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Europeans and Americans are now taxing green technology, which they said in the past they want, because it is built in another country...

spywaregorilla 2y ago
Because they don't want to be dependent on another country for energy infrastructure.
- xattt 2y ago
  Especially when another country is undercutting domestic production of others in order to impose an Orwellian ideology.
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    I think the truth is we just failed to invest in the manufacturing tech and now they’re beating us in the market, so we’re taxing them to make it hard for them to compete. I’d way rather we just invest and outcompete them. I don’t think they’re intentionally undercutting us they just have lower costs from decades of investment that we haven’t been doing ourselves.
    - spywaregorilla 2y ago
      They're undercutting us by virtue of labor standards and other corners that we don't cut.
      - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
        Honestly I know that used to be true, but how true is that today? Laborers in the USA don’t have great standards either. What proportion of the cost reduction comes from lower labor standards and what proportion comes from the fact that they absolutely have invested more in manufacturing than we have? I order my PCBAs from JLCPCB in China and they’re about 1/10th the cost of ordering something from the USA. But you can watch a factory tour, it’s not some horrible labor conditions it’s huge highly automated machines: https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg They just invested more than we did. So maybe their labor conditions are still worse than ours, by some amount, but it’s more than just saving on labor that got their prices low.
        almatabata 2y ago
        It can be multiple things at once. They did indeed invest a lot more into manufacturing but they are also definitely using slave labor to cut on costs (see https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicated-uyghur-forced-labor https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicat...). Who knows as well to which extent the government funds these companies and keeps them afloat. > But you can watch a factory tour, it’s not some horrible labor conditions it’s huge highly automated machines: https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg Rhetorical question but do you really believe they would be allowed to publish anything showing a human rights violation on youtube? To get this footage he probably had to agree that all footage has to be reviewed by the company. There is no way they green light anything that makes them look bad. I would not be shocked if a party official had to be there to make sure he only shows the great side of everything.
        SequoiaHope 2y ago
        I’m not sharing the video as some foolish “proof” of the absence of labor violations. I’m sharing it as positive proof of the many very large highly automated high throughput machines they have! It’s clear they have invested a lot in machinery to produce their goods. Did the Chinese government help invest in that production capacity? I don’t know probably, but I think the US should be doing that too so my point that we failed to invest still stands. The point is, it’s not some evil communist plot to undercut us. They just actually invested in manufacturing and that’s what I’m trying to show with the video. Seriously click through it. There’s a lot of large high throughput automated machines there! There is no equivalent to that facility in the USA that I have ever heard of. Probably big companies like Intel have some impressive machinery but this is a job shop where anyone with $5 can place an order for PCBs. And I seriously doubt this is some North Korean style propaganda show where a bunch of slave labor is hidden behind a door. This factory is a state of the art PCB fabrication facility that gets cheap prices due to investment in capacity. They’re not cheating. They just actually invested and we’ve failed to catch up.
        coliveira 2y ago
      - coliveira 2y ago
        The USA cuts corners on labor standards for more than a century, but Europeans are Ok with that. The same logic applies, Europeans get a lot of their products and services from a country that has little to no safety nets for their workers, so by buying from USA, Europeans are funding their own demise.
        account42 2y ago
        The EU sould also strive for more independence from US corporations, yes, especially the silicon valley ones. Having entire governments depend on Microsoft is a problem.
    - KerrAvon 2y ago
      The USA absolutely fucked manufacturing into the sun, but that doesn’t come back overnight, and China cheats in ways that we can’t. You have a comment below that seems to indicate you have no clue how bad they have it vs US blue collar workers. You might want to do some reading on that before pontificating on this subject.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I get what you're saying. But at the same time, the whole Boeing debacle makes me wonder how many other skeletons we're hiding. Either way, this is the consequences of letting corporations lobby to stifle innovation. They wanted short term money and we're all paying the price.
    - Ray20 2y ago
      There is no problem with the investments size, China had way less investments. The problem is in the amount of work and production regulations, which in some cases just doesn't exist in China.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  In that case, Great job divesting in domestic labor in lieu of offshoring. Mission accomplished
zer00eyz 2y ago
Chinese cars? really? They are at best a hazard. The Chinese government dumped tons of money into every one of those cars, they are being sold at a loss. Not because it's good for any one, rather because china fucked up. Every single one of those cars is a state funded fire hazard about to go on the road. EDITL: cause looking up data is hard apparently: western data: https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-fires.html https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-f... The data we see from china: https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101781161/there-are-about-2000-fires-in-more-than-800000-electric-vehicle-related-enterprises-in-china-every-year# https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101781161/there-are-about... The anti china reporting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMKpCiDomgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMKpCiDomgM Do note, that were talking about a nation that will happily NOT report on stats like youth employment when its bad, so take what you read with more than a few grains of salt.
- chii 2y ago
  do you have any evidence that they're more prone to fire than any other EVs?
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    https://news.metal.com/newscontent/102243830/tragedy-of-electric-car-catching-fire-immediately-after-collision-in-china’s-hangzhou-city-renews-concerns-over-safety-of-nickel-manganese-cobalt-nmc-811-battery https://news.metal.com/newscontent/102243830/tragedy-of-elec... The Chinese government cant even keep it under wraps with how bad it is. If you pay attention to Chinese news there's a few of them every week. And thats the ones we hear about, mostly because the were spontaneous, or in buildings/gargages, or people die. Go look it's hard to fuckin miss.
    - geysersam 2y ago
      If it was only a safety issue the governments in the US and EU would only need the existing legal infrastructure for car safety to regulate Chinese electric vehicles. The US tariffs are not even officially claimed to have anything to do with safety, but everything to do with industrial competition.
t0bia_s 2y ago
Green technology is funded by our taxes in EU. 8000€ on photovoltaic panels per household. Made in China.
7thaccount 2y ago
Tariffs do decrease competition and lead to higher prices for consumers....but...there are certain industries important for national security where a country may wish to subsidize an industry like building renewables or use a tariff against a country like China that is trying to corner the market through nationalized companies. Because those companies are a wing of their government (so to speak) a free market company can't compete and eventually all you have are Chinese companies for these critical industries and they can dictate policy to us.
- coliveira 2y ago
  > there are certain industries important for national security where a country may wish to subsidize an industry ... against a country like China that is trying to corner the market through nationalized companies Your argument doesn't even make sense: in the first part you say yes, we need national support for this sector of the economy, while a few words later you say that China is cheating by giving support to the same sector.

