own.
And it may sound paranoid but remember that China was caught operating their own "police" force around the world not long ago, they will take advantage of any opportunity they are given to spy on other countries.
edit: HN seems to have a short memory. Which country was investigated for tampering with a Canadian federal election recently?
> And it may sound paranoid but remember that China was caught operating their own "police" force around the world not long ago
Have you heard about ICE? That one's not a paranoid thought. It's a very real personal police designed for oppression. I'd much much rather chineses EVs flooding the market over Teslas.
These two concerns do not need to be mutually exclusive. Either one can be recognized as a threat to our liberties without diminishing the severity of the other.
The more relevant discussion is the lack of policy/legislation to prohibit government agencies from sidestepping the 4th amendment and purchasing access from private corps, like Flock, to surveil individuals without a warrant. It’s ICE today, maybe DEA tomorrow, and the FDA in some broken future. In a decade or two, when nearly all vehicles are inherently advanced optical sensors with wheels, what stops auto manufactures becoming real-time surveillance companies, like Flock?
American citizens being shot and brutalized by a state sponsored force of masked thugs without training. Sounds pretty clandestine to me and it's happening in us soil.
Ragebait would be trying to argue that China running secret police and propaganda operations on Canadian soil, against Canadian citizens, is in any way equivalent to a domestic force taking actions primarily against foreign nationals, in a statutorily authorized way within a legal framework that can be challenged.
> Have you heard about ICE? That one's not a paranoid thought. It's a very real personal police designed for oppression.
Oh, come on. ICE may be behaving badly right now, and you might be mad at them, but that's not an excuse for flights of fancy. Stay grounded in the truth. ICE is not "personal police designed for oppression," they're police designed to enforce immigration and customs laws (ICE literally stands for "immigration and customs enforcement").
> The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) removals program contributes to upholding the integrity of Canada’s immigration system by removing people who are inadmissible to enter or stay in Canada.
> ... The CBSA also prioritizes the removal of failed refugee claimants who entered Canada irregularly between points of entry. These cases are prioritized due to their significant impact on program integrity and on Canada’s asylum system.
I'm under the impression that Canada has historically actually been much more strict with enforcing immigration laws and deporting people than the US had been.
Do you know what the word "designed" means? Because I don't think it means what you think it means.
I am in no way saying what that ICE agent did was right. I'm just saying being mad is not an excuse for being a sloppy thinker. What's happening here is the ICE agents' behavior is out of control and they're probably behaving illegally. That's not being anyone's "personal police" (whatever that means) or they are "designed to beat up anyone in the US," but believing such false things will probably lead to stupid slogans that end up doing more harm than good (e.g. "defund the police").
You absolutely have a point, I just don't see how this is functionally different from western/US policy, especially from the perspective of e.g. BRIC nations:
We have ample evidence that US intelligence siphons data from literally every meaningful company it can tap, is willing to share that data with partners abroad and uses such things without even public sanction against targets picked by the president (see Venezuela).
Sure, the US is still the devil you know, but if Americans want to claim the moral high ground then at least credible pretending is required, and under the current administration we wont even get that.
I have never before felt pressured about what I can or cannot protest about in Europe by China, but I can’t say the same about our most powerful ally, who has threatened every sector of our society – political or non-political – with consequences if we do not act and speak as they do. China absolutely does not care about our society the same way as that.
Everyone knows. But America is has made it very clear it has no allies, this means every middle power is near obligated to re-position themselves to be roughly in the middle between the two super-powers.
Perhaps in an ideal world, we trade mostly with allies and nations that are ideologically aligned with the US. Unfortunately, the current president is doing everything he can to weaken alliances with those nations and cripple those trade relations.
Don't be surprised with the downvotes. I've noticed that unfortunately HN is among the most anti-American tech forums around, politically. So anything tangential to this will have predictable results.
A Canadian satire site has the headline "Canada chooses lawful evil over chaotic evil":
* https://thebeaverton.com/2026/01/canada-chooses-lawful-evil-...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon...
Edit: A comment in /r/canada:
> TBF I would much rather work for Lex Luthor than The Joker if I had to choose one.
That's basically it. The Chinese government views the rest of the world through Hobbesian self interest, but in the late 20th century financial way. They want your money, but lawfully.
The US has turned into something much more vindictive and unpredictable, including threatening to invade Canada.
Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
> Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
Probably about the same as the US when it was a developing nation. "How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright":
> From the time of the first federal copyright law in 1790 until enactment of the International Copyright Act in 1891, U.S. copyright law did not apply to works by authors who were not citizens or residents of the United States. U.S. publishers took advantage of this lacuna in the law, and the demand among American readers for books by popular British authors, by reprinting the books of these authors without their authorization and without paying a negotiated royalty to them.
* https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol39/iss1/7/
Nice. IP is one thing that has ruined many things. Unless you are WIPO and Oracle Fan.
All current AI companies are closed. What benefit?
Most things from Uni are published openly.
BTW, did people in US pay royalty to China for inventing paper?
Yeah, people forget that IP is a social construct, and there's no reason a different society can't simply have different constructs. Open source / Free software is a different social construct too; and Stallman would have us live in a world where nobody is enriching themselves with proprietary technology they exert unfair control over.
Problem has always been ensuring that people who have brilliant ideas get appropriately rewarded for their contribution to humanity - but not disproportionately.
Taking your China comment in good faith: the copyright term on paper has long elapsed anyway, even if there's Mickey Mouse drawn on the paper in question.
When was paper invented again?
Also does China publish it's companies IP publicly or is it just a one-sided relationship?
> How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?
As it's often said, "There is no honor among thieves":
https://www.nber.org/digest/mar18/confiscation-german-copyri...
Japan did the same in the 70s/80s while growing their homegrown tech companies, over time it seems they've been forgiven. In the end we all benefitted with better products from Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, and many others.
IP and copyrights slow progress, their expiration should be greatly limited
"stolen" should not be used in conjunction with IP, "infringed" if you like.
To steal is to deny the original owner access to their property. That is true for physical objects, if I steal your wallet or your car you no longer have it.
But if I illegally copy some of your IP you still have access to it. Sure you may experience some financial prejudice from that but you still have it.
Their train industry was built on ripping off companies they forced into poor agreements. They have wrecked industries with technological theft. I suppose it’s lawful from the CCP perspective.
I do not want to claim that two wrongs make a right, but it is funny that you mention "being forced into poor agreements": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_treaties
> forced into poor agreements
Couldn't the poor companies have simply chosen to not do business in China?
Yes yes, poor western executives forced to sell their IP portfolio and workforce. Those evil chinese. Lol
Intellectual property as it exists and is used today overwhelmingly is used to stifle competition and lock down monopolies. It's used to project power internationally by deputizing foreign countries to protect American business interests. It's a far cry from how it's popularly presented as a way for the "little guy" to protect their inventions.
I see you’ve never invented anything that you’ve risked having stolen
They play things according to their own rules, but at least they have some.
No they don’t. Source: me, lived/worked in China for 6 years. There are two rules: 1) to the strongest (doesn’t matter how you get there, 2) make/keep the right connections (guanxi) that will “apply” regulations to your benefit. Most cut-throat place I’ve ever worked.
Same experience... I was told I was not Han and not family so f-you
I suppose Rule of Force is still a rule, so you aren't wrong per se
What rules. China famously flaunts the law everywhere they operate, including in foreign countries.
Laughing heard inside the POTUS office.
Well, I mean, the US is straight up demanding money from its allies (in the form of an "investment agreement" exclusively controlled by the Trump government), and threatening them with economic doom if they don't comply.
Stealing IPs from universities almost look quirky in comparison.
Probably around the same amount of IP that US citizens stole from the UK in the 19th century. We stole loads of inventions during the Industrial Revolution.
Does it surprise you to find out that a lot of old money families in the US made their money smuggling opium and other similarly unethical things? We are a nation of crooks and thieves and always have been.
I ask anyone reading this comment to please study history more frequently, it will help you understand the world better.
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/america-once-stole-ideas-f...
How many resources did the European and American steal from others?
How many humans were stolen by USA alone?
Does it make it better? No.
But that's it. Everything is shit but while USA got rich through manufacturing in the past, now it's China turn
Ask every American AI company what they think of IP protections. Apparently all intellectual property is fair game now.
> How many IPs have they stolen
Oh no, the poor trillion-dollar multinationals and multi-billionaires, whatever would they do?
The Chinese can just request IPs from APNIC too, you know. Or are you referencing the shenanigans with AFRNIC? That still isn't stealing them from companies and universities though. Is there some ongoing mass BGP route hijacking I'm not aware of?
Fine, I’ll bite. What exactly did China steal in 2025, who did they steal it from, which authorities did the victims approach in China for redress, where did they report failing to get redress?
You would have to know all the above for it to be real.
>The US has turned into something much more vindictive and unpredictable, including threatening to invade Canada.
The thing about China is that they are basically hard on the up slope of their advancement as a society/economy/nation, just like US was post ww2.
US on the other hand, has flatlined to the point where we think stuff like trans athletes in sports are a drastic enough reason to elect a president who is a convicted Felon.
China is def gonna outpace US in the next 10 years as the strongest economy, but the interesting thing is gonna be is if they are gonna fall in the same trap as US does in 20 or 30 years.
I still remember the trans hormone experts who don’t understand tariffs.
The US definitely peaked a long time ago, and we're in the slow demise phase of its empire, but I think China has already peaked as well. They have the same obesity and consumerism crises that have plagued the US. Add to that a demographic implosion, and I think the best they can do is hope for 20 more years.
Next 20 years is when PRC will really start cooking. In that period, PRC going to be doubling/tripling skilled workforce more than they have now (currently slightly above parity with US), this is already baked in from past 20 years of birth and current tertiary trends. That workforce, the greatest high skill demographic dividend in recorded history, will hang around for another 40+ years. They will have 40-60 years of operating with as much high end talent as OECD combined within a coordinated system. Past 2080, unless they sort out TFR, things could go bad, but for relevant timeframes, i.e. most of our lifetimes, they're going to be peaking.
What they don't have is rule by the extraordinarily wealthy. They have rule by the party. I guess we'll find out which one is worse.
lawful in the sense they value stability. their stability.
So remind me again why we quit importing Chinese firearms if the Chinese government wants to do everything "legally."
Oh, right, they were shipping cases of unmarked weapons to gangbangers in California....
You know who else was shipping firearms illegally to countries in North America? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
(Obama administration, although not personally his fault)
We could also discuss the provision of Armalite rifles to terrorist groups in the UK, Iran-Contra (an early accountability failure paving the way for pardon abuse), and so on.
The actual reason was lobbying from US companies that were completely losing the competition because of the much lower price for the same or higher quality. But of course, we can try to come up with stories that don't hurt the patriotism ego.
The US? No, Trump.
That’s the point. Unless the system of checks and balances starts working again, there is no practical difference.
Yep. I don't know if anyone is interested in anecdotes, but looking from Europe, I will do my best to avoid any kind of US dependency until US has a) overhauled the legal system starting from the Supreme Court and b) gotten rid of the de facto two-party system. (No, one-party system does not count.)
The two-party system is fine. We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
The problems with the USA political system are: electoral college, senate being 2 votes per state, and the supreme court being 7 people for life. But nothing can be done about the last two now. Especially now that the Supreme Court made a decision limiting how amendments can be ratified.
Ranked choice and compulsory voting would transform America for the better. But there never seems to be much enthusiasm for the idea.
I think it's 9 justices
> We have to be honest about the fact that parliamentary systems can give massive power to a tiny fraction of the population when that small party becomes the deciding vote.
The American two-party system gave massive power to a tiny fraction of the population, which the large Republican party then retconned into most of their members as their party platform. Now they're a large fraction of the population. I'd choose the approach where the small faction remains its own small faction, even if they occasionally get to pull the levers of power.
Is that the extent of your requirements (for now, at least) ?
As an American I keep trying to surmise what we're going to need to do to start repairing the damage from this massive self-own. It's kind of hard because we don't know where the bottom will be, but we at least need to start having these discussions on what constructive approaches might even look like - we can't have our milquetoast opposition party phoning it in yet again with entitlement as the less-bad option.
