[HN Gopher] Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 8...
___________________________________________________________________
Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic
content rule
Author : abduhl
Score : 606 points
Date : 2025-04-29 20:59 UTC (1 days ago)
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| rectang wrote:
| I have zero faith in "free market" ideologues, because what we
| actually get when they gain power is just favoritism for "free
| market" ideologues.
| aswanson wrote:
| Same. This era has exposed them as the shameless hypocrites
| they are.
| resters wrote:
| There is not and has never been any trace of free speech or
| free market "ideology" from Trump. Perhaps as a talking point
| but never in any policy or action. Trump is the anti-
| libertarian, severely authoritarian and moving things toward
| a centrally planned economy!
| kristopolous wrote:
| It was always about power accumulation.
|
| Integrity, honesty, and principles is literally what they
| mean by the word "woke" when they harass people for being it.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| > Integrity, honesty, and principles is literally what they
| mean by the word "woke"
|
| No it isn't, and saying things like this just adds noise.
| What they mean by the word "woke" is a worldview that
| delegitimises the things they aspire to or worked hard for
| (status based on power based on individual agency), and
| prioritises other forms of social currency (victimisation
| by external forces) in a way they find performative.
| dboreham wrote:
| Didn't you just say exactly the same thing as the parent
| comment?
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| I can't tell if this is trolling.
|
| If you genuinely don't think that each side has
| principles, which in fact overlap considerably, you
| aren't very curious about the world.
|
| ETA: In case you are genuinely interested in learning
| about how liberal and conservative people differ
| psychologically, Jonathan Haidt is a very good person to
| read.
| kristopolous wrote:
| One groups principles are hierarchy, control, and
| cruelty.
|
| Arbitrary corrupt incompetency is what they're looking
| for.
|
| Caring about other, having respect, being sensitive,
| these are all 'woke' things from the "great awakening"
| cult.
|
| I want more affordable college and the people in charge
| want to send people like me to concentration camps
| through kangaroo courts. This is the difference.
| supplied_demand wrote:
| The people who go on about "woke" are the most
| performative victims of all. Invoking the word "woke" for
| things they don't like is a form of that performative
| victimization.
| intermerda wrote:
| You can extend the "free market ideologues" to include more
| groups such as those who were very concerned about free speech
| for exactly four years from 2021-2024. Same people were
| concerned about politicization of justice department, but only
| when certain Presidents are in office. Same goes for "respect
| for constitution". "Family values" was abandoned quite a while
| ago.
|
| Wilhoit's Law has never been truer.
| sidibe wrote:
| Can't forget being "for the rule of law".
| matwood wrote:
| Back the blue, unless of course it's the Capitol Police.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Or, in my city, the cops who blew the whistle on other
| cops for electrocuting people's testicles as a means of
| extracting forced confessions. The "back the blue" crowd
| absolutely hates those guys.
| rayiner wrote:
| Most of these examples are good ones, but this one
| actually isn't. I don't know what part of the country
| you're from, but in the south violence against the
| government is treated as distinct from violence against
| fellow citizens. I don't want to debate the substance of
| the view, I'm just pointing out that it's not actually
| contradictory like you're implying. I grew up in virginia
| when it was a red state, my first reaction would've been
| relief that it was still possible. But it also would've
| been my first reaction 25 years ago when I was a Gore
| supporter in a Bush county. Jefferson's tree of liberty
| and all that.
|
| I suspect this divergence comes from people who have
| internalized the 1960s civil rights movement view, and
| whose chief concern is the government protecting
| minorities from the majority. Meanwhile, the more
| traditional Anglo-american view is chiefly concerned with
| protecting the majority from the government.
| mmooss wrote:
| > in the south violence against the government is treated
| as distinct from violence against fellow citizens
|
| From what I see and know, among conservative supporters
| violence against police is strongly condemned and to be
| harshly punished, as is any form of protest that is
| arguably the slightest bit disruptive.
|
| > chiefly concerned with protecting the majority from the
| government.
|
| In fact, by their actions, they make the government -
| police and prosecutors - free to abuse people in almost
| any way with no reprocussions. One of the latest Trump
| executive orders even tells the DoJ to go after any legal
| authority prosecuting police.
|
| And by their actions, they are chiefly concerned with
| using the government to persecute and suppress anyone
| they disagree with.
|
| > 60s ... traditional
|
| It's a nice tactic to try to attribute those who disagree
| to a passing fancy, and your beliefs to 'tradition'.
| rayiner wrote:
| > From what I see and know, among conservative supporters
| violence against police is strongly condemned and to be
| harshly punished, as is any form of protest that is
| arguably the slightest bit disruptive.
|
| The question is who the police are being deployed to
| protect, private citizens or the government itself.
| Ordinarily police are deployed to protect citizens from
| criminals, so it's bad to attack the police. But the
| Capitol police are protecting government officials from
| citizens, so attacking them is less bad. That's the view.
|
| > 60s ... traditional It's a nice tactic to try to
| attribute those who disagree to a passing fancy, and your
| beliefs to 'tradition'.
|
| The assertion that the civil rights era signaled a major
| shift in views about the relationship between individuals
| and the government is hardly controversial. There's a
| book on this idea (probably more than one):
| https://lawliberty.org/did-the-civil-rights-constitution-
| dis....
|
| Indeed, folks in the progressive left share more or less
| the same premise. If you talk to a progressive about
| foundational principles like federalism and limited
| government, the chief response is that those ideas were
| championed by our forebearers so that the government
| wouldn't be powerful enough to protect minorities from
| the majority. The point of disagreement is about whether
| the new approach is better than the traditional one.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Today, when you talk about foundational principles like
| federalism, limited government, etc., the chief response
| is that those are incompatible with having a government
| powerful enough to protect minorities from the majority.
|
| We live in different bubbles, it seems. I haven't heard
| that argument. I have heard that 'states rights' is
| intended to workaround various federal rules, including
| civil rights.
|
| The foundation is that "all ... are creatd equal", which
| includes all members of minorities. The Bill of Rights is
| there to protect unpopular minorities from the majority.
| The majority can always protect itself by changing the
| law.
|
| Edit:
|
| > https://lawliberty.org/did-the-civil-rights-
| constitution-dis....
|
| I skimmed through this. The source is anti-left; of
| course they are going to give characterizations like
| that. And look at this piece of doublespeak:
|
| _When I talk about civil rights, the reader should not
| get the impression that I'm friendly to segregation, or
| hostile to the civil rights movement as it existed for
| the whole of the 20th century up until 1964. In fact, I'm
| very much in sympathy with the claims to an agitation for
| equal citizenship that went on up till then, but there
| were problems in the Civil Rights Act that were not
| evident at first._
|
| They won't say they are hostile to the Civil Rights Act
| and every solution to problems like segregation,
| oppression of minorities and women, etc. And they don't
| offer any other solution. They are "very much in sympathy
| with the claims to an agitation", however. :)
| rayiner wrote:
| > I haven't heard that argument. I have heard that
| 'states rights' is intended to workaround various federal
| rules, including civil rights.
|
| That's the same argument from the other direction. The
| federal government, as designed, wasn't powerful enough
| to protect minorities from the majority. Those rules
| entailed a major expansion of federal power. Indeed, you
| can see the seams in the civil rights laws. For example,
| Title VI's ban on discrimination in public education is
| implemented through conditions on federal funding.
| Because the federal government can't legislate such a ban
| directly.
|
| > The foundation is that "all ... are creatd equal",
| which includes all members of minorities. The Bill of
| Rights is there to protect unpopular minorities from the
| majority.
|
| That's exactly the civil rights era retconning of the
| constitution I'm talking about. The statement that "all
| men are created equal" has nothing to do with minorities.
| Read the context right before and right after:
| https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-
| transcrip.... The statement is about self determination:
| the right of a people to determine their own form of
| government. The equality being referred to is the
| equality between Britain and its monarch and the
| colonists.
|
| The founders said almost nothing about protecting
| minorities from the majority, except perhaps in the
| context of religious freedom. Their concern was exactly
| the opposite: that a minority cabal in the government
| would oppress the majority.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The statement that "all men are created equal" has
| nothing to do with minorities. Read the context right
| before and right after ...
|
| The context before and after is quite well known; I don't
| have to read it. What they say is that 'all men are
| created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with
| inalienable rights, among those life, liberty, and the
| pursuit of happiness. And to protect those rights,
| governments are instituted among men.' (from memory,
| probably a few errors).
|
| All means all - minorities included. The equality is for
| "all men"; rights are for "all men". Nothing is said
| about Britain and its monarch, except in your dreams of
| rationalizing oppression. The language is plain and
| clear, part of the reason it is so well-known.
| roenxi wrote:
| That seems inconsistent with the history of slavery in
| the US. The evidence is that the people writing that
| didn't actually mean "all men" - if I look at https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United... it
| suggests 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of
| Independence owned slaves. That seems like strong
| evidence that the literal text was being interpreted with
| implicit caveats.
|
| A document cannot simultaneously holds all minorities to
| be equal with a right to liberty and accommodate slavery
| as it existed in the 1700s. Some of the signers may
| personally have disagreed with slavery but it seems
| difficult to say that the document itself represented a
| repudiation of the practice.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Their concern was exactly the opposite: that a minority
| cabal in the government would oppress the majority._
|
| That's a unique take fundamentally at odds with the very
| concept of the Senate.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The source is anti-left; of course they are going to
| give characterizations like that.
