If legacy automakers don’t want to make affordable EVs, so be it. I would also prefer to help give an edge to a thriving local industry and develop more local jobs but they need to actually cooperate. In the face of serious competition, despite huge economic protectionist barriers, they don’t want to compete in this market.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.” <==> you can create incentives to develop local industry and protectionism to help them while they’re weak but you can’t make them succeed
The thing is that on the one side this is becoming a national security issue where China is basically building a capability where they can cripple the US economy, on the other side Tesla is already getting subsidized to high heaven already, so it’s more about whether the US government deigns to actually attach strings to the carrots it hands out quite regularly.
On the first topic though, it wouldn’t be a big problem if the US would start to depend on Chinese imports more, as long as all that is symmetrical and China develops dependencies on US imports. We got the French and the Germans to stop trying to kill each other that way. The question is whether China expects this to be a good faith let’s tie ourselves together deal, or a one-sided let’s get ahead by getting leverage thing.
