5 ms·

This isn't necessarily regulatory capture or protectionism. Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular bran

This isn't necessarily regulatory capture or protectionism. Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US. So, yes, you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have lots of people just go to Mexico and buy highly-polluting vehicles to save money, and our problem with smog in the border states would be much worse.

civilized 4y ago
> You can import cars all you want, they just need to be safe and not pollute. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. I don't understand. If this were the case, it seems like the rule wouldn't make an exception for 25+ year old cars.
- nostromo 4y ago
  That exemption exists for car collectors, who generally have a different set of safety expectations of their cars than you would buying a used car at a corner lot.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    Exactly, and circumventing it for vehicles that get regularly used will create a real risk that the rule will get stricter. I do think the rule is a little too strict, but its almost inevitable that something like it would exist.
  - derefr 4y ago
    Kind of weird that car collectors in the US can't collect modern foreign cars, though. Why not instead just have "accredited collectors" like there are "accredited investors"? Wouldn't that be simpler? "Get the piece of paper waiving your right to car safety, and then you can buy whatever stupid cars you like, as long as you don't drive them very often."
    - pandaman 4y ago
      Collectors are in luck and don't need an accreditation: "A vehicle may be permanently imported for show or display. Written approval from DOT is required and should be obtained before the vehicle is exported from the foreign country to the U.S."[1] 1. https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/importing-car https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/importing-car
    - numpad0 4y ago
      One common beliefs too this is that it’s actually a response to gray market/parallel imports of Mercedes cars from Germany.
kube-system 4y ago
The chicken tax was imposed unquestionably as a protectionist measure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
pigsty 4y ago
The interesting thing is Japanese companies generally manufacture cars they sell in America entirely in America, while “American” car companies manufacture their huge polluting machines in Mexico and maybe add one final part in the US so they can claim some work is done in the US. Japanese cars in the US aren’t imported while US cars are.
- fooker 4y ago
  What are you talking about? The vast majority of japanese brand cars are manufacturered in Japan and imported in the US.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    I don’t know either way but DDG led me here [1] > The largest automobile manufacturing facility in the world for Toyota, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. (TMMK) is able to produce 550,000 vehicles and more than 600,000 engines per year. Two years after breaking ground in Georgetown, Kentucky, > Where are the majority of Toyotas produced? > The majority of Toyota vehicles you see on the road are made in your own country. This does read like marketing material from Toyota itself so I don’t know if it’s the most trustworthy. So I look at [2]. Toyota makes 8.1M cars globally. > the assembly of Toyota vehicles in North America came to around 1.75 million units. So nearly 20% of worldwide production is assembled in the US. 2.3M cars are sold in the US [3]. So doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that the vast majority of Toyota cars are assembled in the US. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s more broadly true for other Japanese manufacturers. Do you have a better explanation of your viewpoint? [1] https://gearshifters.org/toyota/where-does-toyota-manufacture-their-cars/ https://gearshifters.org/toyota/where-does-toyota-manufactur... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267272/worldwide-vehicle-production-of-toyota/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267272/worldwide-vehicle... [3] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2021-full-year-global-toyota-worldwide-car-sales-production-and-exports/ https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2021-full-year-glob...
    - zamnos 4y ago
      Same for Honda. What's fascinating is the fact that Ford's manufacturing is less American than Honda, thanks to NAFTA but far be it to think a good ole fashioned American company like Ford would ever act like a corporation that's in it for the money, and move manufacturing out of the US. The chickens came home to roost though, when the SEC declared a $196 million penalty in 2020 in import fines for the Ford Transit Connect, which was imported with a back seat, so it was considered a passenger vehicle for import tax reasons. Upon recieving the vans in the US, Ford removed the seats, turning it into a work van, and avoiding the import tax on work vans, something like 22%. Regardless of if it was clever of Ford or dishonest, the real point of my bringing up this story is those vans were made in Turkey. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/06/03/ford-transit-connect-van-import-penalty/7524765002/ https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/06/03/ford-...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
makeitdouble 4y ago
> Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US. I misread this bit, so for clarification for people like me: Toyota's numbers are 1,144,722 vehicles produced in the US, vs a total of 2,333,262 vehicles sold. So while Toyota is a Japanese company, half is locally produced, and the rest is imported in alignment with the US standards (that they of course have no issue to understand and meet) https://www.toyota.com/usa/operations/map https://www.toyota.com/usa/operations/map
Dalewyn 4y ago
