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I don't know if it's the same people but many of the comments here seem the opposite of the comments on EUs rules where people say they're targeting specific co

I don't know if it's the same people but many of the comments here seem the opposite of the comments on EUs rules where people say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are covered". If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it. I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly

tedunangst 2y ago
It's different when I like the rules.
- qwerpy 2y ago
  Washington state is going in the other direction: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legislature-considers-new-tax-aimed-at-elon-musks-tesla/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legisl... I'm sure the targeted aspect of that one is applauded by the same side that is unhappy about this tariff. At least in the tariff case, it's an objective numerical target and probably even achievable by other manufacturers. Ford is only 5% away from the target for some of its models.
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    I would go as far as saying, that almost no one outside the US knows about state specific rules. People watch or read some news, but they are usually not that much into the US inner political theater, that they additionally make an effort to learn what state has what other rules. I am not even sure how impactful it is, that Washington state does something different. Like ... Are things built or sold there by a large amount? What makes Washington state special? And what are their intentions? And can their lower level rules actually override what is decided at the country level by Trump's gang? It is bad enough, that people have to deal with hearing about all the crazy stuff the orange clown or his henchmen do on a daily basis. There is a limit to how much people want to deal even more with political stuff from the US, you know?
    - eddythompson80 2y ago
      Yeah, without context it doesn’t mean much. Washington is one of the majority liberal states. OP was pointing to a Washington state law that will also “target” Tesla but in the other direction.
  - queenkjuul 2y ago
    Well the problem in the federal case is that musk has for all intents and purposes purchased his new federal exemption from Trump. Did his competitors do something similar in Washington?
KerrAvon 2y ago
>If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it. To be making this claim, you must be an vehicle supply chain expert, so can you tell the rest of us which parts can be domestically sourced in the US and which can't? Also, why is the Model S is stuck at 80%?
KerrAvon 2y ago
[flagged]
- moralestapia 2y ago
  Source, you?
gkoberger 2y ago
Why 85% and not 80%? It’s an arbitrary cutoff that happens to benefit Elon. Ford will quickly get to 85%, but you can’t deny this is yet again a move that is touted as “pro-America” yet somehow mainly benefits Musk (or Trump or someone in their orbit).
- nostromo 2y ago
  Three Tesla models meet the 85% threshold and three do not. If Tesla was writing these rules, surely they'd have chosen the 80% threshold instead. I doubt they see the Ford Mustang as being in their same target market, and wouldn't be a reason to increase the standard.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fnordpiglet 2y ago
    I’d note the ones that meet the threshold are by far the vast majority of Tesla sales and profit. This puts them at a structural advantage. Those three models account for 95% of deliveries in 2024. The rules as stand only impact their highest margin vehicles, which account for 4.8% of their total deliveries. The fact that Elon Musk is personally involved in the decision making and cabinet level discussions and personally benefits immensely- and exclusively- from this special carve out looks like rank corruption on the surface and at face value. Any other administration in history would be investigated until the cows come home if something comparable had ever happened. Even if it somehow eluded the rule makers that they exempted 95% of one companies sales to the exclusion of all other companies and that companies CEO had curried extensive favor with the administration and this was a mistake, the appearance of gross impropriety and conflicts of interest should cause a rapid reset and roll back. I suspect, however, it will not be rolled back, and that they were entirely aware of what they were doing. This is what kleptocracy looks like.
    - beefnugs 2y ago
      I don't understand whats going on with this shithole world, the term Conflict of Interest used to be ubiquitous and everyone understood it. Now its such obvious blatant corruption everywhere, has it really always been this bad and we just all have too much information from the internet now?
makeitdouble 2y ago
When you say EU rules, I guess it's the GDPR part on having the user data stay in the EU? Otherwise I don't see any other rule that would ask the foreign company to move most of it's workforce and production capacity.
- jdminhbg 2y ago
  No, OP is referring to the fact that the companies that are big enough to be subject to the EU DSA's rules about platforms are all American. So any fines handed down for violations of the DSA are exclusively to American big tech firms. The rejoinder is that the rules apply to everyone, it just happens that the companies that are subject are American.
  - kmac_ 2y ago
    Quick fact check: DSA (more specifically, VLOPs regulations) also applies to AliExpress, Temu, Shein, Pornhub, TikTok, Zalando, and others.
  - kurisufag 2y ago
    the USB-C legislation was pretty clearly directed at Apple alone
    - userbinator 2y ago
      ...and now we get stupid overly complex and fragile connectors on things like laptops instead of simple and robust barrel plugs.
      - dboreham 2y ago
        I think you mean: 700 different permutations of barrel plug diameter, sex and voltage?
        userbinator 2y ago
        There has been maybe two dozen different barrel plugs widely used over the last two decades, and "12V" and "20V" were already a de-facto standard for laptops with 2S and 3S batteries respectively (there was some artificial segmentation like 18.5V, 19V, 19.5V, 20V, etc. but they are all within tolerance range). I have not seen a male laptop; they are always female, being the "receiver" of the power. Search for "laptop" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listing_of_DC_coaxial_connectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listin...
rco8786 2y ago
Just a coincidence that the only company that currently fits the criteria is Tesla then. Everyone else can start rearranging their supply chains and building new factories to comply. Easy peasy right? Be up and running in a few weeks, at most, right?
