The exact same thing they said about japanese-made cars in the 70s and in both cases they were right because american cars are trash.
I mean the CEO of Ford said it was humbling when he traveled to China to see what they were doing. Then he imported a Xiaomi SU7 to Michigan apparently so they could “study” it. The U.S. called that reverse engineering anytime China did such when I was growing up.
IIRC, some executive at Ford imported a Chinese EV and prefers it over their own cars, says he won’t give it up.
That’s how captive the US is as an auto market. You think that guy is going to stop lobbying to prevent the cars he sees as cheaper and better from competing against his product?
It’s the same CEO, Jim Farley. He knows American manufacturing is smoked cause they can’t keep relying on F150s forever.
Especially when the current F150 isn’t desirable. Every truck guy I know of wants old trucks with less tech and longer beds.
Exactly, Ford thinks the avg American still wants these massive trucks when that is gradually not the case anymore. Hell small trucks are actually starting to make waves again, and its why people are looking at the Slate truck and Ford itself with their new EV platform, their first vehicle on that platform will be a small truck. They botched the F-150 Lightning and now they’re scrambling.
I guess i dont understand the loyalty, if i was that guy id go to the chinese and be their main importer. Fuck ford their cars are plainly inferior, but jim farley is a free man and he can just call the chinese up and tell them he’ll be the ceo of xiaomi USA and bring in their superior cars. That’s how competition is supposed to work!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
That’s what i mean, leave ford and drive them under with the chinese cars, make more money that way but it’s not all about money, it’s about them having more power over us.
How the tables have turned.
If you look at history from the 60s to 2000s, America has a history of blaming another country for “stealing”, then creating laws to slow them down only to adopt it because Americans can’t build it as well.
America then reclaimed some market value with technology in the 2000s. But we’re also at the mercy of the hardware.
I think America is banking on AI heavily, and other countries will do it cheaper (thanks to hardware, so called “stealing”, and having better power supplies). America is reaching its peak and going into free fall.
Agreed. Also, I want an SU7 so bad!
They’ve all lost foreign markets, no one wants American cars (usually not even made in America) so they’ll bribe our government so we have to buy them.
The wealthy can afford luxury imports.
The problem is the whole bailout culture, if existing companies can’t fail, new ones can’t replace them. Innovaters are forced out or bought up and diluted.
And eventually that means they can’t compete with foreign companies who weren’t hamstrung like this.
The problem is the whole bailout culture, if existing companies can’t fail, new ones can’t replace them.
Rugged individualism for the working class, socialism for corporate losses.
(usually not even made in America)
I’ve a wonderful car that was made in the US.
Its a Nissan.
Well yeah Japanese cars are made in the US and Canada. American cars are made in Mexico
The silverado was made in London, ON for a while. So was the Geo Metro, which was a japanese car with an american nameplate being built in canada.
I had an F150 made in Kansas city, and I wondered how much of it was manufactured outside of the US.
Wow, a 32% american truck!
I tried to find that info for my current car, and it was assembled in Smyna, TN but I wansn’t able to find where the parts were made.
because america is trash.
FTFY.
Capitalists don’t like honest competition, since it requires them to research positive innovations.
But Marx tells us (in Das Kapital ) that the capitalist will always be seek to bypass regulations and ultimately capture the regulating government.
And yes, the scientific advancements of the moon shots returned $14 for every $1 spent. Using that as a reference, lobbying federal and state governments return $120 for every $1 spent.
TIL private equity consolidated all the firetruck manufacturers into a single entity, and then slowed the rate of production, more than doubling the price and the wait time. Firehouses can no longer afford trucks.
Honestly, calling people like this Capitalists is like likening all communists to Stalin. The idea of capitalism is based on competition. If you are eroding competition, you are eroding capitalism.
But Marx tells us (in Das Kapital ) that the capitalist will always be seek to bypass regulations and ultimately capture the regulating government.
