Elon is right, tariffs are going to be necessary if we don’t want to cede the auto industry to China, and I cannot imagine we do. It’s really hard to compete with nearly slave labor.
I don't think the problem is slave labour. I think it's just that the Chinese companies don't seem to care about undercutting themselves, and will instead sell as much as they can to whoever will buy.
I can go on Alibaba and buy batteries directly from Eve Energy Co for reasonable prices-- batteries that I could stick in my homebuilt electric car, or do exactly whatever I wanted with. I can buy synthetic crystals, quartz, yttria stabilized zirconia monocrystals, sapphire boules, etc.
In the west all these things are locked up. You can't buy them if you're an ordinary person, so no one buys them to experiment on.
A western car manufacturer wouldn't sell batteries to an individual, nor would his supplier. But in China they don't care, if you pay, you get it.
Of course, upon all this, they're also strategic. The government actually analyses things and figures out critical technologies for the future and makes sure that a decent number of people are working seriously on them, that they do this as a job, and with the intent of actually realising large-scale production with real impact.
> Of course, upon all this, they're also strategic.
The Chinese government set out to build EVs in 1994 - GM was already well advanced on their electric vehicle (the EV1, which launched in 1996). However, GM discontinued the EV1[1] in 1999, but the Chinese government stayed the course. No publicly listed American company can stay on-task on a project that will only bear fruit in 30 years; long-term projects are the first to be lose funding when there are macro-economic headwinds; see multiple Google X projects, and Google is/was one of the better companies at attempting long-term projects. Hell, even government agencies like NASA struggle with projects that span more than one presidential administration.
1. Incidentally, the Tesla co-founders were inspired to start Tesla by the EV1 - which is why referencing traditional automotive OEMs as "dinosaurs" is laughable
That same slave labor is the reason why so many western companies moved their factories to China in the first place form 1978 when China open to international business and leaving a working class of people without jobs, and VW was one of the first to open a factory there.
Funny how we never saw the usage of Chinese slave labor as an issue warranting tariffs when it made western companies huge profits and leaving westerners jobless, but only when they have to face with the new Chinese competitors and loose profits do they cry wolf.
Three generations, several Presidential administrations, and a few massive shifts in geopolitical realities later, it's more amazing how much continuity there has been in policy than how "hypocritical" a bunch of totally different people are to each other.
I’m not sure it’s hypocrisy so much as pure self-interest. It would be hypocrisy if the complaint was actually about the condition of Chinese workers. Few really care about that unless they’re jumping out of windows, and most not even then.
In both cases, it’s just capitalists wanting to make money. It may be awful but it’s at least consistent.