External context is key - one of the main goals of this hybrid warfare attack on the western world has been to disrupt our relationships with our allies, and also because other countries have developed Democracies that function way better than ours. So please know that at least some of us are listening.
Electoral college, rampant gerrymandering, and 2 senators/state all big structural problems.
Term and/or age maximums might also help.
Other country only sees that US elected Trump. So, yes, the US.
Compared to the current US... china is currently a grade A student who sometimes bullies their the neighbors younger child
That first link is a back button capturer.
As an American I'm rooting for everyone else these days. Good for Canada. I hope the EU builds stronger trade with China too and America gets left in the cold to whither and die. Trump, Vance, Miller, Noem, Musk, Bezos all of them just forgotten about and completely irrelevant to the rest of the world.
Just created account and this is what you choose to post. Interesting. I wonder if I am replying to a bot.
Politics gets people talking.
>As an American
mhm
I feel the same way about the US, but China is even worse. It’s basically what the US is becoming but still further down the road of authoritarianism. So I’m not rooting for it. EU, Canada, Japan etc are a better allay this point.
You realize there are a lot people (who aren't in the administration and didn't vote for them) that would be significantly hurt if all that happened. These people are your family, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers. You hate Trump so much that you'd prefer to see all those people suffer than have him succeed?
I strongly disagree with most of what Trump says and does, but I can't root for an outcome that would make my kids' quality of life be much worse. I'd much rather see us right the ship.
I'm really into geopolitics, and it's clear to see what's happening from the US side.
America still wants to play hegemon, but since Bretton Woods 2.0 didn't happen, they're going to lock up the entire North and South American continents from Chinese and Russian influence. And it'll be fierce.
The next salvo is going to be US statehood for Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is already partisan support within those provinces, and Trump is going to offer money to push it. If that happens, Yukon and the Northwest Territories are next.
(Side note: these are Republican voters, which gives Republicans the Senate for years to come.)
Venezuela wasn't about drugs or oil, it was about China. And it wasn't Trump's thing, it was the career DoD folks. (Venezuela is within medium-range missile range of 50% of US oil refineries. The US doesn't want foreign basing there or in Cuba.)
The DoD is pushing Greenland too as it'll be a centerpiece of Arctic shipping in the coming century. And Cuba, as it's both extremely close to CONUS and a choke point for the gulf.
You can see the plays happening if you watch. The Chinese-owned Panama Ports Company being forcibly sold to BlackRock, the increasing trade and diplomatic ties between China and South American countries, etc.
My bet is that a Democratic president would continue this policy, just with less rudeness and more "cooperation". The Department of Defense -- apolitically -- doesn't want China to have the US within arms reach.
Trump is going to try to speed run it, though.
---
edit: downvotes rate limit my account, so I can't respond.
> I would love to hear how you think Trump will manage to get Alberta and Saskatchewan to become US states within this century.
It's going to nucleate from within Alberta and Saskatchewan.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11615147/alberta-separatists-prai...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_separatism
This has been spoken about for years, but look at how much the conversation is starting to come back up recently:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/alberta-primetime/article/al...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-separation-po...
I see a dozen other articles about this published in the last week.
If Trump adds fuel to this fire, it's going to take over the headlines. The DoD is definitely whispering it into his ear.
Also, the downvotes are silly. I'm not advocating for this. I'm just pointing out what the US is doing and why it thinks this way.
I kinda agree with you. The US policy won't change much. It is a set policy but not very well executed, simply because such a policy is not in the interest of existing power base, so someone new but crude has to be elected, and that's why he got elected not once, but TWICE.
My understanding is that US is going to shrink back a bit, takes care of its neighbours first, but keep its probing bases intact, so that it can slash some costs and be more flexible in next decades. China is going to reluctantly expand its power base gradually -- but I think it's going to be a slow expansion because any rapid one would either fail, or create a new power group within China, that may threaten the existing players.
Not sure about EU though, it better gear up quickly.
It's not bad analysis, I upvoted you, but what you're forgetting is that nothing ever happens. Venezuela was just typical American meddling, Cuba might happen (I'd bet against it) but neither the Canada nor Greenland thing is going to happen because it would be too dramatic for narrative continuity.
> neither the Canada nor Greenland thing is going to happen
Greenland is happening, and will be underway soon. It's just a matter of how much international support it will have initially, and how the USA will strong arm support.
Canada is on the back burner after the realization that a country with a leader who was the Governor of the national banks of two major countries might know a thing or two about economic warfare.
Our official delegation left the Greenland delegation IN TEARS, and we pronounced 'it's happening' afterwards. These aren't shit posters on Twitter, these are our officials and our President ACTIVELY working to take over Greenland.
If Greenland was happening, what's taking them so long? The military could take it without a fight tonight, or last month for that matter.
They want it, but can't take it because it would be too shocking for the public (aka violating narrative continuity.) If they can prepare the public to accept it then it might happen, but most magas I talk to treat it like a joke, trolling the Europeans to make them invest in defense or something. I don't think the American public earnestly believes it will happen, and for that reason I think it won't happen.
Time may prove me wrong, we'll all find out eventually.
It is not trolling when OUR OFFICIAL DELEGATION left Greenland's in tears. This is OFFICIAL POLICY, OFFICIAL DIPLOMACY and has nothing to do with MAGA, memes, jokes.
If I asked you 2 months ago 'do you think Trump will steal tankers of Venezuelan oil using the US military, sell the oil, and deposit the funds in accounts setup offshore in the middle eastern country that gave him a free jumbo jet?' would you have said 'there is no way that will happen'?
I'm sick of the 'it's just Trump being Trump' when no one would treat any other politician that way. No, it is the US President, who sent an official US delegation, which, when it left (after reducing Greenlands official delegation to tears) continued to say 'we are taking Greenland'. Fuck off with 'it's just Trump being Trump'. It is the United States President.
I agree with your assessment. But I think the leaders pulling these strings are not fully appreciating the costs of this security.
Controlling all of these foreign lands is pointless if the country collapses then Balkanizes. The past decade has brought so many events that nobody thought could ever happen that we need to be rearrange our beliefs. It's very possible that those of us around in 10 years will see this time period as being part of the Second American Civil war.
The only thing keeping people almost pacified is the economy is not total dogshit yet. But that's tenuous at best.
There's going to be a post-trump power vacuum. It will likely be much more bloody than our current situation.
I would love to hear how you think Trump will manage to get Alberta and Saskatchewan to become US states within this century.
At that point you might have the West Coast states secede and join up with BC.
Cascadia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement
I live in a bubble in Calgary, and am from Montreal originally. Despite that, I saw lines of people waiting to sign petitions for separation in smaller cities. People who were happy to have their photos taken while they are signing petitions for separation from Canada.
There are some cultural factors in Alberta which draw it closer to the US than to Ontario and Quebec. Libertarianism, pro-fossil fuels, differences wrt firearms, differences in attitudes to crime and punishment, etc... The perception is that previous compromises around these items are slowly frayed to appease voting blocks in other provinces (mostly Quebec).
Then, the dirty reality; the Canadian economy has never been "great", at least in my lifetime. Nearly my whole class at university wound up going to the US, because one couldn't get a decent paying job in Canada in a lot of fields. Even our current prime minister did a ton of his work abroad. If separating (IE: joining the US) was only an economic question, only a tiny elite would support remaining a part of Canada.
The question Alberta separatists wish to ask is much less dishonest than the Quebec separation question in 95, which leads me to believe they are much more confident about their success. I wouldn't rule it out.
separation != joining the US
There is small but loud group of chronic whiners who hate everything (often including each other) pushing the former.
Almost nobody is pushing the latter.
That might be the rhetoric, but separation means joining the US. The experience of landlocked country would be one of getting taken advantage of by every country around it.
There is a good 20% of people in Alberta who would vote for separation today. Take a close look, they aren't voting to be an independent country surrounded by a hostile country around it and a superpower that hijacks oil tankers to the south.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/red-deer-alberta-ind...
It is a stupid idea because the level of changes that would have to happen to everything would be much, much more than people realize. But Brexit has shown us that people will vote for stupid things if they are sold by trusted-but-dishonest actors
The stated objective of the Alberta Prosperity Project is for Alberta to be a sovereign nation. They're not looking to trade Ottawa for Washington.
Of course it is a loony idea, but that is what they're pushing.
A separated Alberta would become a de facto Puerto Rico in thrall to the US without any votes.
The Forever Canadia https://www.forever-canadian.ca/ petition collected over 400,000 signatures from Alberta electors.
Then Danielle moved the goalposts to make it easier for the Independence folks:
Signature collection period: January 3 to May 2, 2026 Number of signatures required for a successful petition: 177,732 (10% of the total number votes cast in the 2023 Provincial General Election).
I signed that petition, just like I voted against Quebec's treason of 1995.
There is some small amount partisan support but not public support, massive difference. It might cost them the next election.
They aren't republican voters - there is sizable difference between the Canadian right and the US right. I think many Americans make this mistake (and Canadians too) - the republican positions on many things aren't that tenable to center of right (Canadian spectrum).
Also - There aren't many more things that are more toxic in Canada politics than Trump and Annexation. He single handedly handed the Federal election to the Liberals - it was the Conservatives who were going to win until he but his thumb on the scale.
> Also - There aren't many more things that are more toxic in Canada politics than Trump and Annexation. He single handedly handed the Federal election to the Liberals - it was the Conservatives who were going to win until he but his thumb on the scale.
Watching these discussions from the outside are statistics like four in ten (43%) Canadians age 18-34 would vote to be American if citizenship and conversion of assets to USD guaranteed [1]. I don't think the political similarities or differences between the American right and the Canadian right are what can result in one or more Canadian provinces joining the US; I think it's economic discontent.
[1]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/43-percent-canadians-would-vote-...
Same poll: 77-87% of Canadians would never vote to part of the USA. Thats a pretty staggeringly high hurdle rate to get a population to acquiesce.
You are thinking about this in terms of today. To put it in perspective, the same question polled 17% in the 55+ age group. Canada has serious generational problems, and as the boomers die the number of Canadians who vote that way naturally declines.
Canada is a beautiful country, but it's super expensive and salaries are low.
Well, I downvoted because I think your views are ill-informed and stupid, not because I think you're advocating for this. You fundamentally don't understand Trump and his ilk - he's petty, vindictive, vain, greedy and a bully. Everything runs on narrative and personal dealings, NOT any sort of rational goals or strategy. Ascribing these things to him is like pretending my cat is scheming about something when it jumps on a window. No bud, they're much simpler creatures.
Venezuela happened because it makes him look good on TV, that's it. There's no grand strategizing, it's a petty, vain person doing shitty things to make himself look great. He believes he is entitled to rule as an absolute monarch and acquiring territory (Greenland, Canada, etc) is just a way for himself to make himself more grand. Sorry, no grand strategy there either. I'll go further and say that part of what makes him so successful is that there's a large contingent of people that can't see him as he is and instead engage in this strategy larp like your various theories.
"Canada has agreed to allow an annual quota of 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the country at the tariff rate of just 6.1%"
https://electricautonomy.ca/data-trackers/ev-sales-data/2025...
"Canada recorded 45,366 new zero-emission vehicle registrations in Q3 2025, accounting for 9.4 per cent of all new vehicle registrations in the quarter, according to the latest report from Statistics Canada."
"Of the total, 26,792 units were battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), while 18,574 were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). "
So this would represent about 1/4 of current annual EV sales.
> He said there would be an initial cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports to Canada, growing to 70,000 over five years.
I always wonder why people settle on a number like 49,000 when 50,000 is sitting right there, looking you in the face.
There are some theories of negotiation that say it's good to pick an overly specific number like that specifically to imply that you've given it thought and aren't willing to change it without getting something in return.
Same reason they set prices at $49.95
No. The reason $49.95 works because $4x.xx price on first look looks better than $5x.xx price ($50.00).
And 4xxxx vs 5xxxx imported cars doesn’t accomplish the same thing in a headline? Sounds more palatable to people who are already against the idea
My wife falls into that trap
I once had someone at a store ask me what something cost, and then got a blank stare back when I said "$90". I had to 'correct' myself and say "$89.99". We all live in very different worlds.
In a country with 42 million inhabitants this doesn't seem like a big change even for canada, let alone for the global economy.
