Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 640 posts

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#511

Post by epolanski »

pstuart wrote: post #498
epolanski wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The US industrial output has been growing for decades[1]. US manufacturing is doing very well, it's US manufacturing jobs that aren't due to automation. 2. Manufacturing as % of the population has long been declining globally including China. Labor cost is a very minor expense in modern manufacturing unless we talking something like clothing. I don't think Americans miss the millions of jobs they had 60 years ago…

That just shows dollar amounts, with no sense of what's being sold. Being that so many companies have moved production to China to make their products cheaper, I'd be curious as to what then comprises those savings.

China hasn't been cheap for ages. Mexican labor is way cheaper both in manufacturing (20% less) and engineering (40 % less).

I'll quote you the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook himself on that topic:

The number one reason why we like to be in China is the people. China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like. China has extraordinary skills. In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. Hence, the vocational expertise in China is very deep.

FWIW a cousin of mine, Italian, founded a 3D printers startup a decade ago and according to him there was no place in the world with the level of expertise and skills to create a complex machine manufacturing startup like Guanzhou or Shenzen. It's not just the skills they have when it comes to manufacturing, it's the entire ecosystem: logistics, bureaucracy, suppliers, energy, materials, engineering. China has all of those.

He was even featured on the first Italian national channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7j5WOsadkI

I can guarantee you that cheap labor was really a non-factor in such a choice, because there was no cheap labor in the first place.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#512

Post by seanmcdirmid »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #506
drcongo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese EVs are already way ahead of most western EVs - really, you need to see some of the cars the likes of Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Denza and Xpeng are releasing.

Having lived/worked in China for 6 years and knowing how most companies there operate and the way they cut corners so things look shiny on the outside but are crappy on the inside, I have very little confidence in any Chinese brand, especially not any of the newer brands. I would not buy a Chinese EV even at a lower price point. There are a couple of exceptions to the above -- DJI and Anker are two companies I do tru…

So I lived and worked in China for 9+ years, I worked in a design studio for Microsoft and worked with many designers who, after the 2008-9 layoffs, went to help found Xiaomi.

Chinese brands 20 years ago (my first stint living in China was in 2002) were like Japanese brands 40-50 years ago. And now they are where Japanese brands were 20-30 years ago. Some of them are becoming serious competitors: robo-vacs, 3D printers, drones, heatpumps, cars...many of those categories they are basically the only players ATM.

Cars are an important point: a $10k BYD is basically a $10k car and nice enough for what you paid for. The higher end options seem ok as well, and are on par with what you would get in the US. You buy an EV for $60k in China, you'll get a bit less than what you get in the US due to higher luxury taxes, but not that much less (definitely not like it used to be where a nice car would cost $100k+).

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#513

Post by alemanek »

bahmboo wrote: post #204
alemanek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just the beginning is my guess. If BYD or CATL commits to a factory /assembly in Canada I would expect limits to be raised on this as progress is made. Or if this goes well we could see limits raised as China drops Canadian product tariffs further.

My gut reaction is there is no way China is setting up vehicle manufacturing or assembly in Canada because the American President would go absolutely nuts. Canada is increasing ties and joint ventures with Canada but manufacturing would be a bridge too far for our little man in the White House.

It is getting to the point where lots of countries will stop caring how the US feels about things.

Between threatening, and some actual military intervention, with Iran, Venezuela, Greenland, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and itself the US is spread pretty thin at the moment. I think Canada will slowly open up to China and boil the frog if you will.

If they are smart about it then it will probably work out really well for them. They will need a new market for their oil, timber, ..etc since the US is no longer a reliable partner. This will take years but as long as China doesn’t do something dumb like invade Taiwan they can just sit back and win while the US is busy self destructing.

I say this as an American, also a veteran, who loves his country but hates what is currently going on.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#515

Post by AnimalMuppet »

joquarky wrote: post #508
insane_dreamer wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about the US, but China is even worse. It’s basically what the US is becoming but still further down the road of authoritarianism. So I’m not rooting for it. EU, Canada, Japan etc are a better allay this point.

The US just has better propaganda.

When the Chinese press criticizes Xi in the way that the non-Fox press criticize Trump, I'll start listening to such claims. Until then, you're showing either massive ignorance or reckless disregard of the truth.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#516

Post by _DeadFred_ »

mikkupikku wrote: post #494
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to tell someone who says ACTIVE, ONGOING, OFFICIAL NEGOTIATIONS that left the foreign country (who thought we were meme'ing until they met with our OFFICIALS) in tears, are just memes. Meaning to or not you are running defense for it, as news coverage/sane people have done continuously for Trump with the 'it's just Trump being Trump'. Don't do that. Don't let them do that. This is the United State P…

> I don't know what to tell someone who says ACTIVE, ONGOING, OFFICIAL NEGOTIATIONS that left the foreign country (who thought we were meme'ing until they met with our OFFICIALS) in tears, are just memes. You've got a legitimate reading comprehension problem right now, because I am not saying that, have not said that, and have explained this to you three times now. Kindly calm down and read.

