The benefit of a tarrif on Tesla vs opening the market to China is that we can easily undo it if there is a US coup, Trump gets medicated, gets burned, whatever. There's still the potential that this is a temporary situation, not the new reality. If we open up to a third party, we can't put the genie back in the bottle.
The thing is, if Trump wants to kill Canada's role in US car manufacturing, then it will cost him the car markets in Mexico and Canada. If there's no jobs here to protect, then we'll just drop the tariffs on Chinese EVs. (This is speaking like 20 years down the road). We'll all be driving Chinese cars in that scenario. The tariffs are a total lose-lose situation, so dumb.
That would be like replacing evil with another evil. CCP are not angels.
But they sell cheap EVs, aren't threatening to invade, and Musk's Swasticars can't compete. It's just economic pragmatism.
Use the Chinese EVs while building up local infrastructure. If Canada wants native production it won't happen overnight, but if it doesn't make a deliberate and significant push for it it's simply never going to happen at all and you'll always be importing from, and therefore dependent on, someone.
Good, the tariffs that is.
Is china the only other country that makes EVs?
Right? Why the focus on Chinese EVs? Do no European EVs exist? No Japanese EVs? Why not just open the doors for all EVs, regardless of what country it's from, and then customers can make informed decisions on which EV to get based on whatever criteria they wish? Get the competition going!
"Open the door to Chinese EVs" isn't a simple solution because it has wider reaches than restricting Tesla-imports. There's a reason Germany just effected tariffs on chinese EVs, namely because they are arguing that as china subsidizes their EVs, naturally non-subsidized local companies could never be price-competitive.
I don't know how that situation is in canada, but I bet similar things have to be looked at.
I like the solution, but it's not a simple one.
We dont need chinese ev to wreck US car industry. We need toyota and their hilux truck brand. We could build a toyota electric car manufacture around quebec's battery shop and a toyota hilux around alberta.
How about japanese ones? :P Better invest on our own infrastructure, we need Canadian EVs!
I AM MANIFESTING THIS PLEASE 🙏
I think Europe or Canada should make EVs, and Greenland being given incentives to tap into their minerals to feed the materials necessary for the project. Greenland gets closer to independence, and whoever makes the cars gets to piss on Musk. Win-win, no need for the risk of CCP becoming too influential within democratic governments.
...While trade is a good thing, I think that maintaining at least a moderate level of manufacturing industry and sciences within your nation or cultural sphere to be very important. Just in case things get weird, like how 2025 has been.
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