It’s a complete sea change. I feel Canada only set tariffs on cars out of some deference to the US auto industry. I don’t want to use slippery slope thinking, but this to me smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US.
For the average family, being able to spend significantly less on a car is a big deal.
Keep in mind that the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one. A lot of Big Three stuff happens across the border in Ontario.
But all the policy support that would have let North American automakers build up a competitive position with China is gone, so this is more about just acknowledging reality now.
> Keep in mind that the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one.
As someone who's worked in the auto industry (in Canada) I have to 'hard disagree.' The big three have proven time and time again that we (Canadians) are second-class citizens when it comes to how they operate the facilities built here. Even before any of this nonsensical tariff nonsense, billions in government money has been given to the likes of Stellantis and GM over the years in an effort to keep jobs in Canada, with them putting in the bare-minimum effort to satisfy people in the short-term and thanking us by continuing their movement of production out of the country. Instead of trying to talk the president down from his pointlessly harmful tariffs, or doing what Toyota/Honda have done in pivoting to building worldwide models beside the domestic ones, the big three are gleefully taking the opportunity to expedite the closure or downsizing of facilities here.
Outside of the chuds who 'need' a pickup truck to satisfy their fragile ego, sales of "American" vehicles are starting to drop, with buyers choosing domestically-produced where possible (like the Toyota Rav4, Lexus NX/RX, or Honda Civic/CR-V).[0]
[0]: https://ca.investing.com/news/economy-news/market-share-of-u...
> billions in government money has been given to the likes of Stellantis and GM over the years in an effort to keep jobs in Canada, with them putting in the bare-minimum effort
You could replace "Canada" with the "United States" and it's equally true. They aren't treating you any different than us.
Just drive around Detroit to see what the big three do to domestic industry. It's sad.
Hey now, I bought a Mexican-made pickup.
Me too.
I think that was true up until last year. Clearly the new administration wants nothing to do with Canada except extract.
Yeah there was never any competing with china, our industry just relies on our market using different values to purchase a car.
It’s tough to convince most price-inelastic people they shouldn’t buy a car that is 1/2 price, even if it has fewer features.
Edit: to be clear I meant that the US did not compete, not that they could not compete
The expensive cars sell well in the us - customers are not that price inelastic. Those who are prefer a used car with all the high priced features of 5 years ago to a new car with no options
Agreed, that’s exactly what i did. But I wonder how much of that culture is because the new cheap Chinese cars aren’t here.
If all you have in town is a target, that’s where people will shop. If you open up a goodwill there might be some handwringing and “I would never” rhetoric. But many people will go to the goodwill even if they don’t admit it.
Having previously owned a Chinese car (Great Wall H5, bought new), I'm on the fence about buying Chinese cars. Initially it was a great car -- lots of features and they used high quality OEM parts (e.g. a Mitsubishi engine). However, I found that it didn't hold up well* and was missing some of the touches that come from engineering not coming from a car culture. As one example, the tensioner for the accessory belt was a single 14mm bolt. Technically it worked, but it was not fun. Meanwhile, even my '85 Ford Escort had a half-inch square opening in the belt bracketry that accepted a half-inch socket driver/breaker bar for setting the tension. I don't think this is uniquely a Chinese problem, as I heard similar complaints from owners of early Nissan/Toyota full-size trucks. Toyota was able to eventually improve, but Nissan had to pack it in on the Titan.
*To roughly quantify, I'd say mid-to-late 80s Ford/GM car, not 70s Ford/GM car. It never stranded me, but it did break a few times in inconvenient fashion.
Is the cheap car better? I don't mind an old car, and luxury cars bought today are likely to last decades.
I remember how popular the Yugo was, and then the Geo metro. Nobody wants good cars, they want cheap transportation.
> Yeah thee was never any competing with china, our industry just relies on our market using different values to purchase a car.
This is patently false. The US could have competed with China if it had maintained investments spinning up battery manufacturing and downstream systems to build EVs at scale, while subsidizing EVs (fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year [1]) and increasing taxes on combustion mobility. The US picked legacy automaker profits and fossil fuel interests instead, simply out of lack of will and short term optimization over long term success.
China is building under the same rules of physics as everyone else. You can choose not to, but that is a choice.
(I believe in climate change, so I am thrilled China is going to steamroll fossil fuel incumbents out of self interest [2] [3], regardless of negative second order effects; every 24 months of Chinese EV production destroys 1M barrels/day of global oil consumption at current production rates, as of this comment)
[1] https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
[2] https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
I've always gotten the impression that China is becoming a technological manufacturing powerhouse because of massive investment by the Chinese government, whereas America is falling behind because the government giving grants to corporations is incredibly unpopular because of the belief that the investment is just going to get pocketed by the CEO and board of directors and spent on stock buybacks rather than the development the people and the government wanted to see.
Even if the money is spent properly, it's still highly criticized. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people complain that Tesla was only successful because of massive government grants.
Am I off base here?
In fairness to the US system, it’s certainly better than the European system or pretty much all but a few around the world. Yes, there is corruption, inefficiency and the largest subsidies are often for huge corporations that obtained them by buying politicians, but! The US government still manages to fund the cutting edge in 2026 in countless fields, to fund real American manufacturing, if you want to get grants you have a real shot at real money regardless of who you are, etc. In China you’re not getting a dime without the right political opinions. In Europe you have to be part of a very specific academic-professional class. In the US you can be anyone.
The thing about China is that they’re more strategic with their money and have longer timelines and clear, achievable visions. If you read the Wikipedia page for Made in China 2025 you’ll get the wrong impression that their success is due to more recent pushes; the vision is far more universal and has existed for far longer. You don’t get to the forefront of advanced manufacturing from nothing in ten years. Look at the 5th and 6th Five-Year Plans, into the seventh… you see the groundwork laid for present day China. The US rarely does that sort of long term thinking or planning these days, and it’s not even about the political winds changing or short-termism as much as that we lack one unified vision. Without that unified vision you can’t plan long term and you also can’t correct glaring problems. For example, if we had a unified vision on manufacturing, an obvious issue would be the lack of an American JLCPCB. You could create one with a stick and carrot approach, tariff assembled PCBs, new rule that any imported assembled PCB has to prominently display “electronics made in China”, smart subsidies for US board houses that encourage scaling and cost reduction. But that level of cohesion and vision rarely happens in the US and so we get a chaotic hodgepodge.
Where do you think that money came from... American consumers. It was a race to the bottom and for the last few decades, the bottom was China.
The new bottom has been moving to Vietnam, etc.
Nope, you are spot on. The broad argument is "Engineers are in power in China, lawyers in America." I see the US as no different as when Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged; everything about making and building takes a back seat to line go up. Well, you can't eat, live in, build with, or go to war with line go up. The stock market is not the economy, nor your industrial and manufacturing base. But it keeps going up, so everything must be fine, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_Assets_Supervision...
Dan Wang: 2025 Letter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454413 - January 2026 (323 comments)
(Dan Wang’s book, Breakneck [https://danwang.co/breakneck/], is excellent and I highly recommend on this topic as others do in the above thread)
That book has been on my list since I heard him on this podcast: https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/chinas-quest-to-engineer-th...
This is a bad argument because you're assuming that the US needs to compete with China on EVs or that not competing results in somehow "losing". A car is a car, at the end of the day. Frankly, the best car is no car, but I'll leave that for some other discussion around transit.
China has gone all-in on EVs because over the years they smartly built up the world's best rare earth refining capabilities and immense manufacturing prowess while the United States has undoubtedly secured the global oil supply (remember tanks and fighter jets to fight wars aren't running on batteries) which, even amongst the doomiest of doomers will last quite a while.
China was never going to be an oil-producing powerhouse, but it did have the ability to leverage alternative energy sources so that it wasn't quite as beholden to the petrodollar institution, so that is what they did. And of course running cars on batteries and doing so at a very cheap cost makes sense there.
Meanwhile, the US can obviously produce good cars at a good enough price and with cheap oil for the foreseeable future it's hard to argue in favor of EVs as a national policy. What, we're going to switch to EVs? Who is going to build them? Tesla? We don't have access to the rare earth refining capabilities to meet demand. It's just physics. And if China is using less oil, that means more for the United States and others.
As you said, China has taken these actions out of self interest, but the self interest isn't "clean environment" or anything like that, it's just down to being not as reliant on the US for energy. Though that's a nice benefit. I do own an EV and I think the driving experience is superior but geopolitically things seem to be trending in a different direction.
> Meanwhile, the US can obviously produce good cars at a good enough price and with cheap oil for the foreseeable future it's hard to argue in favor of EVs as a national policy. What, we're going to switch to EVs? Who is going to build them? Tesla? We don't have access to the rare earth refining capabilities to meet demand. It's just physics. And if China is using less oil, that means more for the United States and others.
This is false. The US has chosen to produce expensive (average new vehicle price is $50k), fossil combustion vehicles to the detriment of its population. I want a cheap EV. I will buy a cheap EV from a US automaker. They do not want to sell cheap EVs. The US won't allow me to buy excellent, cheap Chinese EVs. The US population is being held economically hostage for legacy automaker profits and the fossil fuel industry. Why should the US consumer collectively have to pay more for these low quality decisions? I am incentivized to root for the destruction of US legacy auto so that I can eventually get a high quality, inexpensive Chinese EV, because that will be all who is left building them. China sells more EVs than the US sells entirely. It is only a matter of time as they continue to spin up manufacturing.
Whatever it takes to get cheap EVs with the sharpest deployment trajectory possible, I am not particular, regardless of the harm it incurs on US automakers or the US itself (if unwilling to build EVs, which appears to be the case). Climate change does not care about nation state boundaries. Certainly, if you don't believe in climate change, or don't believe it to be pressing, there is no discussion to be had.
New data: EVs grew more in ’25 than ’24, despite constant lies saying otherwise - https://electrek.co/2026/01/14/contrary-to-popular-belief-ev... - January 14th, 2026
The World Hit ‘Peak’ Gas-Powered Vehicle Sales — in 2017 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-30/world-hit... | https://archive.today/p2hl1 - January 30th, 2024
> This is false.
It's not false. See Honda, Toyota, &c. many models are made in the US by Americans even if they're Japanese companies.
> The US has chosen to produce expensive (average new vehicle price is $50k), fossil combustion vehicles to the detriment of its population.
The US industry regardless of reason isn't going to be able to make a cheap, high-quality EV because it doesn't have access to affordable refining capabilities due to various reasons. So the actual situation is, sure the US could let China ship in a bunch of awesome EVs, but then the US automakers will suffer and some will go out of business and then the US just won't be making cars and those union autoworker jobs will be gone. Some people are fine with that I guess, but strategically it doesn't make a lot of sense for the US to allow the domestic auto industry to be crushed. Same thing with Germany. The EU is already starting to roll back EV mandates [1] for the same reason the US is focusing back on oil and natural gas.
> Whatever it takes to get cheap EVs with the sharpest deployment trajectory possible, I am not particular, regardless of the harm it incurs on US automakers or the US itself
On the other hand, as an American voter and even an EV driver, I disagree with these actions. EVs at all cost isn't a goal that makes sense or that I'm interested in. A better argument is to just do away with cars entirely. EVs still create c02, require toxic processing of materials and components, and while they're better for the environment, they're not as good as walking or transit.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-rel...
> On the other hand, as an American voter and even an EV driver, I disagree with these actions. EVs at all cost isn't a goal that makes sense or that I'm interested in. A better argument is to just do away with cars entirely. EVs still create c02, require toxic processing of materials and components, and while they're better for the environment, they're not as good as walking or transit.
Well, you're arguing this in the wrong country. You might check your priors. I regret to inform you that only about 5% of Americans use public transit [1] [2] [3], and that is unlikely to change unless there is a sea change of migration towards urban areas from the suburbs and rural areas.
A majority of US miles are driven in rural areas or areas without mass transit [4], and the sun belt, where there is limited to no public transit, holds roughly half of the US population. I certainly agree to destroy demand for light vehicle passenger miles in urban areas with robust public transit and other non vehicle options, but the rest of the US will require EVs of some sort. Most of the US does not have mass transit infrastructure, and won't for the remainder of most of our lives (as of this comment).
[1] https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/public-tran...
