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Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

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Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#171

Post by Kon5ole »

hawkice wrote: post #148
Kon5ole wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Polestar should be banned, nor any other Chinese car maker for that matter, but I can understand why Volvo gets a different treatment. Volvo probably employs several 1000s of people throughout the US from decades of dealerships, workshops, second hand sales etc, and they have a relatively large factory in the US. Polestar OTOH has no factories and use direct-sales instead of going through dealerships. S…

The vast majority of the value provided vs extracted, for any business, is related to consumer surplus and gross margins, as opposed to payroll.

>The vast majority of the value provided vs extracted, for any business, is related to consumer surplus and gross margins, as opposed to payroll.

Not sure what you mean here but I suspect we're talking about different things. Payroll is obviously value created by the business that's directly given to the society where the business operates, and it's not uncommon that it's higher than the company profits.

Take Amazon for example, payroll costs are much higher than the profits.

Car companies also create a secondary maintenance and repair business, insurance and financing business, resale business and so on that generate more value in the country they operate as well.

So I find it likely that a well established car brand like Volvo generates more money that stays in the US than they generate money that is extracted out from the US.

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#172

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ifwinterco wrote: post #134
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't have to make it in the US, or even make it at all, you would only have to pay for it there. You also wouldn't have to deliver it to the place you want the money to end up, only to the location of someone willing to pay you there. You could be paying US dollars at a bank in New York to a company based in Australia to have them deliver iron ore to a company in India willing to pay you for it in China.

I think actually Tobin tax is the wrong word sorry. I don't mean just taxing FX transactions, I mean taxing all cross-border capital flows. So yes you can do everything in dollars (and a lot of the time the dollars never need to leave New York) But eventually you do have to pay the workers and taxes in China in yuan, and ultimately that money comes from the US consumer, making some kind of US capital account transact…

> But eventually you do have to pay the workers and taxes in China in yuan, and ultimately that money comes from the US consumer, making some kind of US capital account transaction inevitable?

The thing you're missing is that money never actually has to cross the border when both parties to a transaction are on both sides of it. Corporation A gets money from the US consumer and pays it to Corporation B. The money is still in the US. It now belongs to Corporation B who invests it in US stocks etc. In exchange Corporation B provides to Corporation A outside the US, which Corporation A can then convert into yuan outside the US.

It's equivalent to how money laundering works and why AML laws are a burdensome farce with a ~0% effectiveness rate.

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#173

Post by johaugum »

Eufrat wrote: post #46

The policy of the United States is currently a roulette wheel suffering from dementia that believes that Siri is a Norwegian supermodel they can use to seed the future Herrenrasse.

Siri was invented by a Norwegian (Dag Kittlaus), named after his own daughter!

Steve Jobs later called and bought his company.

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#174

Post by Markoff »

chvid wrote: post #91
Markoff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you will see TCL (and Hisense) nowhere in US? I recommend visiting any store selling TVs. Same goes for Thinkpad/Motorola, but I guess there at could argue these are not original Chinese brands.

Yes - really. The presence of US companies in China is huge and everywhere whereas the presence of Chinese companies in the US is tiny.

> If you go to the US, you will see Chinese brands nowhere.

is their presence tiny or are they nowhere? you can't have both, something something moving the goalpost...

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#175

Post by idiotsecant »

mikrotikker wrote: post #159
idiotsecant wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being confused by nationalism into not seeing that you're making exactly the point I just did. The bad thing here is not that China knows where you are 24/7. It's that anybody does. Why is it bad for China to be able to spy on you but acceptable that Google can? The US government? How about we just STOP THE SPYING? Regardless of who is doing it?

Great. But the solution is not to let china just do it while we work on the solution. Block them, and work on blocking local suppliers. Don't double the problem before you try to fix it.

You have a bacterial infection of the toe and of the finger. If i cut off your toe your foot problem is solved. Or...you can take antibiotics and not cut off anything.

Like it or not, China is the world's factory now. The west has decided it doesn't want to dirty it's hands making things anymore, so it is what it is. Make reasonable, standard daylight firmware a required feature of all these devices and you simultaneously solve about a thousand problems.

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#177

Post by shepherdjerred »

mattas wrote: post #38
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #17

What makes a car ‘made in China’ (therefore over 100% tariffs) vs ‘assembled in the USA’ (therefore no tariffs)? The battery, engine and everything else is absolutely Chinese made. I don’t know how much assembly there is honestly but i feel the Geely, err i mean Polestar was a little close to that line. I will say the laws around this indicate just how ridiculous tariffs can be. There’s always some line to press up a…

Reminds me of this. There's a whole industry around reverse engineering tariff classifications to find ways to minimize all-in manufacturing cost. For example, let's say you sell air purifiers. Option 1 is to import an air purifier and pay the 25% tariff (or whatever the actual duty rate is) on air purifiers. Option 2 is to import a widget that gets classified as a fan (with 5% duty) and import a widget that gets cla…

My favorite is the smoke detector as a musical instrument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6BNE62xGqE

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#178

Post by bruce511 »

woodpanel wrote: post #128
JSR_FDED wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Almost every country subsidizes domestic industry. Just off the top of my head: Boeing, Farm subsidies, CHIPS act (approx 52B), Oil drilling, GM & Chrysler bailouts, Airline bailouts, State tax breaks for Amazon, etc

The scale is not even remotely comparable though to what China does

I agree. Depending on what you measure,total US subsidies are far larger than Chinese ones.

I'd say you can certainly compare them though, and US ones are in the same order of magnitude- although it gets worse if you adjust for population size.

For example, the US subsidizes the defence industry to the tune of a trillion $ a year. (As a % of total federal budget the US spends about double that of China.)

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#179

Post by garyfirestorm »

mikrotikker wrote: post #162
trhway wrote: post #20

the main point to me here is that such decisions should be fully public including all the input info and all the reasoning that is behind the decision, similar to a court case. Instead we have that guessing game.

Not when it comes to issues of national security

lol public roads are mapped on Google Maps

Re: Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo

#180

Post by 05 »

busterarm wrote: post #152
05 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DJI Uh, about that.. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-416839A1.pdf

DJI makes a ton more than just drones.

Yes and unless they start making new ones without any electronics in them they're all still banned
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