askchapo

This seems like it would be setting off terrible, terrible signals to the investor class too.

For American manufacturers, even if they have a somewhat higher labour cost structure, they should have a few "home field advantages" to make it at least initially competitive:

• They should understand their customers better than the foreign devils-- have the Chinese manufacturers even DRIVEN anything with more horsepower than a freight locomotive and a carbon footprint two-thirds that of the entire city of Chongqing? How would they possibly understand what Americans want?

• Some aspects of their cost structure might be more amenable; they aren't schlepping supplies and vehicles across entire oceans, they have established dealer and service networks, they've already paid the right bribes to various regulators.

If they can't at least compete in that scenario, then basically all you have is a firm that lives as a protected novelty, subject to the whims of government subsidy and trade policy. That feels like telling an institutional investor "Go and buy stock in a tourist heritage railway, that's a vital growth business right there!"

On a high level, we can assume this is going to be a repeat of the 1970s with Japanese imports: Detroit continues to do what Detroit does while haemmoraging market share, eventually they have a series of come-to-Jesus moments where they make the electric K-car (or just start selling BYDs under license in the Geo style) to try to reposition themselves, but eventually the size of the market meant that "foreign" cars ended up being made domestically anyway. The smart play would be to jump to the end of the board: which state wants to be the first to get a Chinese EV plant running and generating local jobs and tax revenue?