|
| But I think leftists would share the same premise! They
| would phrase it differently, they'd say something like:
| "the founders were white men who wanted to limit
| government power so the government wouldn't be powerful
| enough to do things like end slavery or take their
| property." But that's the same argument. The traditional
| view is a small government of enumerated powers. The
| post-civil rights view is a powerful federal government
| that can protect minorities from democracy.
|
| > They won't say they are hostile to the Civil Rights Act
| and every solution to problems like segregation,
| oppression of minorities and women, etc. And they don't
| offer any other solution.
|
| That doesn't logically follow. The analogous mistaken
| argument would be saying that those who insist on due
| process for deportations must support illegal
| immigration, because "they don't offer any other
| solution." Of course that argument is wrong. Those people
| simply aren't willing to compromise on due process to
| address illegal immigration.
|
| Similarly, you can be unwilling to compromise on
| federalism and limited government, even if it's to
| address oppression of minorities. That doesn't mean you
| support such oppression, simply that you prioritize other
| values more highly.
| mmooss wrote:
| > That doesn't mean you support such oppression, simply
| that you prioritize other values more highly.
|
| Yes it does, in fact. And while people can try to
| doublespeak and have everyone parsing it out, all that
| matters is where you end up.
| rayiner wrote:
| Even if you think that all that matters is "where you end
| up," your logic still doesn't work. Adhering to
| principles of federalism and limited government also
| changes other aspects of society, in ways that people
| might deem desirable.
| mmooss wrote:
| A solution that leaves people under cruel, evil
| oppression for generations tells you everything you need
| to know about the people supporting it.
| oa335 wrote:
| > The traditional view is a small government of
| enumerated powers.. The post-civil rights view is a
| powerful federal government that can protect minorities
| from democracy.
|
| James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United
| States, wrote:
|
| > "This view of the subject must particularly recommend a
| proper federal system ...[or else] oppressive
| combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best
| security, under the republican forms, for the rights of
| every class of citizens, will be diminished... Justice is
| the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It
| ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be
| obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."
|
| As well as : > "In a society under the forms of which the
| stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the
| weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a
| state of nature, where the weaker individual is not
| secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in
| the latter state, even the stronger individuals are
| prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to
| submit to a government which may protect the weak as well
| as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more
| powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a
| like motive, to wish for a government which will protect
| all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful."
|
| As well as:
|
| > "It is of great importance in a republic not only to
| guard the society against the oppression of its rulers,
| but to guard one part of the society against the
| injustice of the other part. Different interests
| necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a
| majority be united by a common interest, the rights of
| the minority will be insecure."
| fallingknife wrote:
| Prior to the civil rights movement it was assumed that by
| freedom of association, it was beyond the scope of the
| government to prevent things like segregation by private
| citizens. e.g. if a business owner did not want to serve
| black customers, then that is his right. So yes, someone
| who does not support the government having that power to
| infringe on freedom of association will not support any
| government intervention to prevent voluntary segregation.
|
| This is why he distinguishes between the civil rights
| movement before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was
| only concerned with preventing government enforced
| segregation.
| mmooss wrote:
| He opposes any known solution to the terrible evil of
| segregation, and doesn't care to offer any other. If you
| stand by while someone is drowning, eating a hot dog, you
| can claim 'I do support agitation for drowning victims',
| but the facts are plain.
| rayiner wrote:
| Even in your analogy, that just means you're not willing
| to jeopardize yourself in any way to help, not that you
| affirmatively want the other person to drown. In fact
| they recommend that you don't try to help drowning
| victims, because they often cause their rescuers to drown
| as well. More generally, not caring about other people
| isn't the same as affirmatively wanting to harm them.
| mmooss wrote:
| > that just means you're not willing to jeopardize
| yourself in any way to help, not that you affirmatively
| want the other person to drown.
|
| In life, in practice, there isn't meaningful difference.
| They still drown because you abandoned your
| responsibilities.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _who the police are being deployed to protect, private
| citizens or the government itself_
|
| I must have missed the outpouring of Republican support
| for the black lives matter protests when they were
| attacked by police riots or when police stations were
| attacked. No private citizens being protected there, and
| the protesting was directly against government oppression
| (including of the 2nd amendment even!).
| rayiner wrote:
| Republicans don't think that police using lethal force
| against people with long criminal records--which come
| from terrorizing fellow citizens--is "government
| oppression." That doesn't describe every person that was
| the subject of the protests, but certainly describes the
| people who became the figureheads.
| mindslight wrote:
| That's some high and mighty rhetoric, but it doesn't
| apply at all to Kenneth Walker (whose second amendment
| rights were trampled on) or Breonna Taylor (who died
| because of it). So once again, did I just miss the
| outpouring of Republican support for those specific
| protests or what?
| rectang wrote:
| The US Civil War was fought over protecting minorities
| from private slaveowners, so the federal government's
| role didn't fundamentally change in the 1960s.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| > as is any form of protest that is arguably the
| slightest bit disruptive.
|
| Unless it's the Jan 6th protesters.
|
| Or the so-called "trucker convoy" across the border up
| here in Canada. (Convinced half the new-found hostility
| to us comes from this incident somehow getting on the
| radar of people who normally barely acknowledge Canada as
| existing)
|
| In the end it's very much tribal, and little to do with
| the substance of issues and more to do with perceived
| teams.
| soared wrote:
| Is this saying the viewpoint is that violence against the
| government (capitol police) is supported, violence
| against local police is not supported (back the blue) and
| violence against citizens is supported (back the blue)?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| The guy's arguing all over the place. Not much of it
| makes logical sense unless you stop looking for logic in
| the arguments.
|
| Suffice to say, like most ideologues, the beliefs make
| sense when analyzed in accordance with the logic rules of
| the holder of the beliefs.
|
| Think of the beliefs being discussed more as doctrinal
| tenets of a pseudo religious sect, and you get a little
| closer to the thinking of the adherents.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| Their beliefs are fairly simple.
|
| Members of the in-group have divine right and shouldn't
| be bound by laws. Anyone who opposes them is the enemy
| and should be harmed or destroyed.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I tend to think of "rule of law" as describing the
| fairness of the courts. But then you need effective law
| enforcement for the courts to mean anything.
| kace91 wrote:
| Freedom of religion as well, and the age and mental acuity of
| the president. And handling of secret information. And being
| involved in foreign conflicts.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| As a 20th century political theorist once said, "the specific
| political distinction to which political actions and motives
| can be reduced is that between friend and enemy." If you hear
| someone talking high-minded rhetoric and idealism but they
| won't make a friend or an enemy over it, they don't believe
| it.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I have come to believe that many people's political attitudes
| can be boiled down to a single uniting element: an
| overwhelming fear that other people might do to them the
| kinds of things that they would absolutely do to other people
| if given half a chance.
| 3np wrote:
| This line of thinking is increasing and dangerous (and no
| doubt intentional from at least some of the popular
| examples that come to mimd). It will make it that much
| harder for authentic candidates to talk about legitimate
| change and ideology.
| XorNot wrote:
| When your platform is "free lunches for school children"
| no one has to worry about the devastating consequences of
| someone doing it to you.
| pavlov wrote:
| Many of these people literally believe that "free lunches
| for school children" inevitably turns into "those
| socialists will force me to eat bugs in an Orwellian
| nightmare".
|
| For them, Sweden and North Korea are on the same spectrum
| of communism and will end up the same.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Meanwhile they somehow don't see wealthy and powerful
| people using their political connections to enrich
| themselves by garnering favorable treatment from powerful
| government officials as an essential part of how things
| worked in the USSR.
|
| The problem with the saying "those who forget history are
| doomed to repeat it" is that a lot of people haven't
| forgotten history; they simply never learned it in the
| first place.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Is that like projection?
| yapyap wrote:
| Either that or just getting pleasure from doing it and
| getting the opposite of pleasure when on the receiving end.
| fallingknife wrote:
| A very rational fear for anyone who has any knowledge of
| history. There aren't any good or bad guys in this fight.
| goatlover wrote:
| The bad guys are the one in power right now trying to
| turn the US democracy into an autocracy, following the
| Project2025 playbook and what other autocrats have done
| like Putin. This isn't a normal administration.
| leereeves wrote:
| Funny thing about the fictional "Wilhoit's Law". It's not a
| law of science. It's nothing but an Internet snipe from a
| blog post by a music composer. It wasn't even written while
| the political scientist Frank Wilhoit was alive.
|
| https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-
| conservative...
|
| It's just half of a truism: people apply different standards
| to "their side". As true of the left wing as the right.
| zzrrt wrote:
| Being commonly misattributed (which GP did not do!) doesn't
| make it fictional, nor does coming from a composer make it
| automatically wrong or useless.
| leereeves wrote:
| It's not relevant that the quote came from a composer
| specifically. It's relevant that it didn't come from
| someone with any expertise about politics. Yet it's been
| elevated to the status of a "law" by people who just
| really like the way it insults their opponents.
| mindslight wrote:
| Don't forget Kenneth Walker's second amendment rights. You
| could understand some failing to live up to their values if
| they were minor issues, but it's like _all of their core
| issues_. About the only thing that seems consistent is
| wanting to harm their fellow citizens that they perceive as
| different.
| istjohn wrote:
| Wilhoit's Law:
|
| > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
|
| > There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not
| bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not
| protect.
|
| https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-
| progre...
| parrit wrote:
| That doesn't apply to Trump. s/law/what actually goes down/
| simiones wrote:
| Trump and his administration have explicitly directly
| claimed that they _are_ the law, at least in as much as
| the executive branch should believe. They gave an
| executive order instructing every employee and official
| of the executive that they shall wholly and exclusively
| defer to the interpretation of the law as dictated by the
| president.
