“owing in part to Chinese competition and in part to “weak demand for electric vehicles.” “
Two things going on here.
(1) EV manufacturing, demand, sales, etc.
(2) Very low ocean shipping costs allow countries with cheap labor to provide products to other countries around the world cheaper than those countries can make them.
I consider (1) the minor problem and (2) the major one.
The amount of labor that goes into each widget we import is small, maybe 2 or 3%. However if Made in the USA the amount of labor that goes into each widget is still small at 5-7%. So we are gutting out economy for 2 or 3 cents on the dollar. This is nuts.