spywaregorilla 2y ago

Because they don't want to be dependent on another country for energy infrastructure.

xattt 2y ago
Especially when another country is undercutting domestic production of others in order to impose an Orwellian ideology.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  I think the truth is we just failed to invest in the manufacturing tech and now they’re beating us in the market, so we’re taxing them to make it hard for them to compete. I’d way rather we just invest and outcompete them. I don’t think they’re intentionally undercutting us they just have lower costs from decades of investment that we haven’t been doing ourselves.
  - spywaregorilla 2y ago
    They're undercutting us by virtue of labor standards and other corners that we don't cut.
    - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
      Honestly I know that used to be true, but how true is that today? Laborers in the USA don’t have great standards either. What proportion of the cost reduction comes from lower labor standards and what proportion comes from the fact that they absolutely have invested more in manufacturing than we have? I order my PCBAs from JLCPCB in China and they’re about 1/10th the cost of ordering something from the USA. But you can watch a factory tour, it’s not some horrible labor conditions it’s huge highly automated machines: https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg They just invested more than we did. So maybe their labor conditions are still worse than ours, by some amount, but it’s more than just saving on labor that got their prices low.
      - almatabata 2y ago
        It can be multiple things at once. They did indeed invest a lot more into manufacturing but they are also definitely using slave labor to cut on costs (see https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicated-uyghur-forced-labor https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicat...). Who knows as well to which extent the government funds these companies and keeps them afloat. > But you can watch a factory tour, it’s not some horrible labor conditions it’s huge highly automated machines: https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg Rhetorical question but do you really believe they would be allowed to publish anything showing a human rights violation on youtube? To get this footage he probably had to agree that all footage has to be reviewed by the company. There is no way they green light anything that makes them look bad. I would not be shocked if a party official had to be there to make sure he only shows the great side of everything.
        SequoiaHope 2y ago
        I’m not sharing the video as some foolish “proof” of the absence of labor violations. I’m sharing it as positive proof of the many very large highly automated high throughput machines they have! It’s clear they have invested a lot in machinery to produce their goods. Did the Chinese government help invest in that production capacity? I don’t know probably, but I think the US should be doing that too so my point that we failed to invest still stands. The point is, it’s not some evil communist plot to undercut us. They just actually invested in manufacturing and that’s what I’m trying to show with the video. Seriously click through it. There’s a lot of large high throughput automated machines there! There is no equivalent to that facility in the USA that I have ever heard of. Probably big companies like Intel have some impressive machinery but this is a job shop where anyone with $5 can place an order for PCBs. And I seriously doubt this is some North Korean style propaganda show where a bunch of slave labor is hidden behind a door. This factory is a state of the art PCB fabrication facility that gets cheap prices due to investment in capacity. They’re not cheating. They just actually invested and we’ve failed to catch up.
        coliveira 2y ago
    - coliveira 2y ago
      The USA cuts corners on labor standards for more than a century, but Europeans are Ok with that. The same logic applies, Europeans get a lot of their products and services from a country that has little to no safety nets for their workers, so by buying from USA, Europeans are funding their own demise.
      - account42 2y ago
        The EU sould also strive for more independence from US corporations, yes, especially the silicon valley ones. Having entire governments depend on Microsoft is a problem.
  - KerrAvon 2y ago
    The USA absolutely fucked manufacturing into the sun, but that doesn’t come back overnight, and China cheats in ways that we can’t. You have a comment below that seems to indicate you have no clue how bad they have it vs US blue collar workers. You might want to do some reading on that before pontificating on this subject.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      I get what you're saying. But at the same time, the whole Boeing debacle makes me wonder how many other skeletons we're hiding. Either way, this is the consequences of letting corporations lobby to stifle innovation. They wanted short term money and we're all paying the price.
  - Ray20 2y ago
    There is no problem with the investments size, China had way less investments. The problem is in the amount of work and production regulations, which in some cases just doesn't exist in China.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
In that case, Great job divesting in domestic labor in lieu of offshoring. Mission accomplished

