Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk Sides With Trump On Trade With China, Citing 25 Percent Import Duty On American Cars (cnbc.com)
Elon Musk believes China isn't playing fair in the car trade with the U.S. since it puts a 25 percent import duty on American cars, while the U.S. only does 2.5 percent for Chinese cars. "I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult," Musk tweeted. "It's like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes." CNBC reports: Tesla's Elon Musk is complaining to President Donald Trump about China's car tariffs. "Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars? Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints & other factors," Musk said on Twitter in response to a Trump tweet about trade with China. He added that no American car company is "allowed to own even 50% of their own factory" in the Asian country, but China's auto firms can own their companies in the U.S. Trump responded to Musk's tweets later at his steel and aluminum tariff press conference Thursday. "We are going to be doing a reciprocal tax program at some point, so that if China is going to charge us 25% or if India is going to charge us 75% and we charge them nothing ... We're going to be at those same numbers. It's called reciprocal, a mirror tax," Trump said after reading Musk's earlier tweets out loud.
The heads of the followers of the cult of Elon are going to explode over this one.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You can't have free trade if its free trade in only one direction.
...was learning there are Chinese car manufacturers.
Ya know why the English don't build computers?
They haven't figured out how to make them leak oil yet.
If you are anti-tariff then you should oppose tariffs from your competitors as well and move to incentivise their removal. Retaliatory tariffs are a reasonable option.
Then let's charge them 24.9% in order to show some leadership toward reducing tariffs. Then if they lower theirs to match, we'll lower ours again. Let's race to the bottom, because reciprocal tariffs ("an eye for an eye") won't get us to that goal.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
China agreed to play fair, but went from 90 tariffs to over 500, and most are killer. It is long past time for president to call china gov on this BS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Despite the CNBC (and Slashdot) headlines Elon Musk didn't actually side with Trump.
He just tweeted at Trump that China was charging duties on US cars, and restricting US ownership of car factories in China, but the US wasn't doing the same in return.
And since Trump was in a mood to make tariffs Musk's reasonable sounding tweet is now well on its way to becoming policy.
Is anyone here really famous and has a 140 (280?) character argument about why a certain tariff should be enacted?
This is your opportunity to write US policy!
I stole this Sig
So which reciprocal is the right way to do it?
tl;dr - There is no right answer. A policy which is fair in one dimension is unfair in an orthogonal dimension. And vice versa. Everyone wants there to be one best, right solution. But in a lot of cases, no such solution exists.
The United States already has a De-facto import duty against importing Chinese cars in that none so far are able to get https://www.nhtsa.gov/ approval for importing them into the United States.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Seriously though... it's a shame the unavoidable negative connotations of "siding with trump" are going to be far more visible than agreeing on one of the most objective and uncontroversial arguments regarding US import duties on China, the title isn't helping.
India charging a 75% import duty on American cars would be to protect domestic production. They don't care if we won't buy their cars... because they're not trying to sell us any, anyways. What they WOULD BE trying to do is make sure American auto manufacturers can't outcompete the domestic producers, in the domestic market, thus driving the domestic producers out of business. Having the independent ability to manufacture cars is useful if, say, India were to go to war with the USA, or if India were blockaded by China.
I'd expect Musk to care more about Chinese solar panels than Chinese cars.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Seriously, what Chinese cars are actually being sold in the US anyway? I mean, raise the tarriff -- it's not like it will make any difference to anything.
others are not!! If their markets are not open to us why should we have a completely open market to them.
;)
So lets do this, our tariffs will be the exact same as yours!
You free trade with us, we free trade with you!
I have no problems with these tariffs
Just my 2 cents
I would like to read the authoritative comparitive study on world economies to show real numbers. In the absense of this if Elon Musk wants to throw away his "justify it down to the physics" practices and join in with American exceptionalism he is welcome to it. As entertaining as Elon has been I know he is ruthless under his veneer of virtue signalling. Shame on him.
Thereare plenty of world class brains in Europe and Europe has the economic size to scale. Sod America.
P.S. China and Europe are the two worlds biggest economies. America is third.
A lot of folks get a bit wistful about the notion of 'an eye for an eye', as if it were wisdom we were ignoring from some more just age gone by.
It's not. It WAS an improvement - it's part of the Code of Hammurabi, from one of the most ancient literate cultures in history, Babylon.
