Foreign investment would be an economic boost for Mexico. The company has claimed that a plant there would create about 10,000 jobs. A Tesla competitor, BYD markets its Dolphin Mini model in Mexico for about 398,800 pesos—about $21,300 dollars—a little more than half the price of the cheapest Tesla model.
Why won’t the Americans let in the chinese manufacturers to find out? Surely if the cars are trash they have nothing to worry about?
That’s the thing about economics. Humans are not rational actors. And even if they were, they don’t have perfect information.
For example, there’s a thing going around in the US right now about raw milk. It’s not allowed to be sold because of the risk of disease. But people are idiots and seek it out anyway, and get themselves sick.
For cars, assume one of them is an absolute lemon and deathtrap. It constantly needs maintenance, and if you get in a crash, you die. You won’t know about the former until a few years after you’ve bought it, and if the latter happens, you can’t seek any recourse because you’re dead.
Now, I’m not saying that this applies to the Chinese EVs, exactly, but we haven’t seen them shaken out in the US yet, and China doesn’t have a very good track record with consumer safety in the recent past.
To counter those vague negative “maybes” of yours, I just want to point out that the EU, which have much more tight regulations on just about everything than the US, especially when it comes to consumer protection, allows the sale of BDY cars.
If a regulatory regime which is more strict when it comes to consumer protection than the US allows such cars to be sold, then claiming or implying that the reason for the US to block their sale there is that they might be dangerous is quite the flight of fantasy.
I mean, it’s not what OP was arguing, but the main reason they don’t want the cars let in is just to stop China from becoming more powerful. It has little to do with the products themselves.
Surely if the products were shit, then there would be nothing to worry about with respect to China’s power. No?
If they’re shit today, they probably won’t be tomorrow. They’re just as capable of bootstrapping as the next person.
Back in the 90’s Clinton was quoted as saying that with capitalism and development, democracy would inevitably follow in China; trying to stop it would be like nailing jello to a wall. Nobody thinks that way anymore.
I don’t really understand your point… I wasn’t making any comment about democracy in China. That’s absurd.
To clarify, the reason China was allowed to gain that amount of economic influence in the first place was because it was thought they’d be part of the democratic West. Without that, nobody wants an authoritarian superpower.
What? Literally nobody thinks that. The entire Belt and Road Initiative is pretty much open expansionism
Belt and Road is waaay more recent than what I’m talking about, being declared in 2013. The Cold War ramped down in the 80’s and ended around '90 or so, and then the triumphalist narrative that “history had ended” and democracy had irrevocably won was influential in the 90’s and arguably 2000’s.
Also, I’m not really sure “expansionism” is the right word for peacefully growing one’s economy and soft power. Otherwise, the West is expansionist as hell, and that undersells actual territorial expansionism like in Taiwan or Ukraine.