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  With the assumption of course that tariffs won't change before new factories even have come online in a less optimal place. I'd be hard pressed to invest huge amounts of money like that when we are on tariff policy change 80-something in 100 days while I also hearing about imminent "trade deals".
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  I think Honda already has like 75% American parts in the cars they produce in Indiana. It was actually listed on the Acura ILX I bought from them awhile back.
  - rco8786 2y ago
    That's great, I'm all for seeing that number increase. That doesn't take away the fact that this number just explicitly targets Tesla and nobody else.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Genuinely curious why? I live in the USA, but nowhere near any place they make cars. So I have not much interest in helping those folks, fine though I'm sure they are. I'd rather have a Japanese made Honda because it'll likely have higher reliability.
- lenkite 2y ago
  Curious - If this exact act had been done under the Obama or Biden administrations, would you still hold the same opinion ? Tesla was still a love child at that time. Many companies like Honda are now moving part of domestic production to the US.
jwilber 2y ago
The key is the “…over a certain size” solely benefiting the richest man in the world, who just so happens to be heavily involved (despite no election) in the very government setting the policy and determining the size.
markvdb 2y ago
> I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly ...or to create massive stock market front-running opportunities with plausible deniability. "But, but, Hanlon's razor!". Sorry, but at this level of responsibility, incompetence equals malice. We fscking all have to live with the consequences. That includes those of us who could not vote for an alternative.
viraptor 2y ago
It's not just the idea in isolation though. I don't think anyone would complain much if the rule was "in N mths the threshold is X". Everyone could do the necessary adjustments and play by the same rules. But if the rule applies immediately, favours the guy who gave you millions, and impacts the competition financially where they need to make me investments to comply with the rules... yeah, that stinks even if it looks like a generic rule.
- stevage 2y ago
  And absolutely no guarantees those rules stay in place long enough for anyone else to ever benefit.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > no guarantees those rules stay in place long enough for anyone else to ever benefit Not only that, Trump is actively lying about negotiating them down [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-foreign-ministry-says-xi-trump-did-not-have-call-recently-2025-04-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-foreign-ministry-says-x...
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Ideally that's the long term goal though, right? You want good local production, but not impair the trade forever. The best tariff would be a future one that achieves the shift by threat, then gets cancelled because the goal is complete and there's no point is impacting trade otherwise.
    - globalise83 2y ago
      If companies believe today that in 4 years the tariffs will be dropped and that their investment in a manufacturing facility with 25% higher costs than the foreign competition will become effectively worthless, they will be reluctant to invest all that much.
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago
  [dead]
DAGdug 2y ago
They search space for criteria is practically limitless. They have and would absolutely fish for precisely the criteria benefiting Musk. This playbook has been applied well by the crony capitalist class in the 3rd world, and is always a moving target. Most players know that and will not chase the moving target, knowing that another set of rules will emerge that will create new hurdles protecting the crony capitalist. A few will, and get burned. There are two reasons to believe this is applicable here: 1. Trump has a track record of quid pro quos (Adelson being a salient example). Musk is definitely seeking his pound of flesh 2. Lutnick urged people to buy Tesla (shocking and explicit favoritism) The view that this is just incentivizing local production is naive.
Aurornis 2y ago
> where people say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are covered". The rules are written with full knowledge of the current market situation and the understanding that companies can't re-engineer their supply chains overnight. The rule-writers had full knowledge about which companies would and would not immediately benefit from this rule. They wrote it accordingly. This doesn't compare to the EU rulemaking discussion for that reason. If the EU rules were written so that only a single company was hit by the rule, people would be saying the same thing.
croes 2y ago
The question is why 85% and not 80%. Remember when Oklahoma‘s requirements for a new school bible coincidently where only met by the Trump bible?
thrance 2y ago
You can tweak the rules infinitely to get the outcome you want. It's suspiciously convenient how the only company that's exempt from those tariffs is owned by the guy that gave Trump $200+ millions during his campaign. You can't argue in good faith about "well, that's the rule" when the rule was very obviously constructed that way to achieve this specific purpose.
tdb7893 2y ago
Trump has been a pretty different politician (both in how he's talked but also what he's done) so I don't think it makes sense to view things he does slightly differently. Also the issue is less that a specific company is targeted but more that it looks like a personal political favor. Not that your point is entirely invalid, just that I think the context is probably different (though I'm not sure exactly what EU comments you're referring to).
Sloowms 2y ago
These are indeed both policies that involve thresholds and are therefore so similar that you can not argue for the one but not for the other.
clutchdude 2y ago
US states do this frequently - for example, Texas often passes laws that stipulate "cities having a population over...." such that only the major cities have laws applied to them or certain companies having over employees/users/customers over a certain amount.
hnaccount141 2y ago
Context matters. In a vacuum, the 85% rule is fine. In reality, it excludes a single company whose CEO not only holds a position in the administration making the rules, but who clearly holds enough influence that the president himself shot a Tesla ad in front of the white house. Given such visible conflicts of interest, the administration should be bending over backwards to dispel perceptions of impropriety. The fact that they aren't, and that these coincidences keep occurring, should be telling.