>you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. This really is the crux of the issue, those kei cars simply do not meet US car regulations by the very nature of their small size and light weight. Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of the car market with different build, safety, and emissions standards. It's not some grand conspiracy to favor the domestic market or disenfranchise the used car market; the simple fact of the matter is those kei cars do not meet US regulations to be cars proper.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Nor do they meet Japanese regulations to be cars proper. Trying to drive one on a highway (100kmph) strains the poor thing to it’s limit, and if you are ever in a crash with a real car you better prepare to be completely crumpled.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  > Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of the car market with different build, safety, and emissions standards. So, like farm vehicles in the USA?
  - qbrass 4y ago
    It's more like mopeds to motorcycles. If your moped went slower than 25mph and had an engine smaller than 50cc, they were treated more like a bicycle than a motorcycle.
paulsutter 4y ago
If emissions were the concern they’d just require the cars to pass emissions. Although I strongly favor allowing import of recent foreign cars, safety features are a much better practical objection for folks who love objecting to good things. Non-US cars would lack many many mandated features and there’s no workaround
- downrightmike 4y ago
  Maybe pick a model and make an aftermarket upgrade kit
upofadown 4y ago
Toyota can't import trucks with such a small footprint. That would screw up their fuel efficiency metric. That could lead to fines from the US government. That is the primary issue here that prevents the sale of small trucks in the US. With the current regulations, it makes the most sense to sell trucks with the longest wheelbase and largest width.
- derefr 4y ago
  I wouldn't mind driving a car composed of a narrow kei-car chassis resting atop a wide but low-riding platform. It'd be like a bumper car!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  Can you explain this a little more (I dont live in the US and a preliminary search is failing me). It sounds as though the 'regulations' are preventing US consumers from having a choice in trucks, which.. kinda makes no sense from what I've seen in the wide range of oversized trucks in the US.
  - ChoGGi 4y ago
    Larger vehicles have less stringent emissions regulations. Or something along those lines.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      I would have assumed larger vehicles had more stringent emission regulations, TIL!
      - zzzbra 4y ago
        sadly this is the consequence of green emissions standards legislation passed in 2009. thanks Obama
jaredklewis 4y ago
If it’s about standards, how come 25+ year old cars are ok?
- jcrawfordor 4y ago
  The 25-year exception is intended for collectors and restorers. It is aligned with many states allowing historic/vintage/"horseless carriage" plates with limitations and reduced fees for vehicles over 25 years old. These rules are often something like must be driven < 1000 miles per year except trips to/from exhibitions and shows. The federal standards don't get so specific about restrictions on collector vehicles, they just get a lot looser about what can be registered after 25 years.
worthless-trash 4y ago
> If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have > lots of people just go to Mexico and buy > highly-polluting vehicles to save money, and our > problem with smog in the border states would be > much worse. In Australia there are a set of guidelines required for vehicle imports, they even outline pollution and safety requirements that must be met before it can be registered or driven on public roads. On-road non import vehicles can also fail these tests and the car is not considered "road worthy". If vehicles in the US need to be registered, why isnt this a valid solution ?
- oyashirochama 4y ago
  US states control registration. Also older vehicles especially kei cars aren't nearly as polluting as one would think especially if only used for work rather than daily use, with mpg in the upper 50 to low 70s though fairly crap nox by comparison to modern 2020s cars. They also encourage lower speeds which could be a plus in every way.
  - baggy_trough 4y ago
    It takes longer to get places at lower speeds.
    - theodric 4y ago
      That scales with distance. If you're driving 30kph slower for 2 hours, it makes a difference. If you're heading 10-15km to the shop or the creamery, it's not so terrible. Speaking as someone who was a speed freak as a new driver, and sets my cruise at 78 in an 80 zone today...speed ain't everything. You wouldn't want to drive one of these kei vehicles on long trips, anyway.
- zamnos 4y ago
  America's standards for road worthy are just that much higher. IF you: start a car company, buy a bunch of them so the NHTSA can crash test them (thanks Mercedes-Benz for that one), fix them up so they meet modern Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) (which includes backup cameras, among other things), fix them up to meet smog standards (for California), which means it'll also need a compliant OBDII port (and a Japanese OBDII port returning Japanese characters instead of ascii codes won't count), then yeah, it can be considered road-worthy and as a bonus, you can sell them. It's just that all of the above is very expensive and a lot of work, if not impossible. Having to buy a bunch of cars just to get them crash tested is probably the most expensive part, but the rest of that isn't easy either. Coming back to the kei trucks discussed in the article, there's basically no way they're going to pass crash testing. So it's not that it isn't a valid solution, just America has much higher standards for "road worthiness". It's been "done" by MotoRex for R34 GTRs, though there is a bit of fuzziness as to their legality as they got shut down by the government. That's a whole other story though. But if you're not going to use the vehicle on the road and just as a show car, or drag race car, it doesn't need to be considered road worthy and the import journey is much easier.