The problem they had was that, although there were formal practices for justice, everyone was trying to 'even the scales' by damaging everyone else, trying to teach eachother a lesson by using overwhelming punishment for any harm. An eye for an eye was there to stem the gross loss from these countless family conflicts.
The Trump administration is largely the result of people 'feeling' like they want cruel justice, the more cruel the better. To even the scales, mostly the scales of their injured pride.
The problem is that everyone involved is so goddamn stupid. Crazy stupid. Especially Trump. And when he wants to make things 'even', he doesn't really measure - he just cuts and screams and bashes, until he feels like cutting something else.
We're not making thing even - we're not playing tit for tat, we're not trading smart - we're making up numbers, and hoping the fear and confusion will make our friends rich... and that only works for a very small number of Trump's friends.
We're playing the horrible game as it existed before Hammurabi.
Volvo has been a Chinese car company for 8 years. I guess you don't know what you are taking about.
Where do you think the Volvo XC90 is being made? Sweden? How cute!
Imagine how the Russians would stop doing such things if Trump were to make the use of chemical weapons in the UK a "red line"!
No one wants Trump.
It's all about Trump being BETTER than the alternative.
If an American company made cars there, I'd worry about substandard materials substitution, like the Kobe Steel scandal but far worse and more common. Also, their designs would almost certainly be stolen and reused by domestic companies
If? Ford and Chevrolet (Buick and Cadillac) both make cars there that are then imported into the US.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
These guys are so clueless. Do they really think there is some magic about car manufacturing that it couldn't be done in China? Or Mexico? Or the US? Or Russia?
Meanwhile in Brazil import taxes on cars are roughly 115% Breakdown: http://thebrazilbusiness.com/a...
Where do you think the Volvo XC90 is being made? Sweden? How cute!
Who cares where a Volvo is made? Not I. I drive a Ford and I'm not interested in a Volvo...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Thats nice. What does that have to do with anything we are talking about? Oh by the way, Ford builds cars in China too. oops! Plus they are going to build the next Focus in China. Ooops!
Many, many car parts, like controls and engine components, are made in China. But in recent years, a lot of the automotive OEMs have moved their production to Mexico.
A focus? LOL... Yea, they said that about a year ago, right after they changed their "we are moving the focus plant to Mexico" plan. My guess is that Ford's plans may be a changin' again soon...
In the mean time, the plant in Michigan keeps building the Focus... Maybe they will just give up the attempted move and set up a NEW plant for the new Ranger someplace? Seems more likely now doesn't it?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Even if they don't choose China and switch to Mexico the point is that cars can be manufactured anywhere. Ford manufactures all over the planet. Your Ford probably has many Chinese made parts. You may not be "interested" in it, but your "American made" Ford is less American every production run.
Now, as you may see here, where a car is manufactured depends on the model and where it's sold. Volvo has 16 manufacturing locations worldwide, including China and the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You assume I don't understand where parts come from.... Cute..
I was saying I don't care where a Volvo is built because I don't own or want one... At this point on this little rabbit trail, I'm just pointing out that it's not ALL bad here. There might actually be a benefit or two to consider if you think about it.
A trade war with China, might have some other good affects on the global economic and geopolitical worlds too. Such as applying pressure on China to force North Korea to the table, harming China's trade surplus with us... But it will also have negative affects.. Thinking folks understand this..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Japan exported more than 1.6 million vehicles to America in 2015, while the U.S. sold less than 19,000 vehicles to Japan, accounted for about .03% of the five million cars and light trucks sold in Japan.
Japan taxes engine size and emissions. The annual tax on a vehicle with a 4-liter engine, an American pickup, is ¥76,500. Japan is the only developed country in the world with such a tax, so over a 10-year period, it would add up to the equivalent of a 12 percent import tariff.
I couldn't find the import limits, but remember seeing a limit on how many cars per maker was allowed. Not sure if thats still a trade issue.
Of course, the new theory is Americans gave up importing cars, because Japan has high tastes and want quality customer service and its too hard to serve them.
Obama even tried to fight for American imports into Japan.
https://www.detroitnews.com/st...
Thank you for saying that, anonymous MI-6 person! After all, no one else seems to know *for certain* who is responsible for that chemical attack.
I'm so glad you know 100%. Otherwise, we might attack or economically sanction a country that didn't do it.
