- cross-posted to:
- electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
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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.
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Canada doesn’t have an auto industry. We haven’t in generations. We don’t own our factories, we don’t own the caar companies, and we have no control over what is produced or if it makes sense.
The autoworkers here are just pawns. An expendible extension of the US and Japanese auto industries, which have both made awful choices anf gambles in recent decades.
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.
Canada has industries…sure. But all these industries are more or less dominated or owned by foreign companies/countries/institutions etc. In Canada, anything is up for sale as long you know how to lobby your way through (usually with enough capital).
Also anything that is ‘Canadian owned’ usually turns into something like - “the owners become so big, that they are multinationals and likely have a base in another country”. We can keep touting ‘Canadian sovereignty’, but it’s really empty when corporations have no concept of what a social fabric of what ‘Canada’ is.
Even the big 6 banks, the big telecoms, the big grocery chains, who are homegrown, like to screw us.
The real target is not the industries, but the approach to monetary policy in Canada, that overwhelmingly incentivizes capitalistic behaviour. Canada is extremely weak when it comes to reigning in corporate power - ask yourself when was the last time anti-trust was enforced on big, dominant multi-billion dollar companies?
Until monetary policy changes or heavy regulation at the federal level, with the province in lock-step, expect nothing to change.
Canada has industries…sure. But all these industries are more or less dominated or owned by foreign companies/countries/institutions etc. In Canada, anything is up for sale
Do you have any data for this?
Which part? The part that industries are foreign owned, have a significant stake and/or anything in Canada is up for sale? I guess in hindsight the sentence is loaded. Ones that come to my mind would be the natural resources and energy sector in BC as an example that would have significant amounts of foreign ownership. BC itself would prefer to ship out raw materials for cheap rather than have added value processes done locally. This extends to the energy sector too.
It’s a compelling argument, but China is a juggernaut of electrification, while the incumbent automakers are mostly avoiding or ignoring the issue (Hyundai/kia and VW aside), preferring to keep their profit margins high with SUVs - a failing strategy in the face of customer demand for affordable EVs.
What’s the 5 year cost of a Corolla vs a Dolphin?
What is the Canadian - or any automobile manufacturing country - doing to help re-skill workers to compete? Is there any investment beyond cheap loans and grants to megacorps that pull out at the last minute?
The walrus should be asked to name a Canadian auto company. Like what car do I buy, to support a Canadian-head quartered auto company. It’s USA car companies, with Canadian outposts, where Canadians work making US car companies money. The USA doesn’t want to let us build their cars anymore anyhow.
So who cares if Chinese car companies want to take over as the outpost owners. Chinese car companies are talking about building cars in Canada, likely with more automation involved, granted. But the auto industry has already said they can’t compete with their old approach anyhow. So ANY company that wants to build viable cars in Canada, will likely need to automate / robo-size their factories.
Is it a Risk? Sure. But while we can point at Chinese car companies as a POTENTIAL threat to Canadian sovereignty, US car companies are a vulnerability that the USA is ACTIVELY EXPLOITING to undermine Canadian sovereignty. It’s like seeing someone who’s getting raped, and telling them not to try and flee out the building/fight back, because “You never know, might be another rapist outside!”. Stupid fucking media.
As this and many other reports (as well as China’s history) clearly show, China’s threat isn’t “potential.” The Chinese government is actively undermining its ‘partners’ across the globe, and Canada is no exemption.
China is also a decisive supporter of Russia in its war against Ukraine, another sign of China’s hostility against Western democracies.
Still not on par with the USA running influence campaigns and using a plant in the Alberta government to try and literally break apart the country. Still not on par with openly declaring economic warfare against us, and upending trade agreements/standards based on totally bullshit ‘reasons’ like “fentanyl!”.
The USA is openly hostile to western democracies. The USA overtly supports Russian puppet candidates in European elections. The USA props up far right xenophobic fascist politicians. The USA’s biggest corporation leaders do Nazi salutes on international stages, and speak at far-right rallies, and publish techno-fascist manifestos. The USA’s VP literally goes to other countries to speak at far-right campaign rallies. The USA doesn’t support Ukraine in the Ukraine / Russia conflict, and tends to push peace terms that explicitly benefit Russia. The USA insults Ukraine regularly, disrupts shipments, and has been at best a tepid supporter via arms sales. The USA’s director of national intelligence used Russian propaganda, inventing cities and claiming they had biolabs which didn’t exist, in releases even within the last month.
I’m not saying China’s free from risk. Sure, there’s risk in doing business with any global hegemon. But at present, the USA represents a greater risk to Canada than China, in part because our stuff had become so integrated, prior to the USA going rogue. Like Risk is usually defined as the impact of an event multiplied by the chance of that event occurring on an annual basis. Chinese EVs have a far smaller impact/likelihood, than Trump walking away from CUSMA / applying tariffs across the board to Canadian goods. Which is a greater risk, that China may build infrastructure in Canada to start surveilling Canadians more via EVs, or that the USA is already surveilling Canadians via our dependence on Google / US tech companies who are actively exploiting our lack of privacy to fuel AI – one case is a “maybe this will occur”, the other is “this is already occurring on a routine basis”; so one is super frequent, and impacts like 99% of Canadians… while the other is mostly theoretical. The USA is, without a doubt, objectively the bigger risk/threat.
Having lived through the 90s, in which the future I was promised (checks notes) got shipped to China in the name of seducing everyone to betray the local hardware store and go to Walmart instead
This take has a goldfish’s memory.
As an American, I hope Canadians see through the false dilemma being proposed and learn from the abuse NAFTA and only-quarterly-results-matter thinking got the American middle class in manufacturing and consumption; it almost no longer exists and has been deflated rapidly. To say nothing of the clear lessons about off-shoring critical infrastructure, I hope cooler heads prevail and Canada maintains its sovereignty.
If we lose the auto industry i suggest we ban the sale of American cars in Canada permanently and buy from anywhere else.
Not everything needs to be made here, we can focus on what we’re good at and purchase cars from China who makes good cars