tedunangst 2y ago

It's different when I like the rules.

qwerpy 2y ago
Washington state is going in the other direction: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legislature-considers-new-tax-aimed-at-elon-musks-tesla/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legisl... I'm sure the targeted aspect of that one is applauded by the same side that is unhappy about this tariff. At least in the tariff case, it's an objective numerical target and probably even achievable by other manufacturers. Ford is only 5% away from the target for some of its models.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  I would go as far as saying, that almost no one outside the US knows about state specific rules. People watch or read some news, but they are usually not that much into the US inner political theater, that they additionally make an effort to learn what state has what other rules. I am not even sure how impactful it is, that Washington state does something different. Like ... Are things built or sold there by a large amount? What makes Washington state special? And what are their intentions? And can their lower level rules actually override what is decided at the country level by Trump's gang? It is bad enough, that people have to deal with hearing about all the crazy stuff the orange clown or his henchmen do on a daily basis. There is a limit to how much people want to deal even more with political stuff from the US, you know?
  - eddythompson80 2y ago
    Yeah, without context it doesn’t mean much. Washington is one of the majority liberal states. OP was pointing to a Washington state law that will also “target” Tesla but in the other direction.
- queenkjuul 2y ago
  Well the problem in the federal case is that musk has for all intents and purposes purchased his new federal exemption from Trump. Did his competitors do something similar in Washington?

KerrAvon 2y ago

>If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it. To be making this claim, you must be an vehicle supply chain expert, so can you tell the rest of us which parts can be domestically sourced in the US and which can't? Also, why is the Model S is stuck at 80%?