While you're at it, can we assume that all violent crimes in the U.S. were committed by black people? They seem the most likely candidates (much as Russia appeared to be the most likely culprit behind the chemical attack in England) but no one is 100% certain being that we don't have solid evidence.
Wait, which is it, are their designs different and inferior, or copied and actually the same?
You don't seem to have any idea what your complaint is, other than China.
Ignorance of the details of the Kobe Steel QA issue does not, in itself, tell you anything at all about Chinese manufacturing.
Lets see, someone who makes overly expensive electric cars wants to slap a tariff on cars made in China. Call me Capt. Obvious.
If I remember correctly China is pouring a lot into electric vehicles.
Does America even import any cars made in China? Would an increase in the tariff to 25% make any difference?
And then they'll change the name and the color of the paint, and start selling a different car that's just as bad as the old one. Rinse, repeat. The quality of goods designed in China doesn't seem to be improving at all, from what I've seen. If anything, it seems to be getting worse, on average, because instead of five or ten copies of the same product with different names, there are a hundred, all with the same serious flaws, and higher-quality products are impossible to find because they are buried in the ever-growing pile of crap.
Most of the good gear coming out of that country seems to be designed in other countries, with the companies that designed the product randomly inspecting the factories to keep them honest, and randomly inspecting the products to ensure that they aren't substituting lower-quality parts.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
When was the last time anyone saw a Chinese-made car in the U.S.A? I don't recall ever seeing one, nor hearing of one, ever. There are lots of Japanese cars, Korean cars, and European cars, along with some American cars, but someone please name a make/model that is made in China and sold in the U.S.
Thanks, that's news to me.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
...my take on "Free Trade" is that it should really be "Fair Trade" - i.e. a "level playing field". To that, I submit, are 3 aspects: 1) Democracy. A Democratic country should have a built-in bias of preferential treatment as opposed to, say, Communist dictatorships. 2) Wage equivalence. If you can offer workers at $10/day - and who have left those pesky kids who need time and so are left behind in villages - vs $10/hour, that is hardly a level playing field. 3) Environmental and Labor standards. Sure as God made little green apples, companies who can avoid the cost of dumping their effluent enjoy lower costs vs those civilized places that kinda place an importance on clean water enjoy a competitive advantage that we - as consumers - ignore because it's happening "over there". When Japan was flooding America with Toyotas in the 80s and 90s, I - as a proud American - bought them because 1) Japan is a democracy. 2) Their auto workers were (and still are!) making equivalent or better wages than American workers at their plants. 3) They have maintained very strict standards at all of their plants in Japan. China? Just the opposite.
I thought Trump was proposing a tariff that affected all nations, not just China. I don't see how a discussion of Chinese trade practices is relevant to a tariff that isn't being placed solely on China. That's like punching everyone in the face, and justifying it by saying one specific person is a bully.
to standard of living. But they're mostly sweet deals for connected businessmen. e.g like Elon Musk. If we're going to do protectionism that's fine. But talk to me when the H1-B (and H2-B) programs end.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've been living in Japan for almost 20 years (I'm British). From what I've seen, there are not that many real barriers to importing things into Japan any more. I do it all the time (mostly electronics, but also clothes and other items), and it's easy. If you want to sell things here, it's more difficult, but quite transparent now. I dont believe it is any more difficult than importing into the USA, and probably easier than importing in the UK. American cars do not sell well in Japan. They occupy a small niche, and there are devotees, but most Japanese people just dont like them. They look 'wrong', the detailing on the bodywork and interior doesnt match the Japanese taste, the suspension and general drive is way too soft, the fuel consumption is too high... there are so many reasons.
American made cars dont sell well in Europe either, but Ford, GM and Chrysler do have large operations in Europe. The cars are all made locally and tailored for a European taste, which incidentally is much closer to the Japanese. German cars do sell quite well in Japan, in fact I think Porsche sells more cars in Japan than GM.
If Trump wants to sell more American made cars into Europe or Japan then they must be designed and built for those market. But the US manufacturers cant be bothered to do that. This is the real problem. Japanese people have no problems buying Apple gear for example.
While listening to all of the other countries and world-spanning corporations complain about tariffs, keep in mind that each and every one of those entities have their OWN best interests in mind. Not the world’s, and definitely not the US’s.
