It's not due to a lack of will. They can't produce cars as cheaply because they've spent the last 50 years closing factories and buying back their own stock while China invested in their industrial capacity.

They get a lot of bribes from the oil industry. This is about sabotage, not competition.

You don't want a giant ass pickup truck that drives like a tank, takes up 1.5 times the parking space and goes 8 miles on the gallon?

they had decades to prepare for this. if the past is any indication they would rather milk that cow to death and act surprised when it isnt a viable long term strategy.

Because "free markets, competition, being voluntary" are propaganda by capitalists using their owned media and purchased government to make its victims double as its defenders.

The goal of market capitalism is to end competition often by buying out up and coming rivals to kill the threat, manipulate the markets to your advantage using anything from bribery to cost benefit analysis of potential consequences/fines for sociopathic actions to potential profits, and conspire with your economic sector to coerce the workers you need into accepting less.

This is just expanded indentured servitude with a marketing team.

This isn't competition, it sounds like the CCP heavily subsidises the manufacture, in an attempt to kill the American industry off.

Thinking in decades or centuries is a very powerful tool!

Because we don't like free markets. We like the illusion of choice, but the security of monopoly.

It's like when they dragged their feet making fuel efficient cars after the oil crisis

Ya if they want to survive its time to adapt and compete. This is what complacency sets up and I don't feel bad for them at all. They saw this coming and probably just sat there expecting a bailout.

For what it's worth, a government can absolutely subsidized an industry in an attempt to capture a foreign market.

There's a reason Japan and Korea have their own auto industries despite being next door to the largest manufacturing nation on earth, and it isn't because they're somehow making and distributing them for even less than China.

That being said, several automakers have blindfolded themselves about the type of cars people want. I do hope this threat is significant enough that automakers actually shift to mini-electric transportation options.

If not, I'd be happy enough buying a small Chinese electric even if the taxes made it equivalent to a larger "western" vehicle. Because it's what I want to have available to me and it's nice to fuck capitalists with capitalism.