| legitster wrote:
| Trump was never actually a "free market" idealogue. And the GOP
| officially dropped any mentions of it from their party platform
| a few years ago.
|
| If anything, they are doing exactly what they promised. They
| were against globalism and elites and international agreements
| and governance and they are being true to their words.
| fullshark wrote:
| The "libertarians" who are in bed with Trump however...
| linguae wrote:
| The behavior I've seen from so many libertarians from 2017
| onward, especially during the pandemic, January 6th, and
| Trump's reelection, has revealed so much to me and has made
| me rethink my libertarianism. So many libertarians, when
| pressed, would gladly align themselves with the far-right
| for their own benefit, whether to accelerate the
| destruction of the state they hate so much, or whether
| because, deep down inside, they agree with the far-right on
| social views, and libertarianism was simply a cover for
| them to promote abhorrent social views.
|
| I've read a lot of Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell back in
| the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. I also voted for
| Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 primary and regular
| elections. I used to consider myself a Rothbardian-style
| libertarian. While I still view the Austrian School of
| Economics with high regard, my biggest problem with
| Rothbardianism is Rothbard's 1990s turn to the right before
| his passing around 1995, and its deleterious effect on
| libertarianism. Rothbard supported "right-wing populism" as
| a way for the libertarian movement to advance. Rothbard
| supported Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential run (though
| Rothbard would fall out with Buchanan over the latter's
| support for protectionism), and Rothbard even went as far
| as to support the notorious David Duke's gubernatorial
| campaign in Louisiana. This right-wing populism strategy
| led to the paleolibertarian movement, which is limited-to-
| no government fused with a culturally conservative outlook.
| However, it's this cultural conservative mindset that has
| led so many libertarians to be so enamored with Trump.
| Trump, after all, is a much more bombastic version of
| Buchanan, who has a similar ideology. It seems
| protectionism can be overlooked when people view
| "wokeness," and not a breakdown of rule of law, is the
| biggest problem in American society...
|
| Ironically, it was Rothbard himself who complained earlier
| in his career about right-wingers who "hated the left more
| than they hated the state," yet so many libertarians today
| are willing to embrace the far-right because they view the
| left as enemy #1. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a
| post or article sympathetic to Pinochet, I'd probably have
| enough for a nice MacBook Pro.
|
| I realized over the years that while I'm still very
| skeptical of government power, I don't hate the state, and
| I prefer good government over chaos. I value liberal
| institutions and feel they should be defended.
| rectang wrote:
| Thanks for the thoughtful post with the rich historical
| references. For what it's worth, I experienced a drift
| which is the mirror image of yours, starting left,
| developing my appreciation for the necessity of economic
| competition, and then coming to grips with the
| limitations of government intervention.
| jrs235 wrote:
| Are you me?
|
| Although I'm more Georgist these days.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I think Georgism is a pretty limited position, not a
| complete framework. I do agree with land value tax and
| tax on natural resource. But I'm not sure its the
| complete solution.
|
| Also not sure if the idea of paying out people from this
| tax makes much sense. Arguable it made more sense when he
| wrote it, before the social state.
| sneak wrote:
| Perhaps it's the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, but I find
| it hard to consider anyone enamored with Trump to be
| legitimately libertarian. The guy basically regards
| himself as a dictator and his edicts are mega-
| authoritarian.
|
| To me it is logically impossible to reconcile the two
| positions. You simply can't be a pro-authoritarian
| libertarian.
|
| You can't really espouse libertarian values while being
| what is coded as "culturally conservative", because that
| worldview demands conformity and the mechanisms to
| enforce same, which are inherently anti-liberty.
|
| A good rule of thumb is that anyone who had any issue
| whatsoever with _other people_ wearing masks during the
| pandemic are pretty obviously not pro-individual-liberty
| and just factional culture brawlers.
|
| There seems to be a lot of definiton drift in the term
| "libertarian", and that seems wrong to me. (The same
| thing happened to my other primary identifying social
| group, "techno". I spend a lot of time yelling at clouds
| now.)
| linguae wrote:
| One of the biggest challenges with the libertarian
| movement is that it attracts people who like
| libertarianism not because of the non-aggression
| principle, but because it enables them to legally engage
| in certain activities.
|
| An example would be how Barry Goldwater, a proto-
| libertarian, was able to win some solidly Democratic Deep
| South states in 1964, the first to do so since
| Reconstruction. It wasn't because those Southerners had a
| libertarian moment. No, it was because Goldwater opposed
| the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although Goldwater
| supported civil rights and voted for previous civil
| rights legislation, he felt that the 1964 act was an
| unconstitutional infringement on the rights of private
| businesses. However, there were many voters in the South
| who were swayed to vote for Goldwater not because they
| were libertarians, but because they supported
| discrimination, and despite their support for Democrats
| from Reconstruction through the New Deal, anti-
| discrimination laws were enough for them to break nearly
| a century of party loyalty.
|
| During the pandemic, I was dismayed by anti-vaxxers and
| anti-maskers who used libertarian rhetoric to engage in
| reckless behavior that harmed not only themselves, but
| others, especially the immunocompromised. It's one thing
| to be saddened and taken aback by the extraordinary
| powers governments at various levels took during the
| pandemic. Unfortunately, any type of principled
| opposition to government overreach during the pandemic
| was overwhelmed by all sorts of selfish, reckless acts. I
| was completely dismayed by the behavior I've witnessed,
| disappointed not only with various levels of government,
| but also with some conservatives and libertarians who
| managed to make COVID a "culture war" matter.
|
| It turned out many of the libertarians I've looked up to
| were just very articulate right wingers. When push comes
| to shove, they'd excuse people like Trump, Le Pen, Putin,
| and the like, justifying them under the guise that we'd
| be worse off under a standard-issue Democrat or a social
| democrat like Sanders or AOC. I'm not a Democrat by any
| means, but the past decade has shown the damage that
| MAGA-style right-wing populism could do to a country. I'm
| not a Bernie Sanders supporter, but Bernie or even AOC
| would be less destructive to society than Trump and his
| allies.
|
| I am completely saddened by the culture wars and how we
| are unable to solve structural economic and political
| problems in America because we are mired in the culture
| wars. This is tearing our country apart and may make the
| world worse off as other nations fight to fill in a power
| void made available by a descending United States.
| senderista wrote:
| I've always been amazed that Goldwater's Jewishness
| wasn't an issue with his right-wing supporters. Did they
| just not know?
| jfengel wrote:
| In the US, "libertarian" has come to mean "maximum
| liberty for me, which means you are on your own".
|
| The rich, like the poor, are free to live under bridges
| and starve.
| psalaun wrote:
| The free wolf, free to enter the henhouse of free hens
| watwut wrote:
| Libertarianism is essentially "more powerful and richer
| people should not be restricted in any way whatsoever".
| If your freedom or rights are limited by someone who is
| not directly government, libertarian answer is "that is
| their freedom you dont matter, government should protect
| their right to mistreat you".
| sneak wrote:
| I think this not only a strawman, but it is also
| literally factually incorrect.
|
| Libertarianism is very simple and easy to dismiss out of
| hand if you believe this about it.
| mindslight wrote:
| I'm right there with you, friend. I still consider myself
| a 'libertarian' though. Just always with a small 'l'
| because the party is garbage, as the ideals are primed to
| spread corporate propaganda like wildfire once someone
| buys into the fallacy that coercion by non-governmental
| entities is definitionally impossible.
|
| When I was younger I'd do online political tests and
| invariably come back with left-libertarian. Then the
| detour into cpunks, ancap, and the "two axis political
| chart" made me see myself unaligned and see a lot of
| utility in rightism. But that started to fall apart when
| it became clear that fundamentalism doesn't address the
| big picture of emergent layers of complexity. Ironically
| it was Moldbug's writing that nudged my transition back
| to seeing myself as latently left-aligned. No matter how
| much you'd like to, you can't fight thermodynamics!
| panick21_ wrote:
| Something like that happened to me, but I'm European, and
| I never had many illusions about much American
| libertarianism. It was clearly funded by people who were
| just using the movement to get favorable regulation. And
| that was reflected in the issues they were talking about.
| I think there is no contradiction between a small
| government and one that can fine or arrest people
| aggressively when they break the rules.
|
| In addition to that, it always had a strong southern
| "state rights" dog whistle. Personally I never liked
| Murray Rothbard. And the Rothbardian full on
| appropriation of Mises. Plus they often welcomed
| 'libertarians' that had very bad ideas, like Hans-Hermann
| Hoppe.
|
| In terms of Austrian economics, I always much prefer the
| George Mason people. I think the economics fundamentals
| of Austrianism were very forward thinking and they
| produced a lot of great stuff and people, both directly
| and in the larger bubble of associated researchers.
|
| > I realized over the years that while I'm still very
| skeptical of government power, I don't hate the state,
| and I prefer good government over chaos. I value liberal
| institutions and feel they should be defended.
|
| I think American Libertarianism basically went way to far
| into hyper-individualism and total freedom of action and
| defense of historical privileges and laws. While
| different classical liberal philosophies would focus way
| more on the cost of those actions and negotiation a
| balance between individual freedom and society.
|
| Classical liberal philosophy was never supposed to mean
| that you can park your car anywhere and throw garbage out
| of the window or that you can carry your gun everywhere.
|
| Also I think there is a huge difference between
| restricting government on a federal level and on a local
| level. I don't think any philosophical school has really
| figured out this issue. Both centralizing and localizing
| have lots of problems.