[2] https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-st...
[3] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/public-t...
[4] https://www.bts.gov/geography/geospatial-2/daily-vehicle-mil...
Chinese autoworker makes what, 5k USD a year? Vs 50k+ for union autoworker in the US? How can you win that battle?
You're off by a notable amount I think, but that doesn't account for the meat of the price difference anyway.
Chinese manufacturers have an average labour cost per vehicle of $585. American manufacturers have an average cost of $1341.
You can't buy an equivalent American EV for an extra $756.
Source: https://afia.pt/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/labor-cost-per-ve...
Workers at the General Motors factories in Mexico make between $3-7 an hour. So half to a third of what starting wages are in the USA.
China buys and deploys more robotics for manufacturing than any other country in the world. Automate or die as a business [1] [2]. It's not "cheap China labor" vs "expensive union labor"; it's labor vs automation.
And, to be clear, that does not mean you need to get rid of union US labor. It just means the existing folks can do more with the same number of folks they have today, and the pipeline for new workers can shrink while maintaining productivity (and we're going to need those folks for other jobs automation cannot do; trades, electrical grid and renewables infra, nursing and care, etc). This does require both unions and corporations to partner in good faith and share in the gains from this operating model, versus the traditional "squeeze labor as hard as you can for shareholder gains and management comp." If we get to the point where a just transition is needed (like coal mining and generation), that is a policy problem; make good policy, be humane to the human, package them out appropriately if we scale automation faster than expected.
This is simply smart policy as the world reaches peak working age population and heads towards depopulation over the next century [3] [4]. Labor will only get more expensive over time as demand exceeds supply [5]. The capital is there, simply look at annual legacy auto profits; they choose profits over investing in the business, and that is a choice.
[1] Inside China's 'dark factories' where robots run the production lines [video] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY-MH5mdbw - December 4th, 2025
[2] Chinese EV makers accelerate robotics drive for ‘game-changing’ edge over US - https://www.scmp.com/business/china-evs/article/3333310/chin... | https://archive.today/sJKKv - November 19th, 2025
[3] The Demographic Future of Humanity: Facts and Consequences - https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf - May 31st, 2025
[4] Mapped: Every Country by Total Fertility Rate - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-countries-by-fert... - December 22nd, 2025
[5] HN Search: labor shortages - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
(TLDR Increase productivity with automation to compete with others who already have, buy robots, not share buybacks)
This is one half of it that's correct, but the other half is the US is in a late stage capitalism death spiral.
On a huge number of products in the US there is little to no US competition. Instead of using product means (build it better) they use capital means (use your size to get loans to buy up anyone that looks like they could compete in the future).
Lots of US companies minimize actual competition via civil contracts. Cola companies are a great domestic example of this. You give them all the space they want and crowd out competition or you get 'standard pricing', which is way more.
A sizeable portion of the large US companies moved away from making products to printing money via becoming a financial institution. Car companies are a notorious example.
Simply put making products is a side gig, rent seeking is the primary goal. Until we kill that off, we're in for a worsening level of hurt.
The offset is not positive when you factor in the externalities that go into escalating Chinese EV production.
Wrong, unless you can prove otherwise. EVs cost a little more emissions to build but are widely regarded as breaking even with a gas car in 1-2years after production. And even shorter as grids decarbonize.
I would love to see a thorough, agreed upon study comparing ICEs and EVs. If you have hard data (say, from a reputable journal, not just the news), please post.
https://theicct.org/publication/electric-cars-life-cycle-ana...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596... (paywall)
https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/no-doubt-abo... is a writeup of https://www.bnef.com/insights/33557 which is paywalled.
It was. Then the U.S. turned into whatever the hell you call all that.
Now we have U.S. automakers who are derefential to the current regime's leader and are pulling out. The Federal and Ontario government both tried to somehow make them happy, but you can't make that kind of monster happy. So it's time to move on.
> the US auto industry is also very much a Canadian one
Trump's message is loud and clear. The Canadian Prime Minister has said, "the past relationship with the US is over."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y41z4351qo
The US President: "US does not need cars made in Canada; free trade deal is irrelevant"
US Ambassador: "US does not need Canada":It was about the mess around Huawei exec if I recall correctly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_case_of_Meng_Wanzh...
It'll be interesting to see how the Chinese EVs compete "fairly" in Canada. North America has had a lack of choice in automobiles at least as long as I can remember. There are so many cars that are available in Europe or Asia that I wish were available here. But at the same time consumer choices are also very different. So will be interesting to see what the uptake of Chinese EVs are like.
> ...smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US.
Feels like being dependent on both the Chinese _and_ the Americans to me, which doesn't exactly feel like a win.
> I feel Canada only set tariffs on cars out of some deference to the US auto industry
That is exactly what they did.
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicl...
> The tariffs follow a May announcement by U.S. President Joe Biden of 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.
> Trudeau said on Sunday night that he had discussed China and other national geopolitical issues with U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan.
> smells like rolling out a Canadian auto market that is not dependent on the US
The last federal election was almost entirely decided by which leader made the best pitch to Canadians on who would be better equipped to handle Donald Trump and to make the economy less dependent on the USA as a whole.
Nothing to do with “unfair, non-market policies and practices […] and China’s intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards”? I suppose that doesn’t even register anymore to the average selectively outraged parochial Canadian.
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2024/08/can...
You'd be surprised the stink people can put up with when you have a leader to the south of us that is engaged in the kind of regressive behaviour that he/his administration is.
Not that I'm condoning this at all, I think China is a very concerning actor on the world stage. But I can certainly understand the mindset of many Canadians to reflexively seek out alternatives to more USA interdependence, short sighted as some of that may be.
It can, and likely was, both.
It’s a good thing Canada waited for China to resolve all these issues before swinging open our market doors to them.
When you have two overlapping issues, it is perfectly reasonable to choose to focus on the one you consider more important given the current context.
If the context changes, it is reasonable to change which issue you focus on.
We threatened to annex them with the 51st state bullshit.
If I was in Canadas position, I’d prefer trading with the guy with shitty practices over the guy actively threatening my sovereignty.
I don’t get the indignation you’re expressing. Do you work with people in your personal life after they threaten your existence?
Using the government propaganda press release is certainly a choice.
China has been engaging in "unfair, non-market policies and practices and intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards" for decades, but Canada only changed their minds when Biden told them to.
"You know, there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar" -- Justin Trudeau
Yeah, I'm sure he did it because he gives a fsck about human rights and fair markets.
It’s just the beginning is my guess. If BYD or CATL commits to a factory /assembly in Canada I would expect limits to be raised on this as progress is made. Or if this goes well we could see limits raised as China drops Canadian product tariffs further.
My gut reaction is there is no way China is setting up vehicle manufacturing or assembly in Canada because the American President would go absolutely nuts. Canada is increasing ties and joint ventures with Canada but manufacturing would be a bridge too far for our little man in the White House.
Maybe Canada inks a deal to allow Mexican manufactured Chinese EV's?
Now that would be hilarious!
The current (or next) admin would take Alberta and Saskatchewan. They'll propose that the residents secede from Canada and join the US.
There's probably enough political willpower in these provinces and money (paid by the US) to turn this into a real movement.
And from there, Yukon and the Northwest Territories are easy next dominoes.
There's a vocal minority of perpetual malcontents in Alberta arguing for secession. But even those nutters don't want to join the US.
If you're selling 49000 electric vehicles, and the tariff reduced from $CAN 50k (estimated cost of a new electric vehicle; 100% tariff tax) to 3k (6%), saving your customers $2.3B, that seems significant to me?
I'm only trying to give a feel for them numbers, I did check the average selling price for a new BYD
Cars last ~25 years, 49,000 * 25 = 1.2 million Chinese EV’s on the road in a steady state.
Not such as huge shift in total, but EV’s are still a small percentage of total vehicle sales in Canada.
25 years?! Hardly
https://www.brokerlink.ca/blog/how-long-do-cars-last-in-cana...
> In 2020, the Automotive Industries Association of Canada (AIA Canada) reported the average age of Canadian vehicles was 9.7 years, though many industry experts believe that number is closer to 10.5 years today.
If the average car on the road is 10.5 years old, and you assume a flat demand, it is consistent with the lifespan of all cars being exactly 21 years.
(if you look at a random sampling of 100 cars, 5 will be from this year, 5 from 2025, and so on until you've counted the 5 cars from 2005 ; the average age will be 10.5 years)
If you assume that there are more cars sold every year (due to demographics: way more humans are alive today than in 2005), then this is consistent with a useful lifespan of 25 years or more per car since the "10.5" average is skewed younger because of the age pyramid bias.
It's poorly worded, but the rest of the article implies that's average lifespan, not average age.
“The average car lifespan now is closer to 322,000 kilometres, which works out to around 10 to 12 years for most drivers.”
“While the average vehicle in Canada may be designed to last around a decade, there are several factors, some of which are within your control and some of which are not, that can impact how long your car lasts.”
My last two cars were scrapped at 13 years due to rust effects.
The average Canadian drives 15,200km / year is also from that same article you linked.
322,000 km / 15,200 = 21.2 years. Assuming nobody has multiple cars.
From that link: Here's a breakdown of the average annual kilometres driven in some provinces:
Ontario: 16,000 km Alberta: 15,200 km British Columbia: 13,100 km
> One final factor that can impact how long your car lasts is good, old-fashioned luck. Unfortunately, luck is one factor completely out of your control. You have control over the way you drive, but not the way others drive. Even if you are a defensive driving expert, you can still find yourself involved in a car accident.
So the numbers are calculated including traffic collisions in the life span calculation.
I wonder what the actual number is if you exclude traffic collisions? "How often should I expect to have to replace my car" and "How long should I expect a car to last" aren't quite the same question.
Recent CATL independent battery testing has demonstrated 1.25 million mile longevity for battery modules produced. While EV uptake may take time, the EVs that are built will be with us for some time. That equates to 62 years of service life assuming ~20k miles/year
Propulsion is not the issue. Quality cars' engines last just fine for decades, if maintained.
Cars in the north have major rust problems, even if you're exceptionally careful, from exposure to snow and road salt.
Plenty of 30+ year old cars in Candida show rust isn’t that much of an issue. It’s increasing maintenance costs per year that take most vehicles off the road.
Is batteries the limiting factor? I would have assumed road salt + rusting the bejesus out of the car's metal would be the limiting factor.
~25 years isn't the average when you account for accidents, rust, and useful economic life of a car. We had 200+ car crashes due to weather in a single day this week in Waterloo, Ontario.
The average car in the us is 12 years old, so expected life of 25 seems reasonable. Not all make it that long but many will
The average car in Canada is 10.5 years old, in a steady state you double that to 2 * 10.5 =21 years lifespan on average. However the country isn’t in a steady state in 2005 there where 33.5 million people in Canada in 2025 that hit 41.5 million.
So because the number of new cars purchased each year is increasing the average age is significantly below 1/2 the average car’s lifespan.
> In a country with 42 million inhabitants this doesn't seem like a big change even for canada, let alone for the global economy.
The premier ("governor") of Ontario, where GM, Ford, Toyota, etc, have manufacturing plants feels otherwise:
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-canadian-el...
I think the precedent is big. It does seem like an attempt to adjust of their sudden drop in EV sales last year -
https://www.thestar.com/news/canadian-ev-sales-fell-off-a-cl...
Wait till Canadians find out how good Chinese cars for their price.
I suspect the limit will be revised upward ahead of schedule.
The thing I am wondering is if there was an unwritten agreement to build Chinese BEV plants in Canada. This would give China access to the US market without tariffs and would give Canada manufacturing jobs.
This is a “0 to 1” change in international relations. This doesn’t bode well for Trump’s trade war.
Shitty napkin math says china is saving about $1-$1.5B, so I agree, I'm not seeing the needle more here. What _does_ make sense is that this agreement will continue to evolve over time. What _doesn't_ make sense is the 10-40% battery capacity loss because of temperature, for EVs in canada. I think newer EVs manage temperature issues like this better than older models, but I am unfamiliar with chinese EVs so I can't speak to them.
Where would China be getting savings, here? Unless they are also dropping some tariffs? Canada lowering tariffs saves Canadians money.