KerrAvon 2y ago

[flagged]

moralestapia 2y ago
Source, you?

gkoberger 2y ago

Why 85% and not 80%? It’s an arbitrary cutoff that happens to benefit Elon. Ford will quickly get to 85%, but you can’t deny this is yet again a move that is touted as “pro-America” yet somehow mainly benefits Musk (or Trump or someone in their orbit).

nostromo 2y ago
Three Tesla models meet the 85% threshold and three do not. If Tesla was writing these rules, surely they'd have chosen the 80% threshold instead. I doubt they see the Ford Mustang as being in their same target market, and wouldn't be a reason to increase the standard.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fnordpiglet 2y ago
  I’d note the ones that meet the threshold are by far the vast majority of Tesla sales and profit. This puts them at a structural advantage. Those three models account for 95% of deliveries in 2024. The rules as stand only impact their highest margin vehicles, which account for 4.8% of their total deliveries. The fact that Elon Musk is personally involved in the decision making and cabinet level discussions and personally benefits immensely- and exclusively- from this special carve out looks like rank corruption on the surface and at face value. Any other administration in history would be investigated until the cows come home if something comparable had ever happened. Even if it somehow eluded the rule makers that they exempted 95% of one companies sales to the exclusion of all other companies and that companies CEO had curried extensive favor with the administration and this was a mistake, the appearance of gross impropriety and conflicts of interest should cause a rapid reset and roll back. I suspect, however, it will not be rolled back, and that they were entirely aware of what they were doing. This is what kleptocracy looks like.
  - beefnugs 2y ago
    I don't understand whats going on with this shithole world, the term Conflict of Interest used to be ubiquitous and everyone understood it. Now its such obvious blatant corruption everywhere, has it really always been this bad and we just all have too much information from the internet now?

makeitdouble 2y ago

When you say EU rules, I guess it's the GDPR part on having the user data stay in the EU? Otherwise I don't see any other rule that would ask the foreign company to move most of it's workforce and production capacity.

jdminhbg 2y ago
No, OP is referring to the fact that the companies that are big enough to be subject to the EU DSA's rules about platforms are all American. So any fines handed down for violations of the DSA are exclusively to American big tech firms. The rejoinder is that the rules apply to everyone, it just happens that the companies that are subject are American.
- kmac_ 2y ago
  Quick fact check: DSA (more specifically, VLOPs regulations) also applies to AliExpress, Temu, Shein, Pornhub, TikTok, Zalando, and others.
- kurisufag 2y ago
  the USB-C legislation was pretty clearly directed at Apple alone
  - userbinator 2y ago
    ...and now we get stupid overly complex and fragile connectors on things like laptops instead of simple and robust barrel plugs.
    - dboreham 2y ago
      I think you mean: 700 different permutations of barrel plug diameter, sex and voltage?
      - userbinator 2y ago
        There has been maybe two dozen different barrel plugs widely used over the last two decades, and "12V" and "20V" were already a de-facto standard for laptops with 2S and 3S batteries respectively (there was some artificial segmentation like 18.5V, 19V, 19.5V, 20V, etc. but they are all within tolerance range). I have not seen a male laptop; they are always female, being the "receiver" of the power. Search for "laptop" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listing_of_DC_coaxial_connectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_power_connector#Listin...

rco8786 2y ago

Just a coincidence that the only company that currently fits the criteria is Tesla then. Everyone else can start rearranging their supply chains and building new factories to comply. Easy peasy right? Be up and running in a few weeks, at most, right?

ajmurmann 2y ago
With the assumption of course that tariffs won't change before new factories even have come online in a less optimal place. I'd be hard pressed to invest huge amounts of money like that when we are on tariff policy change 80-something in 100 days while I also hearing about imminent "trade deals".
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
I think Honda already has like 75% American parts in the cars they produce in Indiana. It was actually listed on the Acura ILX I bought from them awhile back.
- rco8786 2y ago
  That's great, I'm all for seeing that number increase. That doesn't take away the fact that this number just explicitly targets Tesla and nobody else.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Genuinely curious why? I live in the USA, but nowhere near any place they make cars. So I have not much interest in helping those folks, fine though I'm sure they are. I'd rather have a Japanese made Honda because it'll likely have higher reliability.
lenkite 2y ago
Curious - If this exact act had been done under the Obama or Biden administrations, would you still hold the same opinion ? Tesla was still a love child at that time. Many companies like Honda are now moving part of domestic production to the US.

jwilber 2y ago

The key is the “…over a certain size” solely benefiting the richest man in the world, who just so happens to be heavily involved (despite no election) in the very government setting the policy and determining the size.