You forgot the US is still severely dependent on one import even after Shale. Brains. The US does not domestically produce enough smart people to keep running the high technology economy and is severely dependent on importing brains. If the US plays hardball with the home countries the US will lose its image of a nice country to emigrate to and will suffer from a brain shortage. It could then downgrade its economy to a less technological one or reverse its trade policies.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Why are we comparing tariffs on cars? When is the last time you saw a Chinese car here? Okay, yes, a quick search on the intarwebs says there's a Geely built Volvo that's sold here.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that, e.g. GM, builds the majority of the cars it sells in China, in ,shockingly enough, China. So presumably no tariff there.
Does someone really think that if China was forced to knock the tariff down to, e.g., 5%, that Foxconn workers would buy more Cadillacs? I suspect that most of the Cadillac and Corvette buyers in China aren't put off by a measly 25% tariff.
Will anyone here buy Chinese brands? Even if they start passing crash tests I think I can reasonably predict that it will be years before Chinese brands start selling in quantities that matter to our trade deficit with China. And I don't see that happening even if the tariff is 0%.
Is there anything else that we actually sell to China?
Many homeless have jobs but cannot afford housing in the areas the jobs are. In California this is being driven by hot Chinese money being invested in residential real estate. Thousands of homes are kept vacant as investments while working people are homeless. The trade imbalance with China means China has excess dollars and invests it in residential houses in California. If the trade imbalance would go away the housing market would correct and the homeless guy could actually afford housing rather than a phone.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Funny you knock the English given they invented the computer.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Are we doing insulting Acronyms. Let Play I Like this game!!!!
FORD= Freaking Overpriced Rusty Dumpster
GM=Garbage Metal
Chrysler=Chryst!! Let er rip.
TESLA= Totally Effeminate Southafrican likes America
**Life is too short to be serious**
Seriously, what Chinese cars are actually being sold in the US anyway?
A remarkably wide range of various kinds, actually... all slated to soon become that much more unaffordable, I'm afraid.
Japan taxes engine size and emissions. The annual tax on a vehicle with a 4-liter engine, an American pickup, is ¥76,500.
Because nobody in Japan (or Europe) would want a fucking 4-liter pickup truck. Also, good luck finding a parking spot with that crap.
I know this is offopic, but still. Think about the situation: a Russian ex-intelligence officer who's been giving lectures in Britain about Russian intelligence services after being released by the Russians in a prisoner exchange is poisoned with a nerve agent in public. Russia is the only country that has both the motivation and the capability to do something like this.
Keep in mind that there are way more discrete and efficient ways of assassinating someone (a car 'accident' or a heart attack, a robbery 'gone wrong', or the good old fashioned 'self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head by a drunken depressed man' that's an all-time favorite of Russians) that have been used ever since the cold war For those interested here's a list of 'car accidents' and 'suicides' and other deaths that have happened in the top leadership of the Russian military since the collapse of the Soviet Union. You'll note there was a bunch during Yeltsin, but then it was pretty quiet up until the end of the second Chechen war, when 11 officers had accidents or shot 'themselves' in the head. After that the beginning of the Georgian war coincided with the start of a 'reform' in the Russian military which happened to coincide with another bunch (25) of such deaths in the following 2 years. Is it possible that some of these are genuine accidents or suicides? Sure, at least one of the officers had cancer. But all of them? No way. The point here is that when publicity doesn't matter, the Russians know how to get rid of people opposed to Putin without making a big spectacle out of it.
However Putin's an ex-KGB guy and has made it a point to make the killings of traitors to be very public and visible in order to send a message (see: the polonium poisoning of Litvinenko for example), this is very clearly a personal matter for him, compounded likely by the fact that him and mr. Skripal are the same age (well, Putin's a year younger), so he's from the same generation of spies as Putin himself.
If they wanted plausible deniability over this he'd just have gotten a heart attack or a stroke at home. Even that would have left chemical traces which could've pointed towards an assassination, but at least then the Russians could have somewhat credibly feigned ignorance and blame 'fake news' and 'Russophobia'. But nope, dude gets poisoned with a nerve agent out in broad daylight. They want the world to know it's them. This is basically the equivalent of Vlad leaving his calling card next to the body with a 'snitches get stitches' message, as well as serving another purpose which is giving the British agencies the finger by saying: "yeah, we can operate on your soil and there's nothing you can do about it!".