> Canada lowering tariffs saves Canadians money.
How many chinese EVs are in canada right now? If the answer is close enough to zero as to be insignificant, how is this saving canadians any money on chinese EVs?
If it helps, we can say something like: this adds $1-$2B gross revenue to china selling EVs to canada. Profit, probably less than a $1B. Needle still not moving.
Expanding the market with alternatives that are now cheaper seems like an opportunity to save Canadians money.
> Needle still not moving.
It's a geopolitical needle move, not a purely financial one.
How are plugin hybrids considered zero emission?
EV sales are going to rapidly expand with Chinese BEVs. They are much cheaper and cost competitive.
Good. Carney also remarked our relationship with China is now more predictable with our relationship with the states (wild shade coming from him) just to really make it clear to certain parties why this is happening.
Cheaper car options in this country will be nice, and I say this as a certified car hater who's yet to own one despite pushing 40.
Who wants to be a trade partner with the US these days? I honestly ask people who aren't fully indoctrinated or already have ties established?
Its a dependency that I have to think almost all countries/businesses are evaluating. How do you do business and set up long term supply chains in a country can't trust that the economic policy of today exists in 3 months, they are actively trying to undermine their currency and the system of law is under heavy pressure to the point of failure.
It is tough to be supportive of the United States under this administration or that the future state of the US will be more sound. Having their formally closest trade partner looking over to China for trade is a massive signal.
The trade off is the market is large and strong financial (availability of capital) foundation - but I fear thats changing.
Anybody who knows what a huge market US is, filled with tons of millions of people that spend big, even when financially unsound.
But an unstable market which is not what companies want
Faustian bargain.
It's a bit more than a quarter (25.6%) of the whole world's GDP, so pretty much everyone.
Non political leadership in the US is getting rattled. I don't know if you watched everyone freak out about WH targeting of the fed last week.
Rank and file GOP got rattled with that one.
Same reason everyone wanted to get into the China market. The size of the market and potential to make money.
I think the niche for EV's in Canada will be regional-ish transportation... I would love to see a network of chargers that fully cover the Trans-Canada Highway, but there are still some pretty significant gaps, for example Hwy 17 - If even one of the stations goes down you'd be stranded.
But in that niche I can really see cheap EVs taking off. I know several people who live in Toronto whose cars have never been more than ~80 KM from home, and rarely been over 100 KM/h. That's a perfect EV user.
And a huge plus would be to get rid of the monster American trucks & SUVs that take four parking spots and two lanes at a time...
As a Torontonian that last part is honestly what I'm most excited about. Massive American cars simply do not belong in most of our streets in this city, and if this starts the long process of getting them out that's going to be amazing. I've seen Cybertrucks zooming down streets that are about a Cybertruck and a half wide and it's an untenable situation.
The issue on massive cars comes from your own government not it being american and chinese. Look at what ford builds in europe: same style of cars as the europeans because tax and regulatory environment favors smaller cars.
Massive trucks are useful for construction. You should get better transit so less people have cars.
> Massive trucks are useful for construction.
No, trucks are useful, but a massive modern pickup truck is much less useful in the urban context than a standard pickup truck from 30 years ago. The bed size has remained the same, the outside envelope of the vehicle has ballooned massively.
> You should get better transit so less people have cars.
Toronto has a very high (for north america) transit mode share
I'm not disagreeing smaller trucks are normally better, but massive trucks are useful unlike cars.
Toronto has good transit for North America, but there are plenty of ways to improve it.
Here's a video I wish I could make every American watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
It provides a deep-dive video into the history of how we got to the situation we're in today with American cars exploding in size. It actually has its origins in Obama-era legislation for emissions standards that made an exception for "light trucks". SUVs are legally classified as light trucks so the industry has massively pushed these tanks onto the consumer promising more safety.
It has led to a dramatic decrease in public safety and pedestrian deaths that is unique to the US. One contributor to these deaths is literally parents running over their own children in their own driveways. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS HAPPENING IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
The video goes over the visibility issues with these trucks, how our safety regulations fail to account for them (light trucks only need to be tested in collision with other light trucks) and also covers how modern trucks have the same carrying capacity as pickup trucks from 30 years ago (the main thing that's increased is the hull and cabin size) while being harder to use for actual work since the bed is higher offer the ground
This is a much longer running issue than the Obama administration.
Market distortions favoring heavy trucks include:
* The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), enacted in Congress in 1975 under the Ford administration in reaction to the Arab oil embargo, with its tiered structure on passenger vehicles vs. trucks.
* The "Chicken Tax", tariffs on light trucks enacted by Lyndon Johnson as a reaction to French / West German tariffs on chickens. While much of this trade war was repealed, the light truck tariff never was.
* Section 179 tax deductions, which are biased in favor of heavy vehicles. As I understand it, this particular deduction was inserted into the tax code via the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984 under Reagan, for the purpose of aiding small businesses that might rely on such.
So it's been, from my perspective, a fairly non-partisan desire from all of US politics, with protectionism as perhaps part of the goal, but perhaps due to other goals that had unintended effects.
Personally, I think that government regulations can only explain so much. Even with the market distortions, trucks tend to be rather expensive compared to smaller vehicles sedans, and that's before factoring in the bad gas mileage. My presumption is that America's vastly more rural landscape contributes just as much to the preference for trucks as government policy.
I do surmise from articles, though, that the above US policies have impacted the ability for lighter pickup trucks to entering the market. I suspect that some smaller pickups, like the small "kei trucks" that seem to have a bit of a following in the US even with all the regulatory hassle, would be much more present if a lot of these protections were removed.
I wish I could buy a cheap ford ranger from 1990 just to have for home improvement things. Go pick up furniture, sacks of dirt, lumber. These massive trucks are just so expensive and gigantic.
Massive trucks are useful for construction when they are used for construction. The ones that are used for leisure are the trucks the poster was likely referring to.
If you need to use a truck daily for work an F-150 is an awful choice. The beds of these things are the same size or smaller as pickup trucks from 30 years ago while the bed is also much higher off the ground making it more impractical to regularly load on and off. The bed is only 37% of the truck! The main thing that's increased the size of these trucks is an increase in hull width and cabin size.
According to this study, most F-150s on the road are not used for work
https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-...
Cranes are also useful for construction, doesn’t mean every fourth house on my street should have one
I wish I could examine your brain to understand how you think "Massive trucks are useful for construction" is a good counterargument to people using them as daily drivers.
Transit is the alternanive for daily drivers not cars.
No city ever builds transit infrastructure to tempt people out of their cars, they make the experience of driving shittier and shittier to force people off the road, all the while lambasting drivers for making the city dirty and dangerous.
The experience of driving in cities is inherently shittier as cities get larger.
Not really... Most F150s have a 5.5' bed which is pathetically small. You can't fit a sheet of plywood or a 2x4 in there without having the tailgate down. You can only really buy full-sized long box trucks if you're part of a fleet program.
Most professional builders drive big Savannah vans, which can not only carry full sheets of plywood, but also keep them dry. Plus, the front blindspot is less than one meter.
I don't disagree about transit though.
> You can only really buy full-sized long box trucks if you're part of a fleet program.
This is why the folks I know personally who are actually in the position to need to haul dimensional for work all seem to drive white pickup trucks that they bought from resales of leased fleets.
The _useless_ short bed trucks are driven mostly by young men who were too eager to pile on the personal debt in a show of vanity.
I do know quite a few people with expensive trucks who insist they "Need one" that I rarely see doing work with them.
Most people buying massive trucks (at least in the US) aren't using them for construction.
Also, somehow other countries in the rest of the world seem to get by just fine without these massive trucks.
Ah yes, trucks with empty beds are clearly being used for construction. Not like pavement princesses are a thing.
So get those people on transit and leave trucks to people who use them as trucks.
I bought my first car in SF, a 2016 Spark EV. Tiny subcompact, 135 km range, perfect for our family of 4 (including dog + daughter).
I literally can't buy any subcompact car these days in USA or Canada, since Spark (petrol) was discontinued in 2022, Prius C (subcompact hybrid) discontinued, and Bolt EV (bigger but still small) discontinued and will be replaced with something even bigger.
Looking forward to inexpensive BYD Seagulls flooding Canada and hopefully encouraging dealers to bring in existing subcompacts that they sell everywhere else in the world.
The other is the two car family. One can be EV, leaving the other for trips.
A bit of nuance: yes, Carney said that but he didn't just offer up the opinion unprompted - it was in response to a direct press question about if China or the US is a more predictable partner right now.
And even then, he didn't lead with "China is!" but wandered his way into offering the assessment.
The context makes his comment on this seem less nakedly provocative (not that it'll matter either way - the headline will be the headline, and the Trump admin will use it however they see fit as usual).
Great news indeed. Canada sends money to help ukraine with their Russia problem. Canada then sends money to Russia's communist partner China on the other side.
I find it bizzare that liberals in Canada are happy about doing anything with China considering they are anti liberalism, anti west and have many examples of large scale human right abuse.
"sends money" doing a lot of lifting here
The enemy of my enemy...
I mean Canada's largest trading partner is the US, which also has many examples of large scale human right abuses.
As a Canadian, it's not really relevant to me that a country we trade with isn't liberal, and I don't agree with the premise that China is inheriently anti-west. Anti-western values, yes, but China does not threaten west violently in anyway that I can see. They mostly threaten western dominance economically.
IMO, Canada should just do what's best for its citizen, which is get good trade deals, and ensure that our values don't morph into something unrecognizable. What other countries do in their own borders is largely irrelevant.
> in the US, which also has many examples of large scale human right abuses.
Excuse me? Citation is needed here for present day human rights abuses in the US.
> Canada should just do what's best for its citizen, which is get good trade deals, and ensure that our values don't morph into something unrecognizable. What other countries do in their own borders is largely irrelevant.
It’s extremely relevant, if you believe in personal liberties and democracy you should to do business with societies that uphold personal liberties and democracy it’s that simple.
Its only the first 50K that get 6%, still pretty interesting as being physically so close to the US could cause people in the US to get their first look at Chinese cars.
Chinese car companies face far more ruthless competition than western ones so could end up making better cars as a result, imo.
There are over 100 brands in china selling electric cars
This x1000, I hope this really turns the screws on the US manufacturers, they need to hurt.
Really it’s the US government that it turns the screws on. China doesn’t need to comply with US regulations to produce their cars.
I suppose you realize the people running those manufacturing companies won't be hurt much at all, everyone who scrapes by trying to making a living work for them will hurt a lot when they get fired.
The vast majority of US auto jobs have already been lost to automation yet I don't hear you asking for those to come back in exchange for twice as expensive cars.
This is these companies own fault. These companies have grown cozy rent seeking with little competition and have completely missed the electrification of cars as a result. Cheaper cars will hurt those workers, but all of society will be better off when one of their largest expenses decreases.
This is pure propaganda.
Keep doing you, Canada.
The UAW endorsed the guy currently threatening to invade and annex Canada. Why would I care about them? They can all rot. No Chinese autoworker ever threatened me with invasion.
Until US bans PRC cars on US soil... pretty easy to make the case based on surveillance / NSL. Won't take much for BYD to become next DJI/Norinco.
Apparently its quite simple to buy a BYD vehicle from Mexico and import it into the US already.
https://youtube.com/shorts/IEbl6RIJeDc?si=pNol1UkjxRwML9Dz
I suspect the same thing will happen for northern states buying from Canada!
This is entirely incorrect. You cannot permanently import or register a vehicle which has not undergone homologation. None of these vehicles have been certified to meet US safety standards and they cannot be imported permanently.
Your comment is also partially incorrect. Vehicles 25 years and older may be imported and registered regardless of safety standards or emissions.
https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1100?language=en_...
Nice ackchullay there, thank you for your contribution to the discussion. It is pretty clear that OP is referring to new cars based on context but hey who cares about context.
Simple and legal are different matters. There's a BYD parked in my neighborhood pretty often (Central Texas) with Mexico plates. I have no idea how "permanent" it is, and yet there it is.
I live in southern Arizona. My next door neighbor is Mexican and also owns a BYD. Longest he can keep it here is 90 days:
https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1686
It's 50,000+ users to learn from. Chinese companies have gotten pretty good at learning.
