They get a lot of bribes from the oil industry. This is about sabotage, not competition.

You don't want a giant ass pickup truck that drives like a tank, takes up 1.5 times the parking space and goes 8 miles on the gallon?

It's like when they dragged their feet making fuel efficient cars after the oil crisis

Ya if they want to survive its time to adapt and compete. This is what complacency sets up and I don't feel bad for them at all. They saw this coming and probably just sat there expecting a bailout.

This is what happens when old fucks hold onto power and don't change with the times.

For what it's worth, a government can absolutely subsidized an industry in an attempt to capture a foreign market.

There's a reason Japan and Korea have their own auto industries despite being next door to the largest manufacturing nation on earth, and it isn't because they're somehow making and distributing them for even less than China.

That being said, several automakers have blindfolded themselves about the type of cars people want. I do hope this threat is significant enough that automakers actually shift to mini-electric transportation options.

If not, I'd be happy enough buying a small Chinese electric even if the taxes made it equivalent to a larger "western" vehicle. Because it's what I want to have available to me and it's nice to fuck capitalists with capitalism.

June 11th 2024 GM announced that the board approved a 6 Billion dollar stock buyback plan.

That is a direct wealth transfer from the company to the owners.

We have met the enemy, and they are us.

Because "free markets, competition, being voluntary" are propaganda by capitalists using their owned media and purchased government to make its victims double as its defenders.

The goal of market capitalism is to end competition often by buying out up and coming rivals to kill the threat, manipulate the markets to your advantage using anything from bribery to cost benefit analysis of potential consequences/fines for sociopathic actions to potential profits, and conspire with your economic sector to coerce the workers you need into accepting less.

This is just expanded indentured servitude with a marketing team.

Because we don't like free markets. We like the illusion of choice, but the security of monopoly.

This isn't competition, it sounds like the CCP heavily subsidises the manufacture, in an attempt to kill the American industry off.

Thinking in decades or centuries is a very powerful tool!

On top of the other things people are saying, I guarantee that the U.S. automakers will do a "China will take your jobs" thing if this happens.

This opinion is ridiculous as "the big 3" doesn't even exist anymore and hasn't for over a decade. Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep is owned by a Scandanavian company.

Also this isn't written to protect the few remaining American companies, it's to protect the entire auto industry in the US including Kia/Hyundai, VW, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, BMW, Subaru, etc.

China selling vehicles with massive subsidies that allow them to undercut everyone else in the market isn't good for anybody but China because as soon as they put their competitors out of business, they will jack the price of their cars up as high as they want.

This is the same reason why when Walmart comes to a new town, all the similar local businesses shut down because it's impossible to compete with their deep pockets, but now you're advocating for it on a national scale which will potentially cost hundreds of thousands of domestic manufacturing jobs.

It won't matter how fair things were if we are all dead.