You keep saying 'it's not going to happen because MAGA' and I keep responding with 'Official Government policy is that it's going to happen, maybe you should focus on official government policy'. Sorry that you can't understand my point. I get that you really want to focus on rando MAGAs. I think it more realistic that we focus on what our Governments actual position is, and events occurring around it (such as Greenlander's that thought it was all meme'ing breaking down in tears when they met with us and realized it wasn't), and I'm not going to let your 'but Maga feelz...' have equal weight to ACTUAL United States policy and current diplomacy. Keep posting, I'll keep calling it out.

Active United States diplomacy trumps random Maga feelz. I'm not waiting for time to tell. I'm calling bullshit out, today, now. You can keep waiting for things to work out.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#517

Post by themaninthedark »

ericmay wrote: post #265
toomuchtodo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah thee was never any competing with china, our industry just relies on our market using different values to purchase a car. This is patently false. The US could have competed with China if it had maintained investments spinning up battery manufacturing and downstream systems to build EVs at scale, while subsidizing EVs (fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year [1]) and…

This is a bad argument because you're assuming that the US needs to compete with China on EVs or that not competing results in somehow "losing". A car is a car, at the end of the day. Frankly, the best car is no car, but I'll leave that for some other discussion around transit. China has gone all-in on EVs because over the years they smartly built up the world's best rare earth refining capabilities and immense manuf…

>China has gone all-in on EVs because over the years they smartly built up the world's best rare earth refining capabilities

If by that you mean they propped up their industry and undercut everyone else until they went out of business, then increased prices to a point just below where it would be profitable for someone else to try again?

Then use their monopoly position to further their interests in other sectors?

Edit: Which I may note is probably the same strategy being applied here as well.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#518

Post by Aloisius »

throw0101d wrote: post #398
anvuong wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world?

> Lawfully? How many IPs have they stolen from universities and companies across the world? Probably about the same as the US when it was a developing nation. "How the United States Stopped Being a Pirate Nation and Learned to Love International Copyright": > From the time of the first federal copyright law in 1790 until enactment of the International Copyright Act in 1891, U.S. copyright law did not apply to works b…

Patents (what protects inventions) have nothing to do with copyright.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#519

Post by roncesvalles »

echelon wrote: post #230
throw0101d wrote: post #156

A Canadian satire site has the headline "Canada chooses lawful evil over chaotic evil": * https://thebeaverton.com/2026/01/canada-chooses-lawful-evil-... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon... Edit: A comment in /r/canada: > TBF I would much rather work for Lex Luthor than The Joker if I had to choose one.

I'm really into geopolitics, and it's clear to see what's happening from the US side. America still wants to play hegemon, but since Bretton Woods 2.0 didn't happen, they're going to lock up the entire North and South American continents from Chinese and Russian influence. And it'll be fierce. The next salvo is going to be US statehood for Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is already partisan support within those provi…

>There is already partisan support within those provinces, and Trump is going to offer money to push it. If that happens, Yukon and the Northwest Territories are next. (Side note: these are Republican voters, which gives Republicans the Senate for years to come.)

Disagree.

1. If any Canadian province becomes an American state (with electoral votes), the Republicans won't win an election for the next 100 years. Even if it's Alberta.

2. Alberta likely won't secede unless they get full statehood. Nobody wants to be another Puerto Rico.

3. I think if you did a referendum in Alberta today (even with full US statehood on offer), the votes to secede would number over 10%.

Remember, Quebec in 1995: 50.58% voted to stay, with a turnout of 93.52%. And they were all but ready to leave to the point of engaging in IRA-style terrorism.

Also, the famous failure of Brexit all but precludes any such referendums from getting serious wind in our lifetimes.

Re: Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

#520

Post by like_any_other »

nullocator wrote: post #490
like_any_other wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US killed a million Iraqis not that long ago. There are an estimated 1 million Uyghurs in concentration camps currently [1], but you are correct - neither that, nor the invasion of Tibet, nor whatever process they used to turn a diverse part of a continent into a Han ethnostate [2], or block the NYTimes app from their phones, involved dropping bombs on foreign soil. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution…

There are ~ 2 million black men incarcerated in the united states, many engaging in what is effectively modern slavery. I don't think we can effectively weigh human rights atrocities between nations, but the U.S. is certainly not "better" than China in many respects.

I was not "weighing between nations", I was responding to: "I think this "China evil" framing is a smear"

> There are ~ 2 million black men incarcerated in the united states

In 2019, whites+hispanics committed 0.92x as many homicides as blacks [1], but their 2021 incarceration numbers were 1.72x that of blacks (0.75x for non-hispanic whites alone) [2]. Using homicide to estimate criminality, because it is immune to over-policing.

So, per crime committed, blacks are less, not more, likely to be jailed. But it sure looks pretty damning if you ignore behavior, and don't compare to others!

Now maybe you still think the US incarcerates too many people in general, regardless of race. Well, then I welcome you to calculate the ratio of the incarceration and homicide rate, and compare the US one to that of some other countries.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

Post reply on HN