With their capacity, they could perfectly replicate and improve a Rivian (popular in the US) and still sell for $15k less.
Could? They are already much better for the price.
exactly this - once people realize how far ahead Chinese manufacturing is, they'll put pressure where it's needed to either a) allow more to be imported, because people want nice things, or b) bring the manufacturing process over, like they did with the japanese cars
Chinese cars are good.
Even though they are tariffed as hell they often come as better to European counterparts here at similar pricing.
Chinese EVs are already way ahead of most western EVs - really, you need to see some of the cars the likes of Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Denza and Xpeng are releasing.
Could you explain some specific ways in which they are ahead?
In the case of the Xiaomi SU7[1]: you name it. Pretty much every conceivable way. Performance, comfort, electronics, styling, build quality. Xiaomi is on par with Apple for electronics and they actually followed through on making the car Apple wishes they made. Sells for around 40k, so on par with a Model 3, but absolutely embarrasses anything Tesla makes.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdSusCDZcDg
Their world leading battery tech is much cheaper and last longer, as they bet on the right tech compared to basically every western car company. Their cars overall are much cheaper for equivalent or better quality. Their car companies are desperate to stand out given there are over 100 of them so produce wide ranges of extra features and designs.
For starters they can sell EVs at a profit, a feat which I believe only Tesla has managed among the US manufacturers.
The US government has really handled this poorly. Let's take one of our closest allies and push them into the arms of our biggest rival. All while helping boost that rival's total exports to record numbers. And boosting their universities to top positions in world rankings. Just brilliant, guys. "Make America Great Again" sure seems like it was intentionally tongue-in-cheek.
The exports argument is so bloated.
US has thrived economically for 5 decades after becoming an import economy.
This whole export/import balance is such a lame reasoning...yes you've spent a certain amount of $...and got plenty of stuff in exchange. In the words of some economist I've read "by Trump's reasoning my barber is also taking advantage of me because I cut my hair every month and he never buys anything from me".
Last but not least, services are never included in these trade balance arguments. How much money flows to US through their financial and IT services alone...?
The trade deficit argument is mostly nonsense, but it's being made disingenuously anyway so the actual merit doesn't really matter to the people making it. Trump is a big fan of tariffs because they give him negotiating leverage to make deals beneficial to his own interests and those of his cronies. There is no national interest involved, this is an administration devoted purely to grift. Any benefit to the country is purely accidental.
The trade balance as a number shouldn't matter, but offshoring critical manufacturing capability and production ecosystems does.
China has at least 2 key advantages in manufacturing -- cheaper labor and laxer regulations. If the US were to embrace and extend robotics and automation more vigorously that first point could become moot. Also the second point as far as labor regulations go, and if environmental regulations were properly priced then that too would be moot.
1. The US industrial output has been growing for decades[1]. US manufacturing is doing very well, it's US manufacturing jobs that aren't due to automation.
2. Manufacturing as % of the population has long been declining globally including China. Labor cost is a very minor expense in modern manufacturing unless we talking something like clothing. I don't think Americans miss the millions of jobs they had 60 years ago sewing shoes.
3. Car industry isn't critical manufacturing capability by any means. I can understand ships, or steel or even chips, but cars?
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
The decision for slapping 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs was made by the Biden administration in 2024.
Yes and Canada followed through in matching because the USA was our strongest ally and we had a unified auto industry.
That is no longer the case through the actions of the new US Government.
Accordingly it no longer makes sense for Canada to mirror US tariffs against China.
The battle is already lost as far as China owning the future markets for EVs and probably energy in general. It doesn't seem conceivable anybody else could match their scale, efficiency and technology advantages.
If you're going to fight economically, might as well do it in areas that aren't (a) a lost cause (b) going to hurt you economically since you'll have to settle for worse and more expensive products and (c) the alternative supplier's country isn't threatening to literally invade you and surrounding nations.
I wonder if this might even be below reasonable "subsidy-compensation" tariff levels.
BYD, for reference, got almost 30% of their 2024 income from the Chinese state (~$1.4b).
But this is always difficult to judge because most nations help local industry to some degree, and it can be quite difficult to compare.
In comparison with Musk's companies ($15 billion in 2023, $7b in 2024), this seems to be a pittance.
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/117956/documents/...
This is exactly why its so hard to compare though; government contracts, emission credits and direct subsidies are all quite different and weighting them is highly subjective.
While Americans very frequently complain that the Chinese state subsidizes various industries, I am astonished that they do not see any similarity with the fact that I never heard of any really big investment project in USA, e.g. the building of any new big factory or new company headquarters, that was done otherwise than after receiving very substantial tax reductions of various kinds from the local government of the place chosen for the project. In many parts of Europe those kinds of tax reductions would be illegal, being considered a form of state aid for a private company.
And yet virtually all European lawmakers get $ from governments threatening to cut jobs.
Many countries actively lose money for those jobs, Serbia is an example. They go to extreme lengths to underbid competition for stellantis factories and get a net negative impact.
If you can't survive without taxpayers paying the bills, just die ffs.
PRC slashed tariffs on Canadian ag in reciprocation, which unlike Canada on PRC EVs is uncapped. Meanwhile EV cap only raises based on PRC auto investments and plenty of ways US can throw cold water on that. Either way, this more bargaining chip for Canada vs USMCA renegotiation next year. Like it would be nice to get chinese EVs, or even shoring some of their manufacturing in CA to keep auto sector going, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it being geopolitically sustainable. Imagine US flexes, PRC pulls out, and early adopters get screwed.
What will be interesting are the restrictions on where the BYD vehicles are allowed to go.
e.g. https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/366599/chinese-evs-banned...
I'm also curious to see if we will see more "no drive zones".
We see this in other domains: I recently talked to someone from an asset inspection (think flying around bridges to check for fractures) company. They can't use DJI drones because of security concerns.
What has astounded me about all this is the extent to which so much of our industry fall crisply into one of two groups: 1. Chinese stuff is cheap incompetent rubbish anyway, anyone near it is by definition a loser, so who cares? 2. Chinese stuff is perfect, amazing and we should just stop doing everything and buy what they're selling. They'll totally open factories here and give us jobs too!
The actual reality, which people like your asset inspection firm are dealing with, is the Chinese have leapfrogged the west in so many important respects, but to preserve security we have to live in an expensive technological backwater since the leaders of our society are so resistant to internal disruptive competition that may result in other people displacing them.
Up to 49,000 vehicles. To put that number in context, in 2024 Candians bought 1,918,861 vehicles of which 264,277 where zero-emissions.
25% of all EV sales though
49,000 is less than 20% of 264,277...
Besides which Canadian manufacturers have been extremely reluctant to make EVs, so I really don't see that there's a domestic "EV market" we should be protecting.
Yes, it's a modest step, but my guess is that those BYD cars will sell like hot cakes and demand will go through the roof. By popular demand, the government will have to lift that limit. That's all China needs to destroy american car manufacturing.
The announced limit doesn't seem like enough volume for BYD to roll out a dealership network, but maybe they do it in anticipation of higher limits in the future.
Volvo could be an immediate beneficiary. The Canadian EX30 was going to be cheaper because they could make them in China, but after the 100% US/Canada tariff was announced they had to switch to ones produced in Belgium iirc.
edit: Something I just read that I haven't seen reported elsewhere is that the imported EVs have to cost $33,000 or less. The EX30 currently starts at about $54,000, so... maybe not.
> to destroy american car manufacturing
American car manufacturing is destroying itself just fine.
North American manufacturers are not serious about making electric vehicles for the non luxury segment. The one exception is the Bolt and it's not being made in canada.
Fuck em they are fighting EV mandates while complaining that Chinese manufacturers will undercut their EV sales. They can go to bankruptcy for being liars.
I live in Ontario and support auto workers but not their lying employers.
> That's all China needs to destroy american car manufacturing.
I don't think China can be held responsible for America voting for Donald Trump, one of whose main goals in life has been the destruction of every trading and soft-power partnership that the US has built over the past 80 years.
The Mercosur-EU trade deal, the India-EU trade deal and this China-Canada trade deal. A pattern perhaps? A frantic search for reliable trade partnerships, or just random noise?
Mercosur-EU trade deal was agreed 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93Mercosur_Associatio...
India-EU have deepened ties since long ago too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93European_Union_r...
> Mercosur-EU trade deal was agreed 2019
Sure the details were negotiated in 2019, but it isn't even in effect yet. It still needs to be approved by legislative bodies on both sides of the Atlantic. Which will probably happen sometime this year.
In case you're not aware, Chinese cars have the same or even better quality than US, European and Japanese cars. Their electric vehicles are cheap and high quality, it's really impressive.
I expect that this relatively small quota is a good faith opening the door to Chinese product but the main core goal will be deeper, comprehensive Chinese investment, such as securing BYD/NIO/etc car factories in Ontario.
Could an American go up and buy one and drive it back? Any registration or insurance issues?
Others have covered the problems with this. However if you live in certain US cities that are close to Canada there may be a work around.
Actually move to somewhere across the border and live in Canada. As a US citizen living in Canada crossing into the US for visits, even fairly long ones, has little or no hassle and you can bring your Canadian car.
For example if you are in Detroit, move to Windsor, Ontario. Outside of peak congestion times it is 10-20 minutes to get to or from Detroit. That's quick enough that this could work out even if you do almost all of your activities outside of your home in Detroit.
BTW, there are also cities on the south border of the US where this works (with Mexico, not Canada!), but in many of those the cities on the Mexican side have somewhat of a crime problem so you would have to be a lot more cautious in picking a place to live there.
No. Tarriffs aside this would be the problem:
https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/importing-car
> As a general rule, motor vehicles less than 25 years old must comply with all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) in order to be imported permanently into the United States.
Without homologation there is 0 chance you'd be able to import and register one of these.
How did Ford's CEO do it?
Maybe the same way Steve Jobs did the no plate thing. Maybe he just keeps cycling them. Might even send them to the labs at Ford for destructive analysis after each one is legally done.
Most likely he used a manufacturer R&D exemption to do it. This is fairly common, just usually not as high profile as the CEO.
Precisely this
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-257-2...
Sorry but was this truly a good faith question? Kind of hard to see how it is.
Since I am not as well-versed in Michigan state law as you, yeah it was a serious question. I really wanted to know what law or laws he used.
Assuming they don't conform to US safety standards (and aren't easily made to conform), your best bet is to aim for this provision:
> Nonresidents may import a vehicle duty-free for personal use up to (1) one year if the vehicle is imported in conjunction with the owner's arrival. Vehicles imported under this provision that do not conform to U.S. safety and emission standards must be exported within one year and may not be sold in the U.S. There is no exemption or extension of the export requirements.
There's certainly a question of if it's personal use if your canadian friend leaves their vehicle at your place and you drive it around. But your friend can certainly get it over the border and I don't know how much enforcement you'll get after that. You will want the vehicle to return to Canada before the year is up.
> Assuming they don't conform to US safety standards (and aren't easily made to conform), your best bet is to aim for this provision:
Canadian and US car safety standards are very closely aligned, other than some pretty minor differences. (e.g. DRL required in Canada, TPMS required in the US, etc.)
Sure. If you want to pay the 247% tarriff, there’s nothing stopping you from doing this. US import duty applies when you cross the border, calculated on the vehicle’s origin (China), not purchase location.
At that point just don't register it and pay the fines, it'll be cheaper.
I think the way this would work is you would have your Canadian friend/owner drive it across and then return via another mode of transport. It's entirely possible you could get away with it pretty much indefinitely (especially in an area where folks are used to seeing Canadian plates), but I could also see someone checking a list of "foreign vehicles that entered the US and never left" at some point and one or both of you having some explaining to do (i.e. being ruled inadmissible).
This is only correct if you're not planning on ever registering the vehicle. And good luck with the paperwork to prove that during import. This is a great way to waste a bunch of money and get your shiny new car crushed
Where are you going to get any issues repaired?
Chinese brand cars are already in Mexico and people don't do that. I think you can't register them or something.
I guess we are still tarrifing solar panels though :(
Good. This could force Tesla's hand to make super cheap EV.
Musk and crew know how to make cheap stuff - they've chosen high margin for Tesla however.
If we've learned anything from the last year, it's that Elon doesn't base his decisions on facts or reality. So I doubt that this will have any effect on Tesla.
