This is interesting because it shows some complexity inherent to a government supporting a domestic industry. Naively it seems like the government would block

This is interesting because it shows some complexity inherent to a government supporting a domestic industry. Naively it seems like the government would block imports of the small Chinese EVs so that domestic industry could compete BUT domestic automakers do not want the segment of a $5k tiny vehicle to exist at all, and will not 'compete' for that market! The margins and sales on such a thing would hurt the us auto industry as a whole. Even if a single US automaker stood to win the whole segment, their revenue and OI would sink because of cannabalizing their own full sized sales. So we're left with a profound market distortion, where the "government's" (scare quotes because legislation in this area is driven by automakers not citizens) work to support the industry is having a bunch of unexpected effects. Sure, the automakers stocks are doing fine, but this has shut off development of a new technology, which will end up taxing the populace & increasing impact to the environment, and throttling a new domestic industry that will have defense applications in the future.