civilized 4y ago

> You can import cars all you want, they just need to be safe and not pollute. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. I don't understand. If this were the case, it seems like the rule wouldn't make an exception for 25+ year old cars.

nostromo 4y ago
That exemption exists for car collectors, who generally have a different set of safety expectations of their cars than you would buying a used car at a corner lot.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _ea1k 4y ago
  Exactly, and circumventing it for vehicles that get regularly used will create a real risk that the rule will get stricter. I do think the rule is a little too strict, but its almost inevitable that something like it would exist.
- derefr 4y ago
  Kind of weird that car collectors in the US can't collect modern foreign cars, though. Why not instead just have "accredited collectors" like there are "accredited investors"? Wouldn't that be simpler? "Get the piece of paper waiving your right to car safety, and then you can buy whatever stupid cars you like, as long as you don't drive them very often."
  - pandaman 4y ago
    Collectors are in luck and don't need an accreditation: "A vehicle may be permanently imported for show or display. Written approval from DOT is required and should be obtained before the vehicle is exported from the foreign country to the U.S."[1] 1. https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/importing-car https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/importing-car
  - numpad0 4y ago
    One common beliefs too this is that it’s actually a response to gray market/parallel imports of Mercedes cars from Germany.

kube-system 4y ago

The chicken tax was imposed unquestionably as a protectionist measure. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

pigsty 4y ago

The interesting thing is Japanese companies generally manufacture cars they sell in America entirely in America, while “American” car companies manufacture their huge polluting machines in Mexico and maybe add one final part in the US so they can claim some work is done in the US. Japanese cars in the US aren’t imported while US cars are.

fooker 4y ago
What are you talking about? The vast majority of japanese brand cars are manufacturered in Japan and imported in the US.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  I don’t know either way but DDG led me here [1] > The largest automobile manufacturing facility in the world for Toyota, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. (TMMK) is able to produce 550,000 vehicles and more than 600,000 engines per year. Two years after breaking ground in Georgetown, Kentucky, > Where are the majority of Toyotas produced? > The majority of Toyota vehicles you see on the road are made in your own country. This does read like marketing material from Toyota itself so I don’t know if it’s the most trustworthy. So I look at [2]. Toyota makes 8.1M cars globally. > the assembly of Toyota vehicles in North America came to around 1.75 million units. So nearly 20% of worldwide production is assembled in the US. 2.3M cars are sold in the US [3]. So doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that the vast majority of Toyota cars are assembled in the US. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s more broadly true for other Japanese manufacturers. Do you have a better explanation of your viewpoint? [1] https://gearshifters.org/toyota/where-does-toyota-manufacture-their-cars/ https://gearshifters.org/toyota/where-does-toyota-manufactur... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267272/worldwide-vehicle-production-of-toyota/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267272/worldwide-vehicle... [3] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2021-full-year-global-toyota-worldwide-car-sales-production-and-exports/ https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2021-full-year-glob...
  - zamnos 4y ago
    Same for Honda. What's fascinating is the fact that Ford's manufacturing is less American than Honda, thanks to NAFTA but far be it to think a good ole fashioned American company like Ford would ever act like a corporation that's in it for the money, and move manufacturing out of the US. The chickens came home to roost though, when the SEC declared a $196 million penalty in 2020 in import fines for the Ford Transit Connect, which was imported with a back seat, so it was considered a passenger vehicle for import tax reasons. Upon recieving the vans in the US, Ford removed the seats, turning it into a work van, and avoiding the import tax on work vans, something like 22%. Regardless of if it was clever of Ford or dishonest, the real point of my bringing up this story is those vans were made in Turkey. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/06/03/ford-transit-connect-van-import-penalty/7524765002/ https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/06/03/ford-...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

makeitdouble 4y ago

> Half of all cars sold in the US are imported. Toyota, a Japanese company, is the most popular brand of car sold in the US. I misread this bit, so for clarification for people like me: Toyota's numbers are 1,144,722 vehicles produced in the US, vs a total of 2,333,262 vehicles sold. So while Toyota is a Japanese company, half is locally produced, and the rest is imported in alignment with the US standards (that they of course have no issue to understand and meet) https://www.toyota.com/usa/operations/map https://www.toyota.com/usa/operations/map

Dalewyn 4y ago

>you can import cars all you want, they just need to follow US safety and emissions standards. These cars do not meet those requirements, so you can't import them. This really is the crux of the issue, those kei cars simply do not meet US car regulations by the very nature of their small size and light weight. Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of the car market with different build, safety, and emissions standards. It's not some grand conspiracy to favor the domestic market or disenfranchise the used car market; the simple fact of the matter is those kei cars do not meet US regulations to be cars proper.