I don't think it will change anything for Tesla, unless it lowers their costs through lowered tariffs somehow.
TBH, Tesla is in a tough position with their EVs in NA. They can't really build a cheap enough crossover/suv to compete directly with ICE RAV4, and virtually anything they do at >$50k would negatively impact their existing product sales. The base Model 3/Y are too expensive compared to ICE and have met tepid reviews because of their slightly odd mix of price and features.
So they've chosen instead to focus on autonomy and car hiring. I can't blame them for that. There's a huge potential for recurring revenue in that space and they've been positioning themselves to be in an excellent position to capture a lot of it over the next five years.
> They can't really build a cheap enough crossover/suv to compete directly with ICE RAV4, and virtually anything they do at >$50k
Doesn't the Model Y start at 40K? That's more expensive than the base model RAV4, but the Tesla is probably aimed at a slightly different market segment too. My guess is they could compete head-to-head on price if they needed to, but they don't think the math works out better that direction yet.
They can only compete with a subsidized product with their own subsidized product. The car company that exclusively makes EVs went all-in on the party that promised to destroy EV subsidies. Who's he going to beg to, California? They hate him too.
Id rather it force him into bankruptcy, but i would settle for slimmer margins.
Almost every model they released was cheaper than the last, and that was Musk's open plan.
Tesla will instead announce $20K AI-powered flying cars on Venus instead, available next year.
I'm hoping brands like Ford, GM, Toyota, ... take notice. The big names that make a lot of cars don't have a cheap option.
Tough part with China is that Tesla could fully replicate all chinese EV businesses and still be more expensive without government subsidies and currency devaluation.
Tesla already manufacturers and exports cars from China.
Not good for the brand to chase byd on price
They've already become a cheaper brand here in Europe.
BYD quite literally matched their prices here with the Seal and both brands offer equally stupidly good deals vs the current interest rate here in Poland.
They just can't compete with luxury brands that don't sympathize with fascism. People just don't want to advocate for their own demise.
Wouldn't them creating artificial scarcity be just another way to keep prices at the same level as tarrifs, but with the huge margins going to the private sector instead of the public?
This will likely happen indeed. There will be a huge mark up from dealerships and not enough volume to prompt for pricing competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCgSmlpC61A CBC "Q&A: Carney takes questions on China trade deal, EVs and security"
This is for about 50k cars a year that are priced about 35k CAD or less. It's a small amount compared to Canada's 2mil car sales a year, but it is quite significant in the message it is delivering to the world about Canada being willing to diversify their economy in the wake of hostility from conventional partners. It'll be quite interesting how normal partners react.
This feels like a poor long-term play for a short term political win. Canada has a robust automotive supply industry to US auto manufacturers, and this industry could be in long-term risk in an attempt to hurt relations with freer, traditionally more conservative nations. It’s not a shock but it is always disappointing to see major political decisions made for the benefit of the next election cycle.
> in an attempt to hurt relations with freer, traditionally more conservative nations
I don’t think those are the salient characteristics of the US from Canada’s perspective in this development, and because of that I don’t think of your analysis of this as motivated by short term political considerations is correct. Instead, the current US government’s unexpected decisions to turn the thumbscrews on Canada exposed Canada’s economic dependence as a vulnerability, and the Canadian government is at least trying to signal a capability to become less dependent in the future in the hopes that reduces their vulnerability as perceived by the US government. That vulnerability existed before and will outlast the current US government.
I largely agree, but there are conflicting goals which makes it hard to evaluate if this really is a bad long-term play. Canada has environmental commitments, and giving the population access to cheap EVs will help meet those goals. I don't think this decision is just a short-term political win, there is potential for it to help with the longer term vision of Canada. But I do agree, this is bad for the local automotive industry in Canada.
The message here is that western Canadian agricultural & energy interests are of potential more strategic value than a dying technically backwards auto sector led by three moribund regressive manufacturers who have shown their willingness to show their belly to Trump anyways.
As an Ontarian, I'm saddened. But I don't think the Big3 deserve anymore state support. They've pushed it too far.
Just earlier this week they were running editorials against the gov't on EV mandates. Again. Ok, here you go. Don't want to make EVs? Only want to sell giant Canyoneros?
It's ok. China will service that market. Have fun becoming irrelevant. If consumers really don't want EVs, like they said earlier in the week, then there's nothing to fear. Right? Right?
More that Ontario auto is projected to have no value since Trump has explicitly signaled he wants to kill Canadian auto and reshore to US. If Ontario auto is going, no sense in losing also agriculture especially if oil also going in 5-10 years if VZ ever works to US favor. The only hedge is to save Canadian auto is hoping for some sort PRC JV where Canadian plants keep some jobs and grab some margins, possibly a lot of margins (i.e. no truly cheap EVs) since PRC inputs cheap. Best case scenario is Canada has meaningfully cheaper EVs, but not Chinese cheap, get to hold onto some auto work, have access to worlds largest ag buyer, maybe free up an extra million barrels of oil to export since US will want VZ heavy instead of WCS from Alberta. Although US has many other ways to punish Canada.
Globalization always wins
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46647955
It makes more sense if you assume Trump is being paid off by China.
I'm not saying that's happening, just that it makes more sense than this chaotic self-destruction of the American empire.
That is complete and utter conspiracy hogwash! Who believes in such total nonsense ...
... everyone knows Trump is being blackmailed by Russia ;-)
Have they solved the cold weather vs lithium charge leak problem?
And whatever happened to that mysterious one-day $50 million in tesla rebates?
This new direction of "strategic autonomy", with Donald Trump in the white house just south of the border seems like a difficult hill to occupy.
Unfortunately, this is probably what is necessary at this point.
Isn't it somewhat laughable when something like 3/4 of Canadian exports are to the US?
I think that Canada has to de-leverage trade with the US is what the take away should be. Not that this trade deal itself is going to change all the balances -- its that there are other players who can start to trade - reducing dependence on the US. The compounding effects are damaging as are switching costs.
What it looks like to me is that Carney the businessman is trying to work for the best terms in an eventual annexation scenario.
Trolls be trolls.
Bookmark it.
He should negotiate directly with Putin then instead of Trump the middle-man
The laughing party is the person taking the tariffs and living large off them. The American consumer is suffering.
In reality, the vast majority of Canadian exports are energy and potash, neither of which have any kind of tariffs applied.
Because if they did, Trump's supporters would lose their shit completely. Gas prices would go through the roof and farmers would be in big big trouble.
Tesla goodbye!
Our not-so-great leader's not-so-great trade policies continue to have not-so-great results for the US.
Are BYD cars really subsidized or is that a bunch of BS?
Yes, BYD is tightly intertwined with the CCP and gets a lot of subsidies, grants, favorable loans, etc.
Yes, following an almost cookie-cutter-like pattern of emerging economies protecting and supporting their auto industries.
I feel like that is not specific to emerging economies.
A few assorted thoughts:
- I'm still not over how great it feels to have confidence that Carney has a strong understanding of the economics of these political manouvers. Not only is he not a !@#$ing moron, he's a deeply experience economist more than he's a politician.
- Stratification of trading partners is nothing but good.
- This feels like safe toe-dip. Both sides have agreed to terms that are temporary, meaning there is no surprise rug-pull moment. Which is something the Americans are using more and more to keep everyone so !@#$ing wound up.
- This could be a long-term play for China: establish a presence in the North American auto market. The U.S. is right there. (Watch the Americans ban Chinese EVs from border crossing)
- Even better long-term play: establish North American manufacturing. How about Ontario builds Japanese and Chinese cars, turns CAMI and others into a Roshel or other military vehicle plant, and says good riddance to the American auto makers that have been rug-pulling long before Trump got into politics.
- A great opportunity to start improving trade lines for Canola. Possibly a trial balloon for other primary and secondary resources?
- Canada cannot stand on its own geopolitically. We must be closely tied to a major power. Intuitively that choice is the EU But I fear that China can move much faster and we'll find ourselves de-facto in their sphere while the EU is still debating this and that.
I don't love that Carney is relatively conservative-leaning for being Liberal, but I do really appreciate the fact that he's professional, competent, and stable. He speaks like (what I see as) a regular person and he's not there to whip supporters into fervent chanting.
I'm absolutely relieved that Poilievre didn't win the election (or his original seat). Setting aside just how far to the right he is, I've heard him described as an idiot both by another MP and by someone (who is himself pretty conservative) who met him at some social event.
Trump is binding US automakers tightly to the fossil fuel industry, which at this point in history is like tying a boat anchor to a drowning man.
Good!
The less we depend on Trumpistan the better.
Canadians are incredibly pissed at Trump and his criminal TechBros. This change here is largely due to that.
Trump threatening invasion of Greenland is also aimed against Canada; the USA would have more and more military bases threatening Canada, so Trump's anti-Greenland policy is heavily aimed at threatening Canada rather than China or Russia. One can see how he helps Putin versus Ukraine - one can not trust Trump.
The result of another self-own by the Trump administration.
Money talks, actual values walk. Always.
I get that this is seen as a "practical" move north-of-the-border, but understand, this is the kind of move that guys like Trump, Putin, and Xi all require. They want this kind of thing to happen, because it shows the real issue was never one of democratic values and human rights. If Canadians valued that then their PM wouldn't be inking a deal with China in response to what Trump is doing. There would be some sort of deal with Europe, perhaps, but not China.
The next time the Canadian government brings up some sort of issue with the treatment of Canadians by ICE or some other kind of issue, you can bet that the horse trading will involve a reference to the fact that this deal happened.
That's already more-or-less the rationale in Trump's dealings with Europe: for all of the complaining about Russia as a threat or the sanctity of NATO and how the Greenland affair threatens all of that, there was a solid 15-year-long run where the continent was more than happy to buy petroleum products off the Russians while ignoring escalating human rights violations in Russia along with incursions into South Ossetia and the Donbas.
He picks up on these sorts of deals as hypocrisy based in realpolitik, and will exploit it.
Trump doesn't care about values at all, he cares about money more than anyone else does. I find it laughable you can even talk about values whilst having that main in charge of your country.
And so what if he turns around and goes "ha your values are worthless". Trump is a literal paedophile and a literal rapist. Why should we accept being brow beat by such a man? So? We're moving on without you.
Another resounding Trump success!
No, not of the kayfabe goals that serve as rallying cries for his dwindling band of cultists. But rather success of the goals of our adversaries who helped put Trump in power and seem to primarily inform his policy.
(edit to answer the question below, as throttling has set in: China, obviously)
> But rather success of the goals of our adversaries who helped put Trump in power and seem to primarily inform his policy.
Do you have any specifics? Which adversary of yours wants lower-tariff Chinese EVs in Canada?
I’m assuming this is downstream of trumps move in Venezuela? Canada suffers the most from US access to Venezuelan oil. On top of all the prior rhetoric and moves by his admin.
What concerns me is why does the west think China is trustworthy? Why are we all fighting one another? Culture is important. China knows this, and is unequivocally Chinese relative to the Europeans.
It has nothing to do with Venezuela, and the move has been long time coming. It's not 'on top of all the prior' rhetoric, it is _ALL_ the rhetoric.
Let me be clear: here in Canada, the idea we are ever going to have anything like the same relationship with the United States again is held by a small and shrinking minority. And with every day, with the shit show that's happening down south, this becomes more true. The old adage is true, trust takes years to build and seconds to break.
As for China, I doubt anyone among the Canadian leadership, and most people here, "trusts" China, but it has nothing to do with trust but with cold hard calculus of who we can sell our stuff to. China is a big market, and speaking of trust, China has not threatened us with annexation. Words matter, as do deeds.
Culture is important, but has relatively little to do with geopolitics. Europe had thousands of years of shared history and values, and 2 world wars.
> Why are we all fighting one another?
well, the president of the united states of america and the human slimeball he sent as an ambassador to Canada have been threatening our sovereignty for a year. Hope this helps.
Pete Hoekstra? Canadians adore him! https://youtu.be/k6-KK1hfyU8
IP issues aside, China is a fairly reliable trading partner. That's all most people care about.
Up until a while ago, I'm pretty sure that the consensus was that China not trustworthy. And then, Trump plays his cards and the consensus is now that the US are even less trustworthy. So here you go.