|
| I'm at the point where I am not really have a clear
| 'movement' that I can point to. I still agree with much
| of the criticism of communism, socialism and many
| typically left ideas. I disagree even more strongly with
| the far-right.
|
| In Europe we have central parties, but those often are
| socially conservative and have sub-optimal economic
| policy and bad local politics. So like many others I have
| to end up voting center-left even if I don't agree in
| principle with their philosophy.
|
| On thing that helped me is not to think of absolutes and
| end-states, and only think of incrementalism. Even if I
| disagree with the something in principle. As current laws
| exist I might support things I wouldn't in a different
| situation.
|
| In Swizterland where I life, at least we can often vote
| on specific issues. And that can cut across parties. And
| the consensus based federal government is globally unique
| and works pretty well for stability and consistency.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If I was forced to say one good thing about the guy, it's
| that he is quickly and faithfully delivering on his campaign
| promises, moreso than any other president that ever served in
| my lifetime. He's blasting right through the Project 2025
| checklist and doing exactly what he said he'd do. Those
| campaign promises are destructive, thoughtless, cruel, and
| self-serving, but he said he'd do them, was elected, and then
| subsequently did them. So, I'll give him that.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| While I agree with the sentiment that he is not backing
| down from a lot of his batshit promises, let's not forget
| that he made a lot of promises. The Russian invasion didn't
| end on day 1 or day 100 and he decided to only strongarm
| one side - iirc he said he would threaten Ukraine with
| withdrawing support and threaten Russia with giving obscene
| amounts of support to Ukraine.
| ryandrake wrote:
| His predictions about what other people/countries would
| do were, of course, wrong, but his promises about what he
| (and his admin) would do or try to do themselves are for
| the most part being delivered.
| rat87 wrote:
| It's not for the most part. He's delivering far lower
| percentage of his promises than most presidents.
|
| He made a shit ton of promises and many were nonsensical
| and contradictory. But that doesn't change that he hasn't
| delivered on them. The problem is people see him doing
| the most ridiculous stuff people thought he would drop
| and assume that means he kept most of his promises
| stevage wrote:
| Except brokering peace in Ukraine. He also promised an
| economic boom.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| I don't remember hearing about any peace. I did heard
| about ending the war, which might mean peace for both
| sides, or just one.
|
| >> One of Trump's most audacious promises was that he
| could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking
| office -- or even before.
|
| "That is a war that's dying to be settled. I will get it
| settled before I even become president,"
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Doesn't have to have a 100% hit rate to be "getting
| things done".
| ramses0 wrote:
| We got an economic "boom" alright......
| fallingknife wrote:
| When you promise to broker peace you are promising only
| to try since it is obvious that you do not have the
| agency to guarantee success. There are a million things
| to hate about Trump's handling of Ukraine and Russia, but
| this just isn't one of them.
| hobs wrote:
| He lied and said he had no idea about Project 2025 - when
| people say "he's doing what he said" no - he's lied about
| everything and double backed a half dozen times.
| viraptor wrote:
| > on his campaign promises (...) the Project 2025
|
| He never backed that officially though, right? It's just
| that everyone rational knew what's happening anyway, but
| otherwise - even the not knowing about it was a lie, not an
| explicit promise.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| He explicitly stated that he was not familiar with the
| contents of Project 2025 on numerous occasions. This did
| not stop the media from pushing it as yet another hoax.
| It is unclear whether anyone has actually read Project
| 2025 or if it just sounds scary.
|
| It's truly remarkable how much honest material there is
| to criticize Trump with, yet folks insist on repeating
| blatant lies.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > He explicitly stated that he was not familiar with the
| contents of Project 2025
|
| Yes, that is the "blatant lie" being discussed.
| chgs wrote:
| I think it's obvious he hasn't _read_ it though - he
| couldn't even read an invite from King Charles
| viraptor wrote:
| > whether anyone has actually read Project 2025
|
| I don't get what you mean. It's not some secret - it's
| available for everyone to read. It's also written by
| people who are all around Trump and who got influential
| positions from him. It's been talked about for ages.
| Trump not knowing about it would be extremely weird. (Or
| if he actually never heard about it, that would mean he's
| extremely clueless - I'm not sure what's worse for him)
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > He's blasting right through the Project 2025 checklist
|
| You are confusing that with Agenda 47. While Project 2025
| was all those things you describe, that Trump endorsed any
| of it or is implementing any of those destructive things
| simply isn't true.
|
| He's faithfully implementing Agenda 47, just like the
| majority of people in this country elected him to do. And
| all of those people expected the storm before the calm.
| lobsterthief wrote:
| Have you read Project 2025? It's being executed. Here's a
| handy tracker someone made:
| https://www.project2025.observer/
| justinator wrote:
| _> Those campaign promises are destructive, thoughtless,
| cruel, and self-serving_
|
| You seem to have missed, "highly illegal".
|
| But sure "the trains are running on time"
| etchalon wrote:
| He disavowed Project 2025, so really, he lied to us during
| the campaign.
| lawn wrote:
| No, he didn't acknowledge Project 2025 and he tried to
| distance himself from it.
| tchock23 wrote:
| Like launching a private $500k membership club for elites:
|
| https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/donald-trump-
| jr-m...
|
| True to their word!
| pnw wrote:
| That's the wrong Trump.
| dralley wrote:
| That's not an argument they accepted when Hunter Biden
| was selling some paintings, and this is far more
| straightforwardly corrupt than that.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Against elites but appoints billionaire cronies. Make it make
| sense.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| When I read "elites" it always makes me wonder what kind of
| elites are meant. Surely not elites in intelligence or
| wisdom and knowledge. Does it mean just having tons of
| money? What does it mean to be an elite university in
| contrast to being an elite person?
| watwut wrote:
| They are not against elites. They are elites vaging war on
| their ennemies who are not elites.
| jollyllama wrote:
| All political conflict is elite vs. elite. The extent to
| which non-elites are targeted is collateral damage or as
| proxy forces.
| nostromo wrote:
| Trump is in no way a free market ideologue and has made that
| very clear. Or are you talking about Elon?
| rectang wrote:
| The wider Trump administration, and Musk in particular for
| his DOGE work which has included firing regulatory enforcers.
| bloppe wrote:
| The wider Trump administration is extremely anti-free-
| market. They're very explicit about it. The Republican
| party is nothing like it used to be.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| The Republican party only persists as a name. The Trump
| party has long subsumed it.
| bloppe wrote:
| That's always been a feature of the 2-party system. I
| mean, the Democrats were once the party of southern white
| supremacists. We don't really get new parties, but the
| parties we have change over time as the coalitions within
| them rearrange.
|
| I think a multi-party parliamentary system would be
| better at finding middle ground, but it's silly to say
| that the two-party system keeps politics "fixed".
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| True, the make-up and priorities of both Republicans and
| Democrats have changed a few times over the years.
|
| I would say that in this case, it's a party aligning to
| an individual far more than it has ever been in the past.
| Racist Southern Democrats didn't become Republicans
| because they were enamored with a Republican leader, they
| changed parties because they found themselves misaligned
| with the Democratic Party's pivot to civil rights.
|
| I wholeheartedly agree that a parliamentary system would
| serve the US better.
| loeg wrote:
| The tariffs are literally just Trump and 2-3 cronies.
| mrweasel wrote:
| In terms of tariffs you're normally either a
| "protectionist" or for "free trade". That's sort of the two
| sides of that argument. There is some middle ground, but
| those are the extremes. It is not really related to
| regulations, that's more if you believe that the market is
| able to regulate itself, in terms of environmental impact,
| fair wages, safety and those sorts of things. The latter is
| the things which are impacted by firing regulatory
| enforces, or removing regulation altogether.
|
| The Trump administration seems to run a protectionist
| policy, with a deregulated home market. This will hurt
| exports as it makes products more expensive, but also less
| likely to be able to comply with the regulations of other
| markets, e.g. in the EU, which is heavily regulated. US
| companies have a reduced incentive to comply with EU rules,
| if they know they have a protected market at home they can
| milk instead.
| vkou wrote:
| I'd categorize Elon as more of a free speech ideologue who
| bans any speech that makes him uncomfortable.
| lenkite wrote:
| What speech that makes him uncomfortable has he banned
| exactly ? Asking out of curiosity because I see posts on
| twitter all the time calling him Nazi, blah-blah.
| vkou wrote:
| X will happily ban you for saying 'cisgender'. But since
| enforcement is inconsistent and opaque it provides
| plausible deniability.
|
| It's much in the same vein that Putin allows a few token
| 'opposition' politicians to exist.
| lenkite wrote:
| There are tens of thousands of posts with the word
| "cisgender" at the moment on X. So, I think this "ban" is
| currently only in one's febrile imagination. Putin does
| not allow tens of thousands of opposition politicians, so
| the analogy also does not hold.
|
| Its an _extremely_ big difference from the Biden era
| where any post critical of the vaccine and backed up with
| papers was taken down pronto. This was even confirmed in
| several senate hearings.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2024/08/27/zuckerberg-biden-
| administra...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/10/mark-zuckerberg-says-
| biden-p...
|
| As a non-American, I was very happy when Musk bought out
| twitter - it was ridiculous being unable to criticize
| vaccines - you couldn't even articulate the Indian
| government's stance on Pfizer and how Pfizer refused to
| provde test data. "Freedom of speech" was utterly non-
| existent in that era.
| vkou wrote:
| https://www.the-independent.com/tech/x-cisgender-slur-
| cis-el...
|
| > "The words 'cis' or 'cisgender' are considered slurs on
| this platform," Mr Musk wrote in June.
