So I guess the automakers didn't see the rise of China coming? If they did see this this coming, why were American automakers buying back stock instead of building capacity and cultivating talent?
One reason...None of the CEO's of the auto mfg's. went to China to see what was going on until Farley (Ford CEO) recently went there and saw for himself what's happening, claiming it an "existential" issue. It's hard to believe they could be so blithe in their relationships but...here we are. Read a few Farley interviews; it'll probably shock you. It shocked me, because now he sees what the situation is.
One of my educational experiences happened on a flight back from Wuhan, about 7-8 years ago. I'm sitting next to a Ford engineer who had been in China for about 15 years managing Ford's operations. He was circumspect for a few hours, but he liked to drink. As he got increasingly drunk, he started to unload....
"We gave them the company secrets! We took 20-30 years off their development cycle! I don't know what our guys up top are thinking!"....etc., etc., etc....
The guys running the gig in China knew what was happening. The CEO's apparently didn't.
(I live in Wuhan. Up until just a few years ago, there were all sorts of problems with Chinese cars that everyone, including most Chinese, knew. Now, Chinese cars are so much better than their competition within any particular price point, it's going to get ugly. Very ugly.)
Thank you for useful information and emphasis. I think your references to remarks quoting Bessent and Leninism are not useful. Bessent may be considered one of the architects of the US’s suicidal economic policies.
My intuition is that the answer is no. I think that in the new "China shock" the western companies that will thrive will be those that will manage to integrate within the Chinese industrial chains.
China is just doing what we did a few decades back... Taking the opportunity that WE WESTERNS created for them.
We're actively destroying our economies and industry (Ukrainistan CIRCUS is just the latest sign of the degeneration of the West) with CO2 unicorns and other moronic ideas/policies.
And they are doing it in the WESTERN CAPITALIST style... That's very likely the main reason we're so mad at them!
"This extreme overcapacity has ignited brutal price wars at home, causing profits to vanish. This is forcing Chinese automakers to face an ultimatum: export or die"??
This is just repeating Fox News memes. It's not analysis and it's not true. It's just lazy.
A real analyst, Glenn Luk, has done the hard work and concluded that the top manufacturers are solidly profitable and their main focus is domestic.
I appreciate your comment but the conclusion is not accurate. BYD, for example, achieved all of its growth in 2025 through exports. Domestic sales are flat YOY. Check it.
Correct, the time for tariffs on China was 2002-2008 when we hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs to China. Unfortunately Bush and his economic advisors saw the job loss as a positive because it put downward pressure on inflation. America has been adding manufacturing jobs since 2010 and so Biden’s policies of subsidizing important sectors of manufacturing was succeeding.
One more link in the chain of creating Susan Strange's Theory of Structural Power. It's not just autos, chips, electronics, raw material, tariffs, trade restrictions, financial organizations, or whatever. It's about building structural power, the power to shape frameworks that control all of those things. America has (had?) it, but appears to be losing it through general stupidity.
So I guess the automakers didn't see the rise of China coming? If they did see this this coming, why were American automakers buying back stock instead of building capacity and cultivating talent?
One reason...None of the CEO's of the auto mfg's. went to China to see what was going on until Farley (Ford CEO) recently went there and saw for himself what's happening, claiming it an "existential" issue. It's hard to believe they could be so blithe in their relationships but...here we are. Read a few Farley interviews; it'll probably shock you. It shocked me, because now he sees what the situation is.
One of my educational experiences happened on a flight back from Wuhan, about 7-8 years ago. I'm sitting next to a Ford engineer who had been in China for about 15 years managing Ford's operations. He was circumspect for a few hours, but he liked to drink. As he got increasingly drunk, he started to unload....
"We gave them the company secrets! We took 20-30 years off their development cycle! I don't know what our guys up top are thinking!"....etc., etc., etc....
The guys running the gig in China knew what was happening. The CEO's apparently didn't.
(I live in Wuhan. Up until just a few years ago, there were all sorts of problems with Chinese cars that everyone, including most Chinese, knew. Now, Chinese cars are so much better than their competition within any particular price point, it's going to get ugly. Very ugly.)
Thank you for useful information and emphasis. I think your references to remarks quoting Bessent and Leninism are not useful. Bessent may be considered one of the architects of the US’s suicidal economic policies.
My intuition is that the answer is no. I think that in the new "China shock" the western companies that will thrive will be those that will manage to integrate within the Chinese industrial chains.
A fresh example of European Dead Brains proliferation...
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/climate-lunatics-in-hamburg-pass
Don't blame China!
China is just doing what we did a few decades back... Taking the opportunity that WE WESTERNS created for them.
We're actively destroying our economies and industry (Ukrainistan CIRCUS is just the latest sign of the degeneration of the West) with CO2 unicorns and other moronic ideas/policies.
And they are doing it in the WESTERN CAPITALIST style... That's very likely the main reason we're so mad at them!
"This extreme overcapacity has ignited brutal price wars at home, causing profits to vanish. This is forcing Chinese automakers to face an ultimatum: export or die"??
This is just repeating Fox News memes. It's not analysis and it's not true. It's just lazy.
A real analyst, Glenn Luk, has done the hard work and concluded that the top manufacturers are solidly profitable and their main focus is domestic.
I appreciate your comment but the conclusion is not accurate. BYD, for example, achieved all of its growth in 2025 through exports. Domestic sales are flat YOY. Check it.
This is the type of case where tariffs could make some sense. Too bad Trump has discredited the idea with his crazed implementation.
Correct, the time for tariffs on China was 2002-2008 when we hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs to China. Unfortunately Bush and his economic advisors saw the job loss as a positive because it put downward pressure on inflation. America has been adding manufacturing jobs since 2010 and so Biden’s policies of subsidizing important sectors of manufacturing was succeeding.
One more link in the chain of creating Susan Strange's Theory of Structural Power. It's not just autos, chips, electronics, raw material, tariffs, trade restrictions, financial organizations, or whatever. It's about building structural power, the power to shape frameworks that control all of those things. America has (had?) it, but appears to be losing it through general stupidity.