I am assuming he neglected to mention that the same type of people will seek to capture the government in any system. Socialist, communist, capitalist, feudal, doesn’t matter.
The means they use to capture the government are different. To intention is the same.
This appears the fundamental flaw in every single governance system we’ve tried thus far. The sociopaths will always take over, consolidate power, and abuse and exploit everyone else for their own benefit.
Capitalism or Communism, both as vulnerable, both have failed for the same reasons as far as I can make out.
Well, while USA failed, there are many countries where the combination of democracy and capitalism succeeded to various degrees. Not ever perfect, but way better than anything else tried.
We need dark triad personality screening and trat it like a disability that disqualifies them from participating in politics or leadership roles. It’s bad for them, they can do other things. Completely blind people also shouldn’t be bus drivers.
Just capture the testing procedure and you capture the government. That is the fundamental flaw of “allow only X to run for office”.
The irony is: the original theory of capitalism (in contrast with the clusterfuck that we have now) was based on the idea that competition breeds innovation - because those who didn’t innovate would go out of business due to being surpassed by the others.
And China is kinda steamrolling US in a lot of markets right now.
Mostly in the areas of custom fabs, general manufacturing and not being run by fucking idiots.
I don’t work in manufacturing, in work for a giant popular retail company.
I swear to Christ, I have zero clue how it has survived under the gross incompetence of our leadership. I have never witnessed such stupidity in all my life.
These guys are beyond the pale. Getting mad and emotional and making stupid decisions on vibes. When their nonsense fails, they just blame it on anything but themselves and do the next dumb thing. If we didn’t have stores everywhere, we would be dead. We only survive because you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.
They have subsidize the shit out of their industry by keeping their citizens capital tied up in their banking, housing and stock market. It is hard to get capital out of China now and only the very wealthy can pull it off.
So yes if the government took a good chunk of the interest or revenues you’d make from your investments yes you can have the same subsidized industries.
In their defense they are also willing to let bad companies go under which is something the US hasn’t done since the 90s.
China still calls itself “communist with Chinese characteristics”. They quite openly gave their companies strategic goals to fulfill.
It’s all the dorks thinking they could get hold of that sweet big market if only they gave China enough concessions. And there it was always only for the bosses and owners to participate in the windfall, employees be damned. They were played big time and payed themselves huge bonuses in the mean time for selling us out.
That’s kind of missing the forest for the trees
They have more than two times the population of the EU and US combined, and the manufacturing capacity for basically the rest of the world.
They have enough population so that whenever there’s a new tech/infrastructure to spin up, they’ll do it internally and then come out internationally with a finished & field-tested version of that product.
They also have more PHDs, research and patents than anywhere else in the world, integrated in their industrial ecosystem. That’s like a silicon valley but for basically every field of manufature, research etc.
And to address your first paragraph: Yes, if instead of value extraction for shareholders, which is literally capitalism, we reinvested all of that cash back into the economy as subsidies, we would also be thriving. That’s not a diss on China, that’s a failure on the US/EU.
The population figures you’ve cited coming out of China are dubious at best. Births have been repeatedly found to be overstated and school age populations are plummeting faster than anticipated because of local corruption when reporting their birth figures. Bottom line China is rapidly aging with few young workers to take the place of their existing workforce. That isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of them, but it isn’t nearly enough to sustain anything closely to replacement.
You missed the point entirely about my capital markets comment. Put simply the CCP direct any profits the average citizen has with their capital to subsidize industries. The citizen sees no benefit from their work only an elite few who have connections with the CCP do.
It’s akin to the US government directing capital towards building data centers which consume millions of gallons of fresh water, get subsidized electricity and a elite few who will benefit from their creation while local citizens bear the brunt of utility increases. However in the US you can fight it and vote in a new governing party to stop it. In China there is only the CCP so they just have to endure it. The West isn’t perfect but if you feel the CCP has a superior system I’d question your judgement.
