Biden’s tariffs will make us pay more for cars we don’t want — but are forced to buy

https://nypost.com ^ | 5/18/2024 | David Harsanyi

[bitt]

Not long ago, President Biden promised to transform the American auto industry — “first with carrots, now with sticks” is the analogy The Washington Post used.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d trust the president to drive my car, much less dictate the future of industrial policy.

Yet Biden implemented draconian emissions limits for all vehicles, ensuring that within nine years 67% of all new passenger cars and trucks will be electric.

In the old days, a centralized state controlling manufacturing and commerce, production, prices, wages and conditions in our biggest sectors would be called “fascist.”

Today, we simply refer to it as the Green New Deal.

And, after forcing automakers to build more substandard, technologically regressive, overpriced and unpopular electric cars, Biden has now slapped enormous tariffs on imports, not only ensuring that taxpayers continue to prop up a state-run project with billions but also guaranteeing that everyone will pay more for all cars.

On Tuesday, the White House enacted new tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum in the name of the American worker.

There are somewhere around 14 million manufacturing jobs that rely on steel.

They will pay the price. As will every consumer.

Biden also doubled tariffs on Chinese semiconductors from 25% to 50%.

Populists on both sides will contend that these serve a national-security purpose. That’s debatable. Though Biden didn’t even make that argument.

In any event, there’s no national-security purpose for Biden to raise tariffs from 7.5% to 25% on the components that make EV batteries or quadruple tariffs on EVs from 25% to 100%.

[bitt]

...snip

“Why do we even assume winning the EV war is a good thing?

If an EV future were inevitable, the state wouldn’t have to bribe and force companies to produce them.

Then again, whenever Democrats talk about “manufacturing jobs,” they mean the manufacturing of EVs or solar panels.

Even in that regard, limiting choices on supposedly “clean energy” alternatives makes no sense.

Really, what we have is a corporate/union bailout.

But even the workers supposedly being protected aren’t going to have jobs for too long if we keep propping up technocratic wish-casting with billions in tax dollars.

Even with subsidies, mandates and endless puffery about the alleged upsides, carmakers lose around $6,000 on every $50,000 EV they sell.

Ford says it is losing $100,000 on every EV it produces.

In 2022 the auto giant lost $2.1 billion on EVs. In 2023, it lost $4.7 billion.

In 2024, Ford expects to lose over $5 billion....”

[Parley Baer]

IMHO Biden is the worst President in the history of our country.

[frnewsjunkie]

Question: Do you recognize dictatorship when it happens?
Small doses.. Leads to large.
The frog.....

[Saintgermain]

I wonder what happened to this aticle as all of a sudden it dissapeared and it was a good one.

An Urgent Matter
Kunstler.com ^ | 17 May, 2024 | James Howard Kunstler
Posted on 5/18/2024, 7:18:40 AM by MtnClimber

“If the government can suspend your rights anytime it deems something is a crisis, you don’t have rights. You have permissions.” — “Pismo” on “X”.

While our country sleepwalks through the deadly aftermath of the evil Covid-19 operation, the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the final touches on a nice bit of f[-—]ery called its Pandemic Treaty on International Health Regulations (IHR) or “One Health” initiative, a Globalist power grab disguised in the saintly white robes of public health medicine. The agreement, to be finalized at the end of this month, will cede what’s left of your liberty to this unelected bureaucracy for the sake of global “equity and inclusivity,” meaning more lockdowns, constant surveillance, forced “vaccinations,” restrictions on medications, and censorship of anyone who voices a contrary opinion of these actions.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s Covid-19 all over again, a second crack at controlling everything you do and every choice you might make by a cabal of governments and corporations, in other words, an international gang of fascists. The WHO is an agency of the United Nations, run out of Switzerland. You might recall this is the same place where the World Economic Forum (the WEF, a.k.a. “Davos”) has its headquarters. For years, the WEF has been issuing blueprints for a techno-fascist global regime under which, they state baldly, “you will own nothing and be happy.” (And eat bugs.)

These birds are not kidding around, though anyone can see the megalomania on display, the grandiose will-to-power that seeks to subjugate the plebes of the world — and radically decrease our numbers — so that a remaining tiny elite can enter into a post-modern, techno-transhuman utopia uncluttered with us “useless eaters.” The corporate money and organizational mojo out of Davos is behind what amounts to a homicidal racketeering scheme masquerading as disease prevention.

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies are front-and-center in the mix. They stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars distributing their mandated “vaccines” — which, you know by now, will not be properly tested, and, as currently being demonstrated by the Covid shots, are covertly designed to kill as many people as possible over a long period of time by switching off the natural defenses of your immune system, guaranteeing bewilderment and compliance by the hoodwinked masses. This might sound like a paranoid sci-fi movie, but, alas, the first phase has already happened starting in 2020. And since the pharma companies provide most of the advertising revenue for cable news media, you have been successfully mind-f[-—]ed into not seeing what is going on all around you: a whole lot of sickness and death.

Fortunately, it is the nature of megalomania that it always thinks too highly of its power and reaches too far. For one thing, this WHO “treaty” has to be signed by its member nations. Not all of them are eager to do that. One was Slovakia, whose prime minister, Robert Fico, was gunned down a few days after he announced his country would opt out. The coterie of the USA behind the senile and incompetent “Joe Biden,” is avid to sign us onto the treaty, largely because much of global Big Pharma operates out of our country, and rents so many members of Congress, especially most of the Democratic Party.