|
| > "Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will
| cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum,
| temporary suspensions."
|
| > The newly enforced policy, first reported by TechCrunch
| on Tuesday, saw some users greeted with a full-screen
| warning when trying to publish a post using the terms on
| the X mobile app.
|
| The fact that this is _arbitrarily_ enforced isn 't
| exactly painting it as a haven for free speech. The only
| thing worse than absolute censorship (which is obvious
| and can be routed around) is stochastic, inconsistent
| censorship - which gives him and his defenders a fig
| leaf[1] to hide behind.
|
| Look, maybe _you_ prefer the new brand of censorship X
| has adopted. It sounds like you do. Great. But what you
| can 't do is call it a free speech platform, while
| keeping a straight face.
|
| [1] I would like to point out, as an example: that China
| doesn't censor the internet - you just mysteriously have
| your connection go to shit and drop out if you try to
| search for 4/15.
| lenkite wrote:
| So, posts are NOT being banned, but only visibility
| tagged as that article mentions and as many users also
| explicitly tested. No one reported a ban - only a warning
| with a visibility setting. Seems perfectly fine. Your
| speech is _NOT_ banned as you incorrectly claim. And your
| account is still valid.
|
| Did you _ever_ try writing a mRNA-vaccine critical post
| during the Biden administration on twitter, quoting
| factual sources and linking to scientific papers ? Your
| account got banned pronto.
|
| And as we all know now - it was done at the behest of the
| US white house.
| vkou wrote:
| Firstly, it's absolutely bonkers that _any_ alleged
| 'free speech absolutist' could consider 'cisgender' to be
| a slur. It's like saying that 'man' is a slur.
|
| And that's not an argument that you're going to do well
| with. Because the claim is _utterly pants-on-head,
| irredeemably farcical_ , as is anyone who would stand
| behind it.
|
| ---
|
| But, secondly, if you read the screenshots in the link,
| you'll see that the posts are being suppressed.
|
| ---
|
| And thirdly, you don't see me claiming that pre-Musk
| Twitter was any kind of bastion of 'free speech
| absolutism'. I'm not making that argument.
|
| The argument I'm making is that post-Musk Twitter
| _definitely_ isn 't one.
| creddit wrote:
| Trump has literally been prattling about his love of tariffs
| for decades and was explicit about his plans to heavily
| leverage tariffs during his campaign..
|
| I think you might just want an excuse to believe what you
| already believe
| fullshark wrote:
| I just think a lot of democrats really haven't paid attention
| to how Trump has morphed the Republican party and the
| realignment that has been going on. They still think of a
| Republican as George w. Bush / John McCain / Mitt Romney even
| though they have all been effectively excommunicated from the
| party. I think part of it was hope was Trump was a momentary
| blip but that's obviously no longer the case.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Everyday people have been clamoring for some sort of change
| for a long time. 00s at least. It reached a boiling point
| in the late 2010s and you had a nearly parallel rise of
| Trump and Bernie. The difference is that the republicans
| couldn't keep a lid on Trump and his backers like the
| democrats did to Bernie. So Trump got in and then
| politicians "built in his image" started getting elected
| all over the place. So now the republicans have a party
| that more accurately reflects what people want. And they'll
| use that to mop the floor with the democrats until the
| democrats turn their own party over to reflect what voters
| want.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > reflect what voters want.
|
| and what do they want?
| kibibu wrote:
| Change.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Nation-wide Chesterton's Fence happening right now, with
| people learning a hard lesson soon enough. Let's just
| hope it won't be too late to repair their broken systems.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| It's never too late to fix. The problem is the time
| frame.
|
| The changes made thus far present at least a decade of
| rebuilding to fix, and we're only 100 days in.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > It's never too late to fix. The problem is the time
| frame.
|
| We're never out of time but the problem is time? There is
| absolutely a point of no return.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Sorry, I should have said:
|
| The problem is the time frame _of the fix_
|
| If the US ends up a smoking ruin it can still be fixed,
| it'll just take longer.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| The only real issue is these assholes are taking me down
| with them.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Maybe that's what the people want?
|
| Maybe they don't like the fact that there's people out
| there making 500 grand a year? At least not while they're
| struggling to make ends meet on 50 grand a year.
|
| Now your leaders are supposed to be wise enough to _not_
| take down the 500 grand a year guys. But what if they
| aren 't?
| chgs wrote:
| And someone with a mere 10m in the bank makes more than
| 500 grand just from their wealth appreciating.
|
| Yet people seem to have far less concern about people
| with such relatively low wealth.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I'm WAY closer to the 50k group than the 500k group. I
| just want a leader who has some empathy.
| goatlover wrote:
| Change what though? I'm convinced a lot of this has been
| right wing media portraying government as corrupt and
| broken for decades while demonizing the Democratic party
| as being responsible. True, some of this is likely the
| result of globalism and neoliberalism, but instead of an
| educated debate on the tradeoffs involved and how the
| world has changed, there is a culture war.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Wanting change is a curious notion considering they are
| FOX viewing baby boomers. Isn't it more a change in the
| sense of stopping change and turning back time?
| davidcbc wrote:
| For life to be worse for the people they don't like. They
| just didn't expect it to be worse for them too
| creddit wrote:
| A rational theory of spite suggests that even if they
| know that it will be worse for them too, if the level of
| their spite is great enough, they are still better off
| because the joy of the suffering of others is greater
| than their own induced suffering.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| To be listened to, rather than to be told what to care
| about, and to have those concerns make it to competent
| people with the power to do something about them.
|
| But it's not really compatible with a system where one
| person represents millions. You'd need something
| recursive such that no person represents more than a
| hundred or so, that way there's time to circle back and
| explain why certain complaints aren't being addressed
| this cycle and such. You know, responsibility of
| leadership to the people.
|
| It's also not really compatible with a system where your
| representative for foo-type issues must also be your
| representative for bar-type issues, because "competent
| people" is too broad of a category to be useful.
|
| How to get there from here? I'm not sure but it seems
| like it'll require a more significant discontinuity than
| we've seen so far.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Repeal the act capping house representatives to 435. The
| house then expands massively and you get more
| representative government.
| chgs wrote:
| So you have 6,000 representatives, which is about the
| same ratio as the population back in 1790.
|
| What does each one do? What agency does each have?
|
| They get 20 minutes a year to speak assuming a 2000 hour
| working year.
| panick21_ wrote:
| What would happen is that representatives are more
| locally focused on their districts and would vote in
| larger 'sub'-parties.
|
| In a single seat district system, increase in seats its
| also proven to improve representation for minorities.
|
| I don't think the expansion by itself is a fix-all
| solution.
|
| One of the issues is that you have many single issue
| districts and those that get elected can vote whatever
| they want on everything else. That is both good and bad
| in some situations.
|
| > They get 20 minutes a year to speak assuming a 2000
| hour working year.
|
| Congress isn't about making public speeches, its about
| legislating in congress. Turning congress into a TV show
| is part of the issue in the first place.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Where congress just follows the party line. Or does back
| room deals
|
| I think the larger problem with democracy in general is
| that constituencies are no longer geographic. A software
| engineer in Austin and one in San Jose have far more in
| common than a software engineer in Austin and a Tractor
| dealer in Austin.
|
| The representative for Austin has to represent the
| conflicting views of both the Tractor dealer and the
| software engineer.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Back room deals aren't necessary a negative. That how the
| sausage is made. I rather have backroom deals when people
| can make rational compromise, rather then having media
| spectral where congress sessions are reality TV. Mostly
| used to get clips that can then be used in adds.
|
| > I think the larger problem with democracy in general is
| that constituencies are no longer geographic.
|
| I think that is a good point. Specifically on federal
| level. On local level geographic still matters.
|
| Its basically the old socialist argument about class
| system. Just with a much more complex class system.
|
| I guess you could have some sort of cluster analysis
| putting into X different interest clusters and you could
| vote for a representative in each. And then somehow
| calculate an optimal congress.
|
| "Vote for me, I'm representing technically inclined
| fantasy nerds that like cat girls"
|
| Not sure that is the solution. But you are right that the
| 'pyramid' style system used in most countries could be
| improved on. A simple version of this is basically to do
| all federal votes for congress and use some kind of
| representation algorithm.
|
| The issue with this is that doing a political campaign on
| a federal level is insanely expensive. And I can't even
| imagine if each congress person had to try to get elected
| on federal level. The amount of political adds would be
| crazy.
|
| I really don't have the solution and its hard to run
| experiments on things like this.
|
| > The representative for Austin has to represent the
| conflicting views of both the Tractor dealer and the
| software engineer.
|
| Smaller countries does help her, as geographic area gets
| smaller more interested are represented.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The point is to make it easier for people to hassle their
| representative, and to make it feasible for them to
| actually understand what the people they represent
| _actually_ want.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I think the fix is a more drastic refactor than that. We
| need more depth in this tree. Much more depth.
|
| I imagine a sort of cultural "open enrollment" period
| during which anyone can mark anyone else as their
| representative. Perhaps we create four or five categories
| that we need representation in (foreign policy,
| infrastructure, education, monetary policy... something
| like that), so you gotta then find four or five
| representatives which you personally know and trust.
|
| Then we follow the directed representation graph to its
| terminal nodes (or cycles) and those are the
| representatives that we ask to get together and get
| things done. Those are our leaders. They meet only
| sometimes, the rest of the year they spend working with
| their constituents.
| rat87 wrote:
| I don't think most Republicans want the destruction of
| our country so no I don't think he's an accurate
| reflection
| nkrisc wrote:
| And yet he dominates the party. How could that be without
| popular support from the party base?