That was the lie that was sold. It has always been about exploitation.
Well too fucking bad UAW and NADA both supported trump and now here come the leopards to eat their faces.
Trump pisses off our closest ally Canada and now they have given a toe hold in NA to China, and continue to boycott America products and tourism. The tourism alone has taken away 1.3 billion so far this year.
Chinese cars are coming and there’s nothing these fucks can do about.
Fuck them.
It’s wild people are still surprised about union corruption…
Corporations and the government have an incentive for corrupt unions, so they’re not going to reign in the problematic ones.
It’s on the voting members of every union to keep their own union in line.
They literally just vote for whatever benefits their industry directly.
Military was the same way, I got lined and my direct chain walked a very fine line talking about if we wanted to vote for someone that would expand the military meaning more slots for promotions, or someone that would reduce by attrition and no one gets promotions for four years.
It’s a real thing and should be obvious to anyone, which again is why it’s wild people don’t know why it keeps happening.
When resources are scarce people get selfish.
We fight that by ensuring everyone has enough so they don’t have to feel selfish, then we can out otw the minority who will always be selfish.
UAW and NADA both supported trump
Where are you getting that from?, UAW endorsed Harris and Biden also put a huge tariff on Chinese EVs and harris seems like she would’ve continued that.
UAW was very spilt on endorsement, but extremely together supporting trumps tariffs.
NADA is full on maga.
Its because they don’t actually want free markets. They want captive markets in a corrupt system that they can influence. The last thing want is to be forced to make a decent product at an affordable price
When they want to move manufacturing or people lose their jobs … these guys are all “this is just business”.
It wouldn’t be devastating if you read the room and made AFFORDABLE ANYTHING. Why do you think your own company couldn’t keep the $20k Maverick in stock for years? Why do you think your $100k Lightning didn’t sell well?
Make affordable, decent vehicles, and you won’t have to worry about overseas competition.
Chinese cars can’t be sold in the US?
Buddy, I’d have bought a BYD like 3+ years ago if I could.
No. There isn’t a single Chinese automaker selling in America.
This is backwards. Capitalism is the disruption of free markets to create extraordinary profits for some and higher costs for most. Ford is doing Capitalism. What Capitalists don’t want are free markets.
People definitely do not understand that free markets and capitalism are different things.
It’s intentional, like the conflation of capitalism and democracy. It doesn’t make sense if any thought is put to it but that doesn’t happen enough.
Capitalism is to broad of a term to say it’s different.
Subforms of it may differ (i.e. to my knowledge there is no free market capitalism, although at this point likely better than what especially USA does have…). I’d say free market capitalism is the purest form of it though.
The reality is unfortunately worse (e.g. fossilized energy is still substituted, lobby is much too strong etc. regulations at this point do more damage than good).
And I say all of this as a communist…
Capitalism refers to economic systems were economic decisions are made by private, rather than public, actors.
The free market is a didactic model of a market with no barriers and no information imbalance.
Capitalism is where an ownership class undercompensates labor and pockets the spoils.
That’s a basically inevitable consequence of capitalism, but it’s not part of the definition.
Devastating… like having Dump’s policies close your manufacturing locations down and have to layoff all the workers? That kind of devastation?
Once again proving that corporations have no beliefs apart from “Make more money.”
Capitalism is when the government buys a stake in Intel, or tries to invest in AI companies or tariffs the world, or …
Or when they give away $1,000 to every baby just for existing
The Ford that has moved a bunch of their manufacturing to Mexico after carving out a tariff exemption from vehicles manufactured there?
I love competition! Except when I lose then competition is bad I need to change the rules so I’m the only one who wins. Yes I am way more deserving than other humans because I am me. And me is better.
Checkmate!
Wait, new rule you have to checkmate twice in a row to win.
Checkmate again!
New rule it only counts if we just ate salmon before playing.
Very good dish, checkmate!
New rule, you have to be me to checkmate.
Invisible hand at work