markvdb 2y ago

> I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly ...or to create massive stock market front-running opportunities with plausible deniability. "But, but, Hanlon's razor!". Sorry, but at this level of responsibility, incompetence equals malice. We fscking all have to live with the consequences. That includes those of us who could not vote for an alternative.

viraptor 2y ago

It's not just the idea in isolation though. I don't think anyone would complain much if the rule was "in N mths the threshold is X". Everyone could do the necessary adjustments and play by the same rules. But if the rule applies immediately, favours the guy who gave you millions, and impacts the competition financially where they need to make me investments to comply with the rules... yeah, that stinks even if it looks like a generic rule.

stevage 2y ago
And absolutely no guarantees those rules stay in place long enough for anyone else to ever benefit.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > no guarantees those rules stay in place long enough for anyone else to ever benefit Not only that, Trump is actively lying about negotiating them down [1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-foreign-ministry-says-xi-trump-did-not-have-call-recently-2025-04-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-foreign-ministry-says-x...
- viraptor 2y ago
  Ideally that's the long term goal though, right? You want good local production, but not impair the trade forever. The best tariff would be a future one that achieves the shift by threat, then gets cancelled because the goal is complete and there's no point is impacting trade otherwise.
  - globalise83 2y ago
    If companies believe today that in 4 years the tariffs will be dropped and that their investment in a manufacturing facility with 25% higher costs than the foreign competition will become effectively worthless, they will be reluctant to invest all that much.
cscurmudgeon 2y ago
[dead]

DAGdug 2y ago

They search space for criteria is practically limitless. They have and would absolutely fish for precisely the criteria benefiting Musk. This playbook has been applied well by the crony capitalist class in the 3rd world, and is always a moving target. Most players know that and will not chase the moving target, knowing that another set of rules will emerge that will create new hurdles protecting the crony capitalist. A few will, and get burned. There are two reasons to believe this is applicable here: 1. Trump has a track record of quid pro quos (Adelson being a salient example). Musk is definitely seeking his pound of flesh 2. Lutnick urged people to buy Tesla (shocking and explicit favoritism) The view that this is just incentivizing local production is naive.

Aurornis 2y ago

> where people say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are covered". The rules are written with full knowledge of the current market situation and the understanding that companies can't re-engineer their supply chains overnight. The rule-writers had full knowledge about which companies would and would not immediately benefit from this rule. They wrote it accordingly. This doesn't compare to the EU rulemaking discussion for that reason. If the EU rules were written so that only a single company was hit by the rule, people would be saying the same thing.

croes 2y ago

The question is why 85% and not 80%. Remember when Oklahoma‘s requirements for a new school bible coincidently where only met by the Trump bible?

thrance 2y ago

You can tweak the rules infinitely to get the outcome you want. It's suspiciously convenient how the only company that's exempt from those tariffs is owned by the guy that gave Trump $200+ millions during his campaign. You can't argue in good faith about "well, that's the rule" when the rule was very obviously constructed that way to achieve this specific purpose.

tdb7893 2y ago

Trump has been a pretty different politician (both in how he's talked but also what he's done) so I don't think it makes sense to view things he does slightly differently. Also the issue is less that a specific company is targeted but more that it looks like a personal political favor. Not that your point is entirely invalid, just that I think the context is probably different (though I'm not sure exactly what EU comments you're referring to).

Sloowms 2y ago

These are indeed both policies that involve thresholds and are therefore so similar that you can not argue for the one but not for the other.

clutchdude 2y ago

US states do this frequently - for example, Texas often passes laws that stipulate "cities having a population over...." such that only the major cities have laws applied to them or certain companies having over employees/users/customers over a certain amount.

hnaccount141 2y ago

Context matters. In a vacuum, the 85% rule is fine. In reality, it excludes a single company whose CEO not only holds a position in the administration making the rules, but who clearly holds enough influence that the president himself shot a Tesla ad in front of the white house. Given such visible conflicts of interest, the administration should be bending over backwards to dispel perceptions of impropriety. The fact that they aren't, and that these coincidences keep occurring, should be telling.