zer00eyz 2y ago

Chinese cars? really? They are at best a hazard. The Chinese government dumped tons of money into every one of those cars, they are being sold at a loss. Not because it's good for any one, rather because china fucked up. Every single one of those cars is a state funded fire hazard about to go on the road. EDITL: cause looking up data is hard apparently: western data: https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-fires.html https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-f... The data we see from china: https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101781161/there-are-about-2000-fires-in-more-than-800000-electric-vehicle-related-enterprises-in-china-every-year# https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101781161/there-are-about... The anti china reporting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMKpCiDomgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMKpCiDomgM Do note, that were talking about a nation that will happily NOT report on stats like youth employment when its bad, so take what you read with more than a few grains of salt.

chii 2y ago
do you have any evidence that they're more prone to fire than any other EVs?
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  https://news.metal.com/newscontent/102243830/tragedy-of-electric-car-catching-fire-immediately-after-collision-in-china’s-hangzhou-city-renews-concerns-over-safety-of-nickel-manganese-cobalt-nmc-811-battery https://news.metal.com/newscontent/102243830/tragedy-of-elec... The Chinese government cant even keep it under wraps with how bad it is. If you pay attention to Chinese news there's a few of them every week. And thats the ones we hear about, mostly because the were spontaneous, or in buildings/gargages, or people die. Go look it's hard to fuckin miss.
  - geysersam 2y ago
    If it was only a safety issue the governments in the US and EU would only need the existing legal infrastructure for car safety to regulate Chinese electric vehicles. The US tariffs are not even officially claimed to have anything to do with safety, but everything to do with industrial competition.

t0bia_s 2y ago

Green technology is funded by our taxes in EU. 8000€ on photovoltaic panels per household. Made in China.

7thaccount 2y ago

Tariffs do decrease competition and lead to higher prices for consumers....but...there are certain industries important for national security where a country may wish to subsidize an industry like building renewables or use a tariff against a country like China that is trying to corner the market through nationalized companies. Because those companies are a wing of their government (so to speak) a free market company can't compete and eventually all you have are Chinese companies for these critical industries and they can dictate policy to us.

coliveira 2y ago
> there are certain industries important for national security where a country may wish to subsidize an industry ... against a country like China that is trying to corner the market through nationalized companies Your argument doesn't even make sense: in the first part you say yes, we need national support for this sector of the economy, while a few words later you say that China is cheating by giving support to the same sector.