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Battery costs have declined by 99% in the last three decades, making electrified transport a reality
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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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North America has little competition because of the tariffs on everything not made in USA.
AFAIK Canada is getting out of that shadow. I read an article about a month ago, how Canadian imports were routed through USA, and that it stifled EV adoption in Canada.
EV adoption was stifled by MAGA Premieres killing incentives and ripping out public chargers, while giving money to Detroit to keep building shitty trucks and muscle cars.
Meanwhile, to sell EVs in Europe, XPing is getting them made in Austria using Magna, a Canadian company. Why didn't Carney/Ford insist on this in Ontario?
BYD tried to build buses in Ontario but they were so shit they had to close the plant and pay a bunch of lawsuits. And BYD is hurting, they just laid off 100,000 worldwide.
Wow interesting I didn't know that, I've heard that China has too many car makers, and some of them would have to go. So this is probably just the beginning of an adjustment for Chinese makers.
This is actually one of the very few places that US tariffs make sense. (Not from a consumer perspective of course, but from a nationalist industry protection point of view.) The rest of the tariffs the US places are silly because there isn’t much other manufacturing in the US to protect.
Nope. Tariffs reduce competition and you end up with a shitty local option that just costs more and sales die anyway.
Oil dependency is a national security issue for a lot of countries, tariffs on EVs have really backfired here while also increasing climate change
The US manufactures more than ever. There are a lot less people in manufacturing than 70 years ago, but we make just as much. I know of one factory that went from 2000 employees in 1950 to 200 today - they make more product than in 1950 despite that. Automation has made a big change in the US.
Not really if you want fair competition.
It's not fair competition if labor standards are far lower in the country being imported from.
Absolutely correct, we don't want a competition based on social dumping or highest subsidies.
That's why you make tariffs to compensate for that like the EU does, but EU has higher standards than USA, and is hit by tariffs in USA anyway, and although China has state subsidies, the 150% tariff doesn't make the competition fair, it simply excludes any car made in China from being sold in USA.
Why would the US want fair competition?
Like I said, the consumers do not benefit from the tariffs, the nation does.
Because US businesses will only compete and innovate if you force them. Leave them safe behind ramparts of protective trade policies, and they'll keep coasting on 1990s technology, as the country as a whole slowly becomes a backwater.
No the nation doesn't, it just degrades into further noncompetitiveness, and increased consumer prices.
Short term tariffs can allow domestic manufacturing to reach the design and scale to be competitive without tariffs. This was, in theory, the idea behind the 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs. Of course, none of the American auto manufacturers are doing anything with that leeway other than continuing to be terrible.
You are 100% correct that this is the general idea, the problem is that USA actually had a head start with Tesla, (as painful as it is to me to admit.)
Now the lack of competition will only result in the loss of the lead USA had until just a few years ago.
Of course Nazi Musk and Nazi Trump undermine American exports, and no amount of US tariffs can compensate for that.
Does the nation benefit when there’s no actual benefits like health care for the citizens?