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Because Fox, and Newsmax work overtime to convince people
| that Trump wouldn't do the things he said, and he'll
| actually do the good things people want. And that if
| anything bad happens, it's the aftershock of previous
| administrations (of which, Trump's is exempt, of course).
|
| You don't have to be tapped in to see that whatever is
| said on Fox becomes Republican dogma very quickly. That's
| why half the country is more concerned that Zelenskyy is,
| somehow, a dictator, and less concerned that we ushered
| Russian state media into our white house.
|
| It's an embarrassing state we're in, but many voters have
| been fostered with complete incuriosity with what
| Republican politicians stand for.
| gtowey wrote:
| 50 years of attacks on our education systems have yielded
| exactly what was intended: a nation so poorly educated
| that they cannot discern truth from fiction anymore.
| sarchertech wrote:
| It's easy to dominate the party as long as you have 51%
| of the primary voters, which in 2024 was about 20% of
| registered Republicans.
|
| Essentially if you have the very strong support of 10-15%
| of the party voters, you're untouchable.
| chgs wrote:
| Ahh democracy
|
| Of course that also relies on those "I don't want Trump"
| republicans actually voting for him.
|
| But let's assume that all happens and it's not the fault
| of republicans because they are apethetic. How do you
| explain the congress and senate members who back him?
| nkrisc wrote:
| If people cared they would vote in the primaries. If they
| don't, then they must be happy with how those who do are
| voting.
|
| But then they also vote for him in the general election,
| since he won, so I conclude he has the support of the
| Republican base.
| mindslight wrote:
| Trump is very adept at talking out of both sides of his
| mouth in a way that is much different from how a standard
| politician does it, so he gets a lot of people are
| excited at hearing what they want to hear. A regular
| politician equivocates and never really commits. Trump
| just asserts a statement that sounds definitive despite
| being word salad, and then shamelessly contradicts
| himself by asserting the exact opposite later. If he gets
| called out on it he just responds with nonsense.
|
| If you were evaluating him as a regular person you'd
| conclude he was demented or otherwise had significant
| brain damage, and was the no-inhibition combative type
| that needed to be in a facility. But his word salad
| apparently appealed to enough people's self-centeredness
| to end up as President instead. Maybe my happy place can
| be imagining he's got aphasia, doesn't want any of these
| harmful policies either, and he's suffering right along
| with the rest of us.
| kenjackson wrote:
| They wanted destruction of minorities (racial, sexual,
| gender, religious), but not of the country. They still
| hold out hope that Trump will hurt them more in the long
| run. It's an extremely mean-spirited party at this point.
| mindslight wrote:
| By my reckoning, Trump is just the reactionary talk radio
| monster of Limbaugh, Gingrich, and others finally escaping
| its cage. They'd get people all riled up with low-
| information rage against the gubmint, and then dial it back
| just enough to herd them to the booth to vote for
| establishment republicans. The main way the party has
| morphed is that the inmates have finally taken over the
| asylum.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's hard to label Trump a free market ideologue. He's more Mr
| tarrif man.
|
| If you want free markets look more to Lee Kuan Yew and
| Singapore (#1 on the "Index of Economic Freedom").
|
| One of the virtues of proper free markets is the markets
| largely figure which companies win in a relatively non corrupt
| way, rather than politicians leaning on the scales.
| digianarchist wrote:
| The Singaporean government's hand in it's own economy is
| larger than a lot of self-professed communist states -
| Temasek Holdings, Mediacorp, DBS Bank, Singapore Airlines etc
| etc.
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| I never understood why libertarians/free market proponents
| think that Singapore is the paragon of laissez-faire
| economics. Try studying the country's housing market
| policies, for example, and you'll quickly realise that the
| government is extremely interventionist.
|
| The difference is between Singaporean policymakers/civil
| servants and their counterparts from elsewhere is that the
| former are actually world-class in terms of competence, and
| their interventions are generally very well-designed/well-
| justified.
| chgs wrote:
| Singapore is the example of a (relatively) benevolent
| dictator over decades.
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a dictatorship -- no label neatly
| applies to Singapore, but calling it a dictatorship (even
| if benevolent) is quite incorrect. Describing it as a
| soft authoritarian country is much more appropriate.
| tim333 wrote:
| Maybe free in some areas eg. trade and less so in others.
| panick21_ wrote:
| While they are interventionist in some way, so is
| everybody else. The US government involvement in housing
| is gigantic as well.
|
| We can learn a lot from the policies, both free market
| and otherwise. And we shouldn't learn from others.
|
| No free market person thinks of Singapore as some prefect
| example. As that doesn't exist. So you have to take
| example from different places. And Singapore has more
| good examples then most.
| loeg wrote:
| Trump isn't a free market ideologue and never has been. I'm not
| sure what you expected. He didn't conceal his viewpoints; if
| you are surprised, I think you weren't paying much attention.
| grugagag wrote:
| I don't know about markets but he claimed to be a free speech
| ideologue. But then he bought twitter and proved otherwise.
| loeg wrote:
| I don't believe Trump bought Twitter.
| andruby wrote:
| Elon or Trump? Or do you see them as a team?
| afavour wrote:
| The Republican Party on the other hand is very much in favor
| of the free market... or was. Many long time Republicans
| turned on a dime and deserve to be called out on it.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I think it's a bit more accurate to say that many long time
| Republicans _claimed_ to support free markets. It 's a
| little naive to believe that they actually meant any of
| that in reality. Them and their donors were growing
| fabulously wealthy off of functionally _non_ -free markets.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| They don't even claim to support total free market as end
| goal. Both party support free speech and free trade on
| principle, but support what shouldn't be free is highly
| political.
| vitus wrote:
| They were in favor of the free market from Reagan onwards.
| But the party was founded on the premise that tariffs would
| protect their northern constituents and industries, and
| they took over a century to shake that tendency. Perhaps
| the only Republican president before Reagan who was in
| favor of lowering tariffs was Eisenhower, as part of
| rebuilding globally after WW2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_A
| c...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
|
| Meanwhile, as others have pointed out, our current
| president has been advocating for tariffs for about as long
| as the Republicans were in favor of the free market.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trumps-tariff-
| str...
| afavour wrote:
| > They were in favor of the free market from Reagan
| onwards.
|
| Which is the relevant part. I'm not really concerned with
| historical positions of the party itself so much as the
| politicians themselves, none of whom were alive a century
| ago.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Such has been the US agenda in the developing world since the
| 70's. It's sort of odd to see them do it to themselves though.
| It's as if they became confused and started believing their own
| cover story.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| Tariffs are antithetical to free markets.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Arguably, a similar problem exists for "big government"
| ideologues, except more severe.
|
| https://fee.org/articles/10-crazy-examples-of-unrelated-wast...
| afiori wrote:
| Every voice on that (except the last one as it is too vague)
| is popular with the relevant electorate. I dislike how a
| bunch of random unrelated shit is stuffed together into a
| single bill but that is because the US is a vetocracy.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| Ideology is their sales pitch, it's for you and me to consume.
| It has nothing whatsoever to do with their goals and
| intentions. This has been true of Thatcher and her deeply
| protectionist policies all the way up to today with Trump and
| his tariffs. We're not choosing between regulations and no
| regulations, we're choosing between regulations that benefit
| the working class and regulations that benefit the owning
| class. (Although I suppose it could be argued that in the US
| you choose between regulations that benefit the owning class
| and regulations that benefit the owning class more)
| joshdavham wrote:
| This is crony capitalism.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It is but it always has been. I would also appreciate if the
| big 3 American car companies had 85% American content.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would also appreciate if the big 3 American car companies
| had 85% American content_
|
| Versus 80%? Those five percentage points are worth a double-
| digit tariff.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| 5 percentage points should be easy enough for them to
| change then by moving a few supply chains.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| So make it 90% and don't give Tesla the special
| treatment.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Your answer to the question "Is the 5% between 80 and 85%
| worth a double-digit tariff?" here is "Yes. A double
| digit tariff on a car that is 80% made in America makes
| sense."
|
| Right?
| metalman wrote:
| and then there is the other side of the 14.9% coin, which
| will be fought over by Canada(read ontario), Mexico, China,
| and the rest when it comes parts and cars made in Canada
| and Mexico, that is going to be tricky, as both countrys
| have historicaly bought a lot of US cars and other stuff,
| but will now be in no possition to also play along with the
| anti china stance in the US and tarrifs, and all the other
| issues at the borders.......geoplotical has more meaning
| now.
| qwerpy wrote:
| What should we call it when the other side does things in the
| opposite direction? https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
| news/politics/wa-legisl...
|
| Punitive legislation? Lawfare? Crony capitalism but for the
| other companies?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Do you have evidence Ford and GM bribed their way to getting
| that law passed
| jfyi wrote:
| It blatantly is, and the responses to you pointing that out are
| insane.
|
| Deflection, whataboutism, sealioning with a side of demanding
| sources for what is essentially the use of a greater than sign.
| mystraline wrote:
| Used cars are ALSO exempt.
|
| And, all used goods bought at secondhand stores are tariff-exempt
| as well. And so is FB marketplace, Craigslist, and others.
|
| My protest is meager, but effective for us - we just will buy
| used and use 'Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle' where we can.
| EnEnough of us doing that will slow and hamper the economy (read:
| rich peoples' money).
| userbinator wrote:
| That suggests an ecosystem may appear around making new goods
| "used" enough to meet some legal definition.