> Up until a while ago, I'm pretty sure that the consensus was that China not trustworthy. And then, Trump plays his cards and the consensus is now that the US are even less trustworthy. So here you go.
But that doesn't make China trustworthy, which this move implies.
It seems like there's some "narcissism of small differences" kind of thing going on here. Trump may not share Canada/Europe's values to the same degree of prior US presidents, but China does not share those values at all and never has. It's really questionable judgement to throw your lot in with China if you're not happy with the leadership of the US.
We do trade with plenty of people who we don't think are trustworthy (Trump's US, for instance). I don't see that this move implies that China is trustworthy at all.
Why would this move imply anything about China's trustworthiness? Canada has forever been USA's lap dog. They say "jump" we say "how high?". Those tariffs we had were mostly to be in solidarity of the US.
Yes, it was also to protect car manufacturing in Ontario, but Trump has sent a clear signal that as long as Canada isn't a US state, this industry is going to die. So, why bother with a tariff at all?
This has nothing to do with China's trustworthiness.
> Why would this move imply anything about China's trustworthiness?
Per you GGP: China was previously considered untrustworthy, so its products tariffed to exclude them. It implies more trust if now those tariffs are being removed to allow them in. And it's especially off of the motivation is some evaluation of the US's trustworthiness, because those two things are completely independent.
> Yes, it was also to protect car manufacturing in Ontario, but Trump has sent a clear signal that as long as Canada isn't a US state, this industry is going to die. So, why bother with a tariff at all?
If that were the motivation, it would make way more sense to partner with the Europeans. IMHO. There's a better alignment of values there.
I don't see where you're going. We trust europeans and I very much doubt that we had any tariff on their automobiles to begin with. We're talking about removing a "artificial" stopgap tariff specifically targeting Chinese imports, not preferring China over Europe.
European cars can't compete here because they're not cheap enough. Chinese car are. They're the one disrupting the global market now.
> Why are we all fighting one another?
Because of the Chinese/Russian asset that got into the highest leadership position of the western world, and is now using that position to create and inflame fighting amongst ourselves. We had it too good, for too long, people got too entitled, became out of touch with what actually made our society great, and our adversaries took advantage of that.
As an American, I am truly sorry to all of our allies and friends who didn't even get to vote on the matter.
While we (Canadians) certainly aren't happy with Trump's attack on Venezuela, Trump's threats against Canada, reneging on deals with Canada, threats against Greenland, and attacks on the US's domestic rule of law probably all carry more weight in this decision than that.
Despite the issues that Trump has caused Canada still does more trade with the US, on more favourable terms, than China...
What is Canada's issue with the "attack" on Venezuela (I wrap it in quotes because the actual operation was the capture of Maduro)
We're generally against warmongering. We're definitely against invading another country with the purpose being to steal it's resources, and that's what explicitly what the attack was. We're weary of the military of our neighbor violating their own constitution, and their own laws, to invade another country without authorization from the appropriate civilian authorities because that sort of lawlessness doesn't tend to turn out well. We are concerned by the blatant murders and violation of the rules of the sea, and the rules of war that lead up to the invasion including the sinking of ships nowhere near the US posing no threat to the US and the murder of shipwrecked people. I'm sure the list goes on, but those are some headline concerns that come to mind quickly.
The actual operation was a military invasion of another country resulting in 3 figures worth of deaths - not merely a "capture" of someone - though the capture itself is concerning for the aforementioned reasons.
I don't want to be overly dismissive, but where do you actually see the cultural threat scenario?
Do you want the west to stick together mainly to preserve disneyified European fables in cinema as opposed to Chinese three-kingdoms drama?
According to Russian users, Chinese EV works poorly in cold climates. I don't think Canadians prefer EVs anyway.
There are a massive amount of new EVs in Quebec, which isn't exactly tropical. Part of it is subsidies, $2K for new EV, and $600 for charging. The other thing is the crazy scale of hydroelectric production in that province, some of which gets exported as far as Baltimore. So electricity is very available and reasonably cheap in QC.
We'll see how BYD's handle the bone chilling Montreal winters... Unless they're an absolute flop, I can see some fairly solid future prospects.
(I live in Ontario, but I've been to Le Belle Province quite a bit ;) )
https://www.quebec.ca/en/transports/electric-transportation/...
https://www.quebec.ca/en/transports/electric-transportation/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project
As an EV driver from Ontario it's amazing crossing over, or even getting close to the border, the EV situation is just so much better.
That said, while hate Tesla the company ... I'll take their chargers over the patchwork of various apps & cards I have to install in order to make use of things there. There's a notable absence of Tesla stations there, but a lot of variety of other things and I had bad luck installing half the apps and it was not fun trying to set that all up while standing in the -20C cold in a gas station parking lot while just trying to get to the ski hill.
The vast majority of Canadians live near the US border. The weather is not tropical but it is quite normal compared to a lot of US states and northern Europeans.
EVs and cold climates are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, if you want to road trip with snowy 30 mph headwinds, the charging times will be meaningfully worse. Not impossible, but definitely noticeable.
On the other hand, the traction control is fantastic and they tend to have the best preconditioning features so that you never have to get into a cold car for your commute.
For a lot of people, that second paragraph is far more important than that first for at least one of the cars in their household inventory.
They're also a lot more resilient at extreme temperatures. Your range will be crap, but you can count on it running in -30C or more without problems.
> I don't think Canadians prefer EVs anyway.
One of the more popular locations for the Ford Lightning is Toronto. They seem to do fine. Canadian politics echoes American politics a bit, but they are not quite so ideological about EVs as we are.
I (Canadian) drive a Polestar 2. Chinese manufactured car by Chinese company Geely (tho with Volvo DNA).
It's the best winter driving car I've ever owned. A set of Michelin X-Ices on it's amazing. I've been driving for 35 years and I've never driven something with better winter handling, including Subaru I used to own, etc.
Chinese EVs are not what you want flooding the global market.
Every Chinese business big enough to play at the global scale has the government in it's power structure. They don't necessarily dictate business decisions but every bit of data collected is by default accessible by the government.
Having a significant fraction of a country driving around in Chinese EVs gives an insane amount of information to the Chinese government for free. It's not just direct information either like the driver's identity and personals, with millions of cars on the road a lot can be inferred, like if the parking lots at military bases suddenly fill up on a Tuesday afternoon or traffic between a high value person's home and an airport gets unusually slow.
These correlation attacks are not just theoretical, Strava leaked the location and layout of a military base in Afghanistan, accidentally, by showing the most commonly jogged routes by users on their public map.
These cars have cellular modems, they will have wifi and bluetooth hardware, if a particular person's device was identified at, for example, a political meeting or business conference then that person could be trivially tracked by the dozens of Chinese cars that they pass in a day. The information could be smuggled home along with all the normal diagnostic, update and service info that streams out of a modern car.
This could be done today by the American government, and it is to some extent, to identify, and locate, protesters and criminals by their mobile devices but it takes time, access to equipment/logs that the government does not always own.
And it may sound paranoid but remember that China was caught operating their own "police" force around the world not long ago, they will take advantage of any opportunity they are given to spy on other countries.
edit: HN seems to have a short memory. Which country was investigated for tampering with a Canadian federal election recently?
China isn't threatening to invade Canada. The neighbours to the south that have similar software in our military planes are.
> And it may sound paranoid but remember that China was caught operating their own "police" force around the world not long ago
Have you heard about ICE? That one's not a paranoid thought. It's a very real personal police designed for oppression. I'd much much rather chineses EVs flooding the market over Teslas.
These two concerns do not need to be mutually exclusive. Either one can be recognized as a threat to our liberties without diminishing the severity of the other.
The more relevant discussion is the lack of policy/legislation to prohibit government agencies from sidestepping the 4th amendment and purchasing access from private corps, like Flock, to surveil individuals without a warrant. It’s ICE today, maybe DEA tomorrow, and the FDA in some broken future. In a decade or two, when nearly all vehicles are inherently advanced optical sensors with wheels, what stops auto manufactures becoming real-time surveillance companies, like Flock?
Did ICE have clandestine police stations in Canada trying to rendition political dissidents? People need to get a grip and some perspective.
American citizens being shot and brutalized by a state sponsored force of masked thugs without training. Sounds pretty clandestine to me and it's happening in us soil.
Except those actions are not secret, nor illegal, nor a threat to any other country’s sovereignty?
Their actions are very illegal (extradition if American citizens, stealing property, entering without a warrant, murders, etc.).
And the US's stance and actions around Venezuela and Greenland are also both illegal and a threat to a country's sovereignty.
Tariff threats is another example.
If you think those actions are not illegal I'm stopping to reply, this is clearly just ragebait.
Ragebait would be trying to argue that China running secret police and propaganda operations on Canadian soil, against Canadian citizens, is in any way equivalent to a domestic force taking actions primarily against foreign nationals, in a statutorily authorized way within a legal framework that can be challenged.
> Have you heard about ICE? That one's not a paranoid thought. It's a very real personal police designed for oppression.
Oh, come on. ICE may be behaving badly right now, and you might be mad at them, but that's not an excuse for flights of fancy. Stay grounded in the truth. ICE is not "personal police designed for oppression," they're police designed to enforce immigration and customs laws (ICE literally stands for "immigration and customs enforcement").
Canada and every other country has some kind of police force that serves those roles: for instance: https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/security-securite/rem-ren-eng.ht...:
> The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) removals program contributes to upholding the integrity of Canada’s immigration system by removing people who are inadmissible to enter or stay in Canada.
> ... The CBSA also prioritizes the removal of failed refugee claimants who entered Canada irregularly between points of entry. These cases are prioritized due to their significant impact on program integrity and on Canada’s asylum system.
I'm under the impression that Canada has historically actually been much more strict with enforcing immigration laws and deporting people than the US had been.
I got news for you: ICE is designed now to beat up anyone in the US. Here is one example: https://newrepublic.com/post/205280/fed-agent-permanently-bl...
> I got news for you: ICE is designed now to beat up anyone in the US. Here is one example: https://newrepublic.com/post/205280/fed-agent-permanently-bl...
Do you know what the word "designed" means? Because I don't think it means what you think it means.
I am in no way saying what that ICE agent did was right. I'm just saying being mad is not an excuse for being a sloppy thinker. What's happening here is the ICE agents' behavior is out of control and they're probably behaving illegally. That's not being anyone's "personal police" (whatever that means) or they are "designed to beat up anyone in the US," but believing such false things will probably lead to stupid slogans that end up doing more harm than good (e.g. "defund the police").
You absolutely have a point, I just don't see how this is functionally different from western/US policy, especially from the perspective of e.g. BRIC nations:
We have ample evidence that US intelligence siphons data from literally every meaningful company it can tap, is willing to share that data with partners abroad and uses such things without even public sanction against targets picked by the president (see Venezuela).
Sure, the US is still the devil you know, but if Americans want to claim the moral high ground then at least credible pretending is required, and under the current administration we wont even get that.
I have never before felt pressured about what I can or cannot protest about in Europe by China, but I can’t say the same about our most powerful ally, who has threatened every sector of our society – political or non-political – with consequences if we do not act and speak as they do. China absolutely does not care about our society the same way as that.
No different than American companies or European companies. With the US having Palantir in their pocket…
The accountability and scale are hugely different to the point I don’t see how anyone can make this argument in good faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
Are you following the news? Canada is the target of a trade war from the US right now.
All that goes for US EVs too. And China hasn't threaten with annexation.
Everyone knows. But America is has made it very clear it has no allies, this means every middle power is near obligated to re-position themselves to be roughly in the middle between the two super-powers.
This ignores physical geographical reality.
Geographic proximity is mutual. If it came down to it, I doubt the US will ever be prepared for polite Canadian terror cells.
Perhaps in an ideal world, we trade mostly with allies and nations that are ideologically aligned with the US. Unfortunately, the current president is doing everything he can to weaken alliances with those nations and cripple those trade relations.
Don't be surprised with the downvotes. I've noticed that unfortunately HN is among the most anti-American tech forums around, politically. So anything tangential to this will have predictable results.
You’re talking to a brick wall unfortunately. People care more about cheap EVs and sticking it to the US than national security.