Aeolun 4y ago
Nor do they meet Japanese regulations to be cars proper. Trying to drive one on a highway (100kmph) strains the poor thing to it’s limit, and if you are ever in a crash with a real car you better prepare to be completely crumpled.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> Even in Japan, where they hail from, kei cars are a distinct category regulated separately from the rest of the car market with different build, safety, and emissions standards. So, like farm vehicles in the USA?
- qbrass 4y ago
  It's more like mopeds to motorcycles. If your moped went slower than 25mph and had an engine smaller than 50cc, they were treated more like a bicycle than a motorcycle.

paulsutter 4y ago

If emissions were the concern they’d just require the cars to pass emissions. Although I strongly favor allowing import of recent foreign cars, safety features are a much better practical objection for folks who love objecting to good things. Non-US cars would lack many many mandated features and there’s no workaround

downrightmike 4y ago
Maybe pick a model and make an aftermarket upgrade kit

upofadown 4y ago

Toyota can't import trucks with such a small footprint. That would screw up their fuel efficiency metric. That could lead to fines from the US government. That is the primary issue here that prevents the sale of small trucks in the US. With the current regulations, it makes the most sense to sell trucks with the longest wheelbase and largest width.

derefr 4y ago
I wouldn't mind driving a car composed of a narrow kei-car chassis resting atop a wide but low-riding platform. It'd be like a bumper car!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
worthless-trash 4y ago
Can you explain this a little more (I dont live in the US and a preliminary search is failing me). It sounds as though the 'regulations' are preventing US consumers from having a choice in trucks, which.. kinda makes no sense from what I've seen in the wide range of oversized trucks in the US.
- ChoGGi 4y ago
  Larger vehicles have less stringent emissions regulations. Or something along those lines.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    I would have assumed larger vehicles had more stringent emission regulations, TIL!
    - zzzbra 4y ago
      sadly this is the consequence of green emissions standards legislation passed in 2009. thanks Obama

jaredklewis 4y ago

If it’s about standards, how come 25+ year old cars are ok?

jcrawfordor 4y ago
The 25-year exception is intended for collectors and restorers. It is aligned with many states allowing historic/vintage/"horseless carriage" plates with limitations and reduced fees for vehicles over 25 years old. These rules are often something like must be driven < 1000 miles per year except trips to/from exhibitions and shows. The federal standards don't get so specific about restrictions on collector vehicles, they just get a lot looser about what can be registered after 25 years.

worthless-trash 4y ago

> If you didn't block them as imports, we'd have > lots of people just go to Mexico and buy > highly-polluting vehicles to save money, and our > problem with smog in the border states would be > much worse. In Australia there are a set of guidelines required for vehicle imports, they even outline pollution and safety requirements that must be met before it can be registered or driven on public roads. On-road non import vehicles can also fail these tests and the car is not considered "road worthy". If vehicles in the US need to be registered, why isnt this a valid solution ?

oyashirochama 4y ago
US states control registration. Also older vehicles especially kei cars aren't nearly as polluting as one would think especially if only used for work rather than daily use, with mpg in the upper 50 to low 70s though fairly crap nox by comparison to modern 2020s cars. They also encourage lower speeds which could be a plus in every way.
- baggy_trough 4y ago
  It takes longer to get places at lower speeds.
  - theodric 4y ago
    That scales with distance. If you're driving 30kph slower for 2 hours, it makes a difference. If you're heading 10-15km to the shop or the creamery, it's not so terrible. Speaking as someone who was a speed freak as a new driver, and sets my cruise at 78 in an 80 zone today...speed ain't everything. You wouldn't want to drive one of these kei vehicles on long trips, anyway.
zamnos 4y ago
America's standards for road worthy are just that much higher. IF you: start a car company, buy a bunch of them so the NHTSA can crash test them (thanks Mercedes-Benz for that one), fix them up so they meet modern Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) (which includes backup cameras, among other things), fix them up to meet smog standards (for California), which means it'll also need a compliant OBDII port (and a Japanese OBDII port returning Japanese characters instead of ascii codes won't count), then yeah, it can be considered road-worthy and as a bonus, you can sell them. It's just that all of the above is very expensive and a lot of work, if not impossible. Having to buy a bunch of cars just to get them crash tested is probably the most expensive part, but the rest of that isn't easy either. Coming back to the kei trucks discussed in the article, there's basically no way they're going to pass crash testing. So it's not that it isn't a valid solution, just America has much higher standards for "road worthiness". It's been "done" by MotoRex for R34 GTRs, though there is a bit of fuzziness as to their legality as they got shut down by the government. That's a whole other story though. But if you're not going to use the vehicle on the road and just as a show car, or drag race car, it doesn't need to be considered road worthy and the import journey is much easier.