Chinese EVs Won’t Save Canada’s Auto Industry. They Will End It | The Walrus
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The deal is a blueprint for industrial surrender

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Last year’s numbers for China’s electric vehicle industry tell the story: production rose 10 percent and revenues 7 percent, but profit margins fell to their lowest level in a decade. Production incentives lock original equipment manufacturers into a destructive cycle of hypercompetition called “involution” in which they impose even more crushing payment terms on their suppliers. Driven to overproduce beyond what Chinese consumers can buy, they dump excess output in foreign markets where they at least have some hope of making the profits they need to gain an edge on domestic competitors and keep factories humming to please Chinese Communist Party overseers. Add a significantly undervalued yuan that makes their cars artificially cheap in dollar terms, and you have an incubator for global manufacturing titans like battery maker CATL.

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By all means, follow the money. Just understand that with Chinese EVs, it leads to a dead end for Canadian automotive manufacturing and could ultimately trigger a slow death spiral for much of Canadian industry. All too often, I hear Canadians saying we have no choice now. What they really mean is that the easy path is blocked, and they don’t like the harder road. But that’s the one that leads to longer-term prosperity and sovereignty through developing our own supply chains and ecosystems.

  • ScottyOP
    29·
    4 days ago

    The autoworkers here are just pawns.

    Do you have an idea what autoworkers for Chinese companies are? They are literally slaves.

    As the article says,

    That’s the one [path] that leads to longer-term prosperity and sovereignty through developing our own supply chains and ecosystems.

    • marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today
      1·
      1 day ago

      Do you have an idea what autoworkers for Chinese companies are? They are literally slaves.

      That’s one way to describe 75-95% automated factories with the remaining labor being middle to upper-middle class fabrication and robotics jobs, all of which require at least a Bachelor’s degree.

      The story you’re thinking of, really confusing for everything, is that BYD was investigated for a partner company they used for construction a Brazilian site having allegedly ‘slave like’ conditions. Because Brazil is hoping for a bigger payout, they’re suing BYD as well as the actual construction company that was in charge of labor and, well, construction.

      Chinese people have guaranteed worker’s rights that are better defined and protected than Canadian worker’s rights. Mainly because Canada fell for McCarthyism and is deepening its dependence on Capital, which is antithetical to the goals of 99.999% of the populace.

      As the article says,

      Canada is free to develop its own EVs. In fact a Canadian company is desperately fighting the Canadian government for the right to fucking make EVs

      But that’s not what this pushback is. This is American and Japanese automakers putting pressure on your representatives whom they’ve bribed. TO lower your choices. Increase your prices. And lower competition so they can continue to rake you over for every single penny they can get out of you, and ultimately remove from the Canadian economy.

      If you’re not going to support local companies and you’re not going to build your own, why not at least have cheap EVs instead of just giving all that margin to the people currently trying to make Alberta secede.

        • marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today
          1·
          1 day ago

          Can you please fucking read your propaganda before trying to make claims you don’t understand?

          Because you just agreed with me that it’s not BYD. At all. Even slightly. It’s not even a Chinese company.

          Unless you believe the following companies are Chinese: LÉVAI-SECURITY Ltd., Plusz Kéz Ltd., and AIM Construction Hungary Ltd.

          Because this is a construction site. Not a factory in use. It is a construction site using mostly local companies and workers to do construction. Because that’s usually the law in most countries. BYD has been fined in Brazil because “it should be supervising what’s happening on the site,” because some politicians have no concept of how a construction site functions and think that Mr John BYD himself is inspecting each day laborer’s balls every night. A misconception you too seem to hold.

          • ScottyOP
            11·
            1 day ago

            It is a construction site using mostly local companies and workers to do construction.

            No, as always, BYD is using migrant workers from Asia. In case of this Hungarian site, there were some 10,000 Asian workers employed (their passports were confiscated, they were not paid adequately, they worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, they lived in containers under inhumane and catastrophic conditions, …).

            Btw, this Hungarian company, which is controlled by BYD, is the same that is responsible for the BYD factory in Brazil, just for your information.

            [Edit typo.]