| coaksford wrote:
| I think the meaning was not "You can import used cars without
| tariffs", but "If you buy used cars already in the country,
| you don't pay the new tariff, so just don't buy new cars."
| rtkwe wrote:
| If you're importing it it doesn't matter it's condition other
| than it's worth less so the tariff would be less. What they
| mean is if you buy goods that are already here there's no
| tariff, but they will also go up in price too as the new item
| goes up.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Isn't that actually what they've been doing in Cuba since the
| revolution? I'm sure those old cars should have been retired
| by now and replaced with cheap Chinese imports, but for a few
| decades, they were refurbishing American-made cars
| continuously.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The parent comment was a confusing statement. They were
| saying that buying a used car or goods from a second-hand
| store does not go through the tariff process because the
| produce is already here.
|
| There was a loophole in the past where you could take
| delivery of a car in a foreign country, drive it for a while,
| and then go through the process of importing it as if you
| were moving back to the United States. I don't know if the
| new tariffs honor that loophole or not.
| uxhacker wrote:
| So get the car delivered in Europe. Go on a driving holiday
| and then ship to the USA.
| toast0 wrote:
| Are you saying if I import a used car, I don't have to pay
| tariffs? Factory delivery programs would become a lot more
| popular.
|
| Or are you just saying that if I buy a car that's already in
| the US and has already had any import tariffs due at time of
| import paid, I won't have to pay them again? That's a lot less
| interesting.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Yes. Volvo has had a program for decades where they fly you
| to Sweden where drive a vehicle around long enough for it to
| be "used", buy it then they ship it over to the US to avoid
| US new car import tariffs.
| bushido wrote:
| Very surprised to learn that this is real
| https://www.volvocars.com/us/l/osd-tourist/
|
| Pretty cool. Lots more info on reddit threads.
| yareally wrote:
| Audi, BMW and Mercedes did this as well until a few years
| ago.
|
| https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-
| car/...
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| looks like you have to pay VAT?
| Aloisius wrote:
| VAT is only levied if it doesn't get exported within a
| certain amount of time (6 months from the scheduled
| delivery date).
|
| I knew someone who tooled around Europe for a month
| before dropping it off to be shipped to her without
| having VAT incurred (though it was a couple decades ago).
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Yes - my question exactly.
|
| I was strongly considering importing a 25-year-old kei truck
| from Japan before the tariffs were announced.
| toast0 wrote:
| Seems to me that it's probably worth the incremental cost
| to buy one that's already here and registered in your
| state; there's a lot of unknowns in customs and vehicle
| licensing, and I'd rather not deal with it. But I spent my
| weird car slot on a 1981 Vanagon instead of a kei
| truck/van.
| macintux wrote:
| Based on what I've seen from states that are attempting
| to implement new rules, Kei trucks and cars aren't
| grandfathered in, sadly.
|
| Even buying one locally that is already registered
| doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to continue
| registering it.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Used cars respond to market forces too.
|
| If new cars become much more expensive, used cars will become
| much more expensive. This isn't even a theoretical idea. The
| exact thing happend in 2020-2021 when you couldn't buy a new
| car.
|
| This is what many don't understand about tariffs in general:
| you put tariffs on foreign goods and anything exempt will
| simply raise their prices to match.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Now they need a special insurance subsidy to offset the extra
| costs for losses.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Most positive take:
|
| Someone asked what is the car model with the most American parts
| right now? We will make everyone meet that benchmark or better.
| Animats wrote:
| The CEO of Ford is very critical of Trump.
|
| But Ford can probably get the USA content for gas-powered
| Mustangs up from 80% to 85%. The electric version is made in
| Mexico, but once Ford's Blue Oval City plant in Tennessee comes
| up in 2027, that will move to the US.
|
| Of course, who knows where Trump will be by then.
| bix6 wrote:
| How long do you think that 5% will take them?
| Animats wrote:
| I have no idea, but I'll bet there are people in Dearborn,
| Michigan working on that right now.
| plaurens wrote:
| Curious about Rivian...
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| Won't safe his Chinese sales though
| wahern wrote:
| Tesla builds Model 3s and Ys in their Shanghai factory using
| almost entirely domestically sourced components, and even
| exports a fair number from there. But perhaps the trade war
| will reduce demand.
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| BYD is eating their lunch.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Well, better cars at a lower price tag and their CEO
| doesn't seem to like doing "Roman" salutes.
|
| If they were allowed to the US market we know what would
| happen here.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops
| of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have
| some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull to make him
| squeal like a pig, elected office or no.
|
| I can only assume they're all actually largely ok with it.
|
| I would not have imagined that they just never thought about
| things like that in general and now have actually no idea what to
| do now that this kind of situation has happened. _I_ have no
| previously considered reactions or plans for most things and life
| just smacks me in the face like I 've been walking with my eyes
| closed, but _I 'm_ a hapless midwit.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why aren't you assuming the opposite -- that these mythical
| levers don't actually exist?
| noduerme wrote:
| Most people feel like hapless midwits, and we know that most of
| us actually are. Yet we have this tendency to assume, for some
| weird reason, that people in important positions have their
| shit together more than we do. Only in emergencies and times of
| crisis do we see that _no one_ has their shit together. When we
| see that, we want to blame it on conspiracy or some sort of
| 5-dimensional chess being played, because it goes against the
| safe notion that someone, somewhere, is steering the boat (even
| if we don 't like where they're taking us). But the safer bet
| is that no one is steering, and no one actually can steer, and
| that it's incompetence all the way to to the top.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Yes, accidental, hapless stumbling onto major windfall on
| multiple occasions clearly is an indication of nothing more
| than pure, unadulterated, McDuck level of luck and not, I
| repeat, not indication of anything but simple return of a
| favor.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't mean to imply that I believe they are excellent
| people who will take care of us all, nor that there is any
| illuminati cabal like that other ludicrous comment.
|
| I only mean to imply they are people who know how to get what
| they want, and are willing to do more or less anything.
|
| There is a new story that Amazon is going to overtly display
| the tarrif on every price. That is like 1% of the kind of
| thing I'm thinking of.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You've missed the tail end of that story - Trump made an
| angry call to Bezos, presumably full of threats, after
| which Bezos announced that they weren't going to do that
| and totally never planned to.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It's still an example of a lever.
|
| He didn't pull it but that's a seperate issue and
| actually exactly my point, why not? Or for that matter,
| maybe he did pull it, maybe he caused the story to even
| appear in the first place, or maybe they will do it
| regardless what he just said. Maybe he has something less
| obvious he's working on, or maybe he's somehow fine with
| the tarriff.
| SimianSci wrote:
| There seems to be a (largely American) misconception that
| people in positions of power are there because they earned such
| a position through being capable and competent.
|
| Most people in power lack critical thinking skills, having
| earned their position primarily due to the circumstances of
| their birth and the people they know.
|
| It is incredibly rare for someone who is competent enough to
| weild such levers of power to be granted access to them.
| creddit wrote:
| > I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the
| tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions,
| don't have some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull
| to make him squeal like a pig, elected office or no.
|
| The "US is an oligarchy, the corporations are in control" was
| always a false narrative.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Huh? If anything, it now should be clearer than ever that it
| has been for a long time. The only difference is that the
| oligarch that happens to be benefiting from it is in the
| public spotlight, associated with and part of the current
| administration, and at the same time main guy for several
| publicly owned companies.
|
| If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not
| because they have no power to wield.
|
| Good grief. There are times when I read some posts and it is
| like reading youtube comments under madtv skit 'apple i-rack'
| asking what it means... how do you not know what it means?
| creddit wrote:
| > If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is
| not because they have no power to wield.
|
| Good grief, this is just an axiomatic belief, then. No
| evidence will sway you one way or another.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| What part of oligarch is hard to translate into
| sufficient amount of evidence that does not require me to
| prove that 1000 million dollars might result in an
| ability to wield influence that a a simple individual
| like meself would consider mildly outsized? At this point
| it is like gravity. You don't have to believe it. It is
| just is.
| lawn wrote:
| Of course they have more influence than you and I.
|
| But that doesn't mean they have enough power to influence
| the president and to correct course.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << But that doesn't mean
|
| Fine. Let us have it your way.
|
| What does it mean?
| woah wrote:
| You're so wedded to your overly simplistic and conspiratorial
| worldview that everything is a secret plan by "the elites",
| that now you've had to invent a new conspiracy about how they
| all had a secret plan to lose themselves billions of dollars.
|
| Sometimes a stupid guy gets elected by low-information voters,
| and enacts stupid policies that crash the economy. There isn't
| any secret illuminati meeting where they can tell him to stop.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I think you shouldn't try to use the word stupid given this
| example of your acuity.
| TylerE wrote:
| Dude, Trump and Elon are literally the Elite. Take your
| blinders off.
| vharuck wrote:
| >now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of
| situation has happened
|
| They know what they would do, if this were under any other
| president: make phone calls, write editorials in major
| newspapers, start donating to future political rivals.
|
| But this is Trump. He's surrounded by equally corrupt lackeys,
| and immediately fires anyone showing a shred of morality. The
| entire federal government does his bidding. He sues news media
| until they settle with him for millions, signs executive orders
| banning specific law firms from working with the federal
| government until they offer him millions in legal services,
| cuts off money from states that dare defy his will, and demands
| universities let the federal government investigate all staff
| in Middle East studies. Any business leader who stands up to
| him will be crushed. The best way to keep making money is to
| get on his good side, like Elon.