Under the US Constitution, the president can’t follow through on an international treaty without the Senate’s approval by two-thirds of its members. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has been the most active figure in that body investigating the crimes of the Covid-19 op and organizing votes against the treaty, which he declares to be all 49 Republican senators. Thus, there can be no two-thirds majority ratification of the WHO treaty.

But note that the shadow government running “Joe Biden” has been doing all kinds of things in overt defiance of the Constitution and the rulings of the US Supreme Court on what is permissible under the Constitution, for instance, cancelling colossal sums of college loan debt. The “Joe Biden” regime is lawless. Anyone following the malicious prosecutions of candidate Donald Trump and the mass round-up of J-6 protestors can see how that works. So, you are advised to call and write your elected representatives in Congress to make sure that the executive branch (the White House and its agencies) gets the message: no deal on the WHO treaty.

There are other trends underway at this time that may assist us in escaping what amounts to a globalist coup d’état.....

[Leaning Right]

Congress is supposed to make the laws. The president is supposed to carry out those laws. Checks and balances.

But now the president makes the laws, just like a king would. The only difference is that our king doesn’t call them laws. He calls them regulations or executive orders instead.

And Congress? It’s now pretty much just a debating society.

Everyone - regardless of political beliefs - should be very concerned about this. But I guess as long as Netflix is putting out new movies every month, it’s all good.

[butlerweave]

The EV revolution is dead , no one wants them ,even the government doesn’t use them not even the so called world leaders

[Brian Griffin]

The Chinese will be making the cars in Mexico and not have to pay tariffs on the Mexican value added.

Joe Biden is trying to bamboozle the steel and auto worker union members.

[Tell It Right]

According to Sundance at CTH, Brandon's tariffs on Chinese EV's won't apply anyway because they're being made in Mexico.

So it's all smoke and mirrors.

[Omnivore-Dan]

No one can “force” me to buy anything I don’t want, don’t need, can’t afford, or just don’t like. This push by Bribeme and his Ying-Yang admin is not going to fly. I’ll drive a Model “T” or get a horse before I’m “forced” buy an EV. Even ride a bicycle, I don’t have far to go to get anything I need. Screw the libtard gov and their ridiculous ideas. Can only pray Trump gets elected and reverses this complete nonsense.

[oldtech]

How long can a motor company like Ford continue to produce something it is losing money on before it ceases production? This insistence on going to EVs was, is, & will continue to be a bad idea & certainly as long as they are proven unsuitable for most people. This kind of thinking of requiring EVs could possibly lead to a standstill of the whole nation. Can this “green new deal” stand even after Joe Biden is gone? Sooner rather than later, I hope.

[roving]

I bought my last new car. I am done.

[arthurus]

Obiden’s tariffs will have little or now effect on anything as they specifically target cars made in China as China has moved and is moving its automobile production offshore to places like Mexico as part of its commercial colonization project.

[John S Mosby]

Socialism is Forced Theft. Theft by force of “law”. The best definition of this is this type of central planned “economy” driving the populace to buy only what the government dictates and also taxes them more for doing what they are forced to do. Totalitarian writ large.

[SteveH]

ideally a properly designed tariff would protect domestic production of goods. IMHO the article does not seem to address how the biden tariffs are in fact not properly designed...

[Organic Panic]

It’ll be fun charging them.

[unclebankster]

I bought my last new car. I am done.

********************

The bigger issue than ICE vs EV, is the auto sector has already manufactured enough vehicles to keep sales going for a decade.

The used car market is saturated with vehicles, let alone new vehicles manufactured, and demand will drop even further as old timers around the globe die off.

[ABN 505]

You are not alone, they are killing the Golden Goose of tax revenue.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

One would think that an oversupply of cars would make prices drop, all other things being equal. Have federal regulations kept the prices high? Or what?

[SunkenCiv]

[snip from the YouTube page] Auto industry insiders were stunned when Caresoft, a highly regarded engineering consulting firm, tore down BYD's mass-market EV, the Seagull.

Priced around $11,000, the engineers found the Seagull to be well-designed, user friendly, rich with options, and of surprisingly high quality and reliability.

The US automakers reacted swiftly, and produced reports insisting that BYD's entrance into US car markets would be met with strong enthusiasm from buyers, and legacy carmakers would be unable to survive.

Because of the Seagull's low price point, US tariffs of 25% would be irrelevant: BYD could still make high profits even after the tariffs were paid. Or, BYD could simply place final assembly plants in Mexico and avoid them altogether. Aware of this, the Biden Administration in May jacked the tariffs up to 100%, and announced that Chinese car plants even in tariff treaty countries would be cut off from US markets.

Correction: I was wrong when I said that EV's are lighter. Apologies. I was working with three sets of notes, and the changes didn't make it over in the final draft. It was my fault. Cheers. Kw [/snip]

Detroit auto engineers tear down BYD's Seagull: "An extinction-level event" | 8:01
Inside China Business | 41.1K subscribers | 203,628 views | July 6, 2024