How many former intelligence officers do you think will consider giving lectures about their knowledge of the Russian system after this in Europe? If there were any before this, you can bet that the line just got a whole lot shorter.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Thank you anonymous Russian troll. Quite seriously, there is no other logical source for that attack, but you're right, we don't know 100%. We just know that Russia has a long history of this shit, and that Putin has been strutting around bragging about his weaponry w/o provocation from others.
Just another day in Paradise
Japan taxes engine size and emissions. The annual tax on a vehicle with a 4-liter engine, an American pickup, is ¥76,500. Japan is the only developed country in the world with such a tax, so over a 10-year period, it would add up to the equivalent of a 12 percent import tariff.
Incorrect. In the Netherlands, we have an annual tax based on car weight plus a tax on new vehicles based on CO2 emissions. Pretty much every European country has some sort of taxation for cars, some based on engine size (Italy), some based on weight or emissions. All of those are progressive for larger vehicles.
Also, the Japanese tax is applied to domestic cars as well as imports.
The Japanese tax structure is designed to push people towards smaller cars, which the American car companies don't bother making because they're more interested in the domestic market which demands road boats.. This is enough to make American cars impopular in Japan (just as they are impopular in Europe). To add insult to injury, American cars have been crap for decades, and the industry has started to climb out of that hole only a few years ago. This is why Japanese cars are far more popular in America than American cars are in Japan.
Japan exported more than 1.6 million vehicles to America in 2015, while the U.S. sold less than 19,000 vehicles to Japan, accounted for about .03% of the five million cars and light trucks sold in Japan.
Japan taxes engine size and emissions. The annual tax on a vehicle with a 4-liter engine, an American pickup, is ¥76,500. Japan is the only developed country in the world with such a tax, so over a 10-year period, it would add up to the equivalent of a 12 percent import tariff.
I couldn't find the import limits, but remember seeing a limit on how many cars per maker was allowed. Not sure if thats still a trade issue.
Of course, the new theory is Americans gave up importing cars, because Japan has high tastes and want quality customer service and its too hard to serve them.
OK, there are only a few American cars that Japan wants... but American manufacturers refuse to make them LHD to accommodate Japan. European manufacturers import into Japan because they focus on desirable high end cars like Porsche or Lamborghini. With developed countries, we should be building high end autos that cant be built in undeveloped countries. That is why the trade seems so one way, it doesn't matter about the tariffs in Japan or China to BMW, Lamborgini or Jaguar because these cars are desirable enough to have a high price tag. The US needs to play catch up as only a few American cars are desirable to non-Americans, the Corvette is the only one that springs to mind immediately and that is simply because it's a cheap Fezza, however the price of converting one to LHD is not worth it.
China and Japan could drop all trade barriers and the US wouldn't sell any more cars to them because US cars aren't any better or desirable.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A decade or so ago I had the questionable pleasure of driving Great Wall pickup trucks for a few months in the Mid East. I don't know what they cost but they wore out like they were intended to be disposable. The drive train seemed to hold up alright but everything else was falling apart after three months. Even the tuning and volume knobs on the radios went bad.
The story that I heard, was that Toyota had built a factory in China to build these light pickup trucks. The Chinese partner company, Great Wall, ended up breaking off the agreement with Toyota once the factory was all setup and re-branded everything to their logo. Then started pumping out trucks made with the cheapest materials possible. I remember the fenders being so thing and flexible you could probably cut them with a cheap can opener.
President for life Xi Jinping was clanging on about protectionism recently which was kind of funny coming from him.
The CPC requires corporations wishing to do business in China to partner with a Chinese firm in the same industry and to have a CPC party member on the
board of the new partnership. It is a very shrewd tactic as it gives both the Chinese business and the CPC access to IP and influence over the foreign business
partner and because of the rise of plutocracy in the US influence within the halls of power there.
With all of the production that has been moved to the PRC and their heavy restrictions on foreign goods it is the influence over the wealthy in the US that give the CPC any leverage over the US and so the high tariffs on US goods and seeming fearlessness in the face of a trade war.
"The Chinese government supports Chinese companies in going global. But we believe that this process should be market-oriented, with companies being the main driver." - Xi Jinping
America solved these problems in the 60s and 70s. The patents on the tech have long since run out. China pollutes because they have little regard for their people. Their government doesn't _care_ if those people die. There's a million+ waiting in the wings to replace them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Valid analysis. Just because there are not Russians hiding under our beds, does not mean Russia never engages in clandestine operations.
Pretty much what I expected. Did they use Toyota designs under their own name?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.