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Comment by thefourthchime | Hacker News Reader

I think you're ignoring the fact that Chinese manufacturers are heavily tariffed in the west

Not at all. Global light vehicle sales are ~90M units/year. US ~17M/year. EU ~13M/year. China remains a factory to the world (and itself is the leading market). BYD can build in Mexico (NAFTA) and the EU to avoid tariffs, if desired.

Tariffs aren’t going to keep the EV printer at bay. They only delay the inevitable.

https://electrek.co/2024/10/09/byd-to-sell-100000-evs-north-...

https://electrek.co/2024/08/16/byd-plots-another-ev-plant-wh...

https://electrek.co/2024/03/12/byd-triple-ev-market-share-eu...

https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-ev-driving-seat-us-a...

The tariffs would most likely morph to disallow that.

I disagree this would be effective or a path to success. The evidence does not show policy moves faster than capital, and auto tariff policy gymnastics only work until foreign corporations open factories in country (as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Stellantis, and Hyundai all have done [US example]).

US EV demand is simply not at the point where this is economically rational (imho), yet. And so, you’re stuck with a legacy auto EV, a Tesla, or a BYD with 100% tariff markup for now. Even with the tariff, the BYD is still cheaper than a Tesla.

It's not rational, but the current tariffs are explicitly aimed at Chinese EVs and were created faster than they could hit the US market in any sizable quantity even using China's existing manufacturing infrastructure.

Policy in support of existing capital that is a heavy hitter politically can absolutely move faster than capital of new entrants.

And with both political parties explicitly being anti-chinese capital currently, it's not clear that a chinese factory would even be allowed to open domestically.

>BYD can build in Mexico (NAFTA) and the EU to avoid tariffs, if desired.

Not if Trump wins and I mean that without cynicism.

Heavily tariffed in the US, no tariffs in AU/NZ/Asia.

EU is imposing tariffs depending on the manufacturer's co-operation with cost investigations.

No special tariffs in the UK also.

You are ignoring the fact that the world doesn't end with the USA (and EU)... Even in LatAm (which is "west") there is abundance of Chinese cars... In Africa it's probably even more visible...

China can easily get around that the same way they made western manufacturers get around its own tariffs. Only the Americans aren’t going to require 49/51 JVs, even though they should.

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