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249 points Jtsummers | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.215s | source
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softwaredoug ◴[] No.45762476[source]
By not aligning economically to other country's markets, US companies are in a real pickle.

Imagine you're a US car manufacturer. You see EVs growing around the world, and stagnating in the US. Do you:

(a) Double-down on investments in EVs (billions of USD!), even with a soft US market for EVs, hoping you might compete globally.

(b) Become a parochial, US-only, business hoping to squeeze what you can out of a gradually shrinking industry

When other countries subsidize consumers to buy EVs, and the US does not, it effectively creates a self-own trade barrier for domestic companies.

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forgotoldacc ◴[] No.45762652[source]
The US seems to be at risk of becoming a Japanese style economy in the coming years. As in they focus on tech that sells well locally, but is of no interest outside the country. And that can work for their economy and is a nice way to package protectionism. But eventually, people years down the road see how much better tech is in the outside world and jump to it and never look back. Then your own industry starts to drown and is only held up by a class of elderly people afraid of change.

Examples are the strange Japanese flip phones and the computers with CF card and floppy drives with a 1.5 ghz single core CPU selling for twice the price of a MacBook Pro.

With BYD selling globally now, and Boeing losing its reputation, American vehicles of all sorts are at risk.

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1. adventured ◴[] No.45762751[source]
The primary risk that China's auto industry poses is to Japan, South Korea, and the few parts of Europe with large scale auto manufacturing.

The US domestic auto industry was hollowed out decades ago. Germany's domestic auto industry is just starting to be hollowed out, that process is in the early days. China's auto rise will ravage European manufacturing, not US manufacturing. Auto manufacturing is a small share of the US industrial base, it's a large share of the German industrial base for example.

Boeing and Airbus will both lose large chunks of their global airplane business to cheaper Chinese competition over the coming decades. It's definitely not exclusive to Boeing. The US airline market is far more lucrative than the European airline market, US carriers like Delta are very profitable and can more or less be forced to not buy from China.