|
| This is literally tyranny. Thank goodness there are plenty of
| judges willing to stand against the obviously illegal acts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What about the voters that vote out members of Congress
| because they go against Trump?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| He's chaotic and unpredictable by normal standards, but that
| seems irrelevant to me.
|
| I don't mean the damage isn't consequential. What I mean is
| he has very obvious and simple motivations and reactions. For
| the purposes of somehow dealing with him, it's not all that
| important that "he might do anything". It seems obvious that
| anyone who wants to deal with him should take that as given
| and move right past worrying about what he might do and
| assume that he _will_ , for sure, do anything. But he will do
| so for completely basic reasons and in response to completely
| basic stimuli.
|
| A bullfighter completely antagonizes the bull into a frothing
| unthinking frenzy, on purpose, and owns the bull.
|
| The bull is actually totally predictable and manipulable, and
| not because the bull can be reasoned with.
|
| Musk and some few on the right are the only ones not being
| complete idiots about handling him. They are getting
| everything they want from operating him.
|
| The left probably can't play that same trick since they
| probably can't figure out ways to tell him he's great and get
| leftie things out of him. Or forget left & right just
| business where they're all assholes, everyone can't play the
| same suck-up game. Musk is apparently doing suck-up without
| looking like a weak begger suck-up. Or he's allowing himself
| to look like just enough of a beta to keep Trump from feeling
| threatened, yet, like how his maga hat isn't red. Flouting
| the uniform, yet, not. It's probably a fine line there. And
| there is only room for a few magic pretend-beta slots. Trump
| will simply not give good behavior to very many people no
| matter what they say, so if all 100 people in his circle were
| all the perfect suck-up, still only a couple will get what
| they want and the rest get pissed on.
|
| So anyone that didn't happen to win that lottery (or just
| weren't as good as Musk at that game) will have to go the
| other way which is poking him with a stick.
|
| But they aren't. In the left vs right arena the left just
| continues to try to use rational arguments and appeals to
| reason on people who don't give a shit about that. Just who
| are the dummies when it comes down to that?
|
| Though I wasn't originally intending to talk left or right
| but just about chaos impacting business and these supposed
| hard nosed rutheless powerful captains of the world just
| letting it happen. They only care about one thing, and he's
| burning that one thing by the billions, and they are...what?
| Nothing?
|
| So when I say "I can only assume they are somehow ok with it"
| I mean there must be things I don't know. Like ultimately
| this doesn't really hurt Bezos and the like all that much.
| Like they make money on whatever happens somehow. Or they
| think longer term and they are ready to absolutely gorge
| themselves on some kind of bounce back in a couple years
| because they are somehow positioned exactly right. Like how
| at a smaller scale how Equifax ultimately _made_ a shit ton
| of new money as a result of having their web site hacked.
| Maybe all the Bezos 's of the country are just arms dealers
| who make out no matter what.
|
| I don't know. Perhaps everyone's right and they are all tools
| no better equipped than myself. But I just think that's a
| kind of stupid take. Some probably are, and some surely are
| not. I am quite sure I can not solve Apple's Trump problem
| better than Tim. I simply wonder, what the heck are they
| doing? It _looks_ from here on the ground like they aren 't
| doing anything. But I can only assume that just means I can't
| see anything that matter from here, and don't know how to
| read what I can see.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Mentioned it a few times in the past, but this is just a big
| freak out and America having a hard time squaring the fact that
| by almost all meaningful metrics, their "enemy" has taken the
| lead. Nobody really knows how to fix it, everyone at the top
| knows they can't really do much about it, but they have to show
| "power", because that's all they have left. Nobody wants to
| "lose" in public's eyes, but that's just how some of the world
| is starting to think.
|
| Honestly, I feel kinda conflicted. From one point, I always
| looked up to the American values, and way of life. But it's
| becoming increasingly misaligned with my own values and the
| things I find important in life.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| How is the unit for domestic component content defined? Is a
| screw a component in the same way a windshield is? Is it by
| weight? By cost?
| leptons wrote:
| Yes.
| alwa wrote:
| It appears that the American Automobile Labeling Act measures
| domestic content on a value basis (that is, the amount the
| manufacturer pays the supplier for it):
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/part-583-american-automobile-labeling-...
| mmooss wrote:
| Does that include tariffs?
| bix6 wrote:
| It's funny cybertruck doesn't make the cut, unfortunately nobody
| buys those so it's irrelevant.
| marcusb wrote:
| I see them quite frequently where I live, usually covered in a
| vinyl wrap advertising some local business or other.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| There appears to be someone in my local city that is using
| their cybertruck as a billboard. They drive around during
| rush hours and every week or so they switch the wrap to a
| different company. I wonder if it's being widely done
| elsewhere.
| cwmoore wrote:
| I saw a plain white one that could represent a drywall
| business.
| marcusb wrote:
| My wife says the wrapped ones of any color look better
| than stock. She thinks the stock ones look like toasters,
| and that Tesla should have painted two red/orange stripes
| along the tonneau cover to complete the stock look.
| platevoltage wrote:
| I mean, they do. Wraps also ruin the stainless steel
| finish, so you are committed to wrapping for the rest of
| the car's life. Wraps aren't meant to last more than 5
| years or so.
| marcusb wrote:
| I haven't seen anything like that where I live. I see the
| same businesses over and over, and often see them parked at
| or near the business in question.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| In St Louis, I see them everywhere, too. Not as advertising
| but just driving around town.
|
| There's a mall that closed and, for a while, there were
| hundreds parked in that lot waiting to be sold (and they
| were).
| bix6 wrote:
| I saw a DOGE wrapped one the other day. Thought it was DOGE
| at first then realized it was actually just DOGE (crypto)
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I don't know if it's the same people but many of the comments
| here seem the opposite of the comments on EUs rules where people
| say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no,
| the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are
| covered".
|
| If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it.
|
| I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to
| get things made domesticly
| tedunangst wrote:
| It's different when I like the rules.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Washington state is going in the other direction:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-
| legisl...
|
| I'm sure the targeted aspect of that one is applauded by the
| same side that is unhappy about this tariff.
|
| At least in the tariff case, it's an objective numerical
| target and probably even achievable by other manufacturers.
| Ford is only 5% away from the target for some of its models.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I would go as far as saying, that almost no one outside the
| US knows about state specific rules. People watch or read
| some news, but they are usually not that much into the US
| inner political theater, that they additionally make an
| effort to learn what state has what other rules.
|
| I am not even sure how impactful it is, that Washington
| state does something different. Like ... Are things built
| or sold there by a large amount? What makes Washington
| state special? And what are their intentions? And can their
| lower level rules actually override what is decided at the
| country level by Trump's gang?
|
| It is bad enough, that people have to deal with hearing
| about all the crazy stuff the orange clown or his henchmen
| do on a daily basis. There is a limit to how much people
| want to deal even more with political stuff from the US,
| you know?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Yeah, without context it doesn't mean much. Washington is
| one of the majority liberal states. OP was pointing to a
| Washington state law that will also "target" Tesla but in
| the other direction.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Well the problem in the federal case is that musk has for
| all intents and purposes purchased his new federal
| exemption from Trump.
|
| Did his competitors do something similar in Washington?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| >If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it.
|
| To be making this claim, you must be an vehicle supply chain
| expert, so can you tell the rest of us which parts can be
| domestically sourced in the US and which can't?
|
| Also, why is the Model S is stuck at 80%?
| gkoberger wrote:
| Why 85% and not 80%? It's an arbitrary cutoff that happens to
| benefit Elon.
|
| Ford will quickly get to 85%, but you can't deny this is yet
| again a move that is touted as "pro-America" yet somehow mainly
| benefits Musk (or Trump or someone in their orbit).
| nostromo wrote:
| Three Tesla models meet the 85% threshold and three do not.
|
| If Tesla was writing these rules, surely they'd have chosen
| the 80% threshold instead.
|
| I doubt they see the Ford Mustang as being in their same
| target market, and wouldn't be a reason to increase the
| standard.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd note the ones that meet the threshold are by far the
| vast majority of Tesla sales and profit. This puts them at
| a structural advantage. Those three models account for 95%
| of deliveries in 2024. The rules as stand only impact their
| highest margin vehicles, which account for 4.8% of their
| total deliveries.
|
| The fact that Elon Musk is personally involved in the
| decision making and cabinet level discussions and
| personally benefits immensely- and exclusively- from this
| special carve out looks like rank corruption on the surface
| and at face value. Any other administration in history
| would be investigated until the cows come home if something
| comparable had ever happened. Even if it somehow eluded the
| rule makers that they exempted 95% of one companies sales
| to the exclusion of all other companies and that companies
| CEO had curried extensive favor with the administration and
| this was a mistake, the appearance of gross impropriety and
| conflicts of interest should cause a rapid reset and roll
| back. I suspect, however, it will not be rolled back, and
| that they were entirely aware of what they were doing. This
| is what kleptocracy looks like.
| beefnugs wrote:
| I don't understand whats going on with this shithole
| world, the term Conflict of Interest used to be
| ubiquitous and everyone understood it. Now its such
| obvious blatant corruption everywhere, has it really
| always been this bad and we just all have too much
| information from the internet now?
| sethammons wrote:
| Being a sell out was bad. Now it is the goal: to be an
| "influencer"
|
| I think as people feel financially squeezed, they get
| less strict on how to get by. This leads to acceptance of
| "take the money and run." The loss of the middle class is
| the source of many woes.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| When you say EU rules, I guess it's the GDPR part on having the
| user data stay in the EU?
|
| Otherwise I don't see any other rule that would ask the foreign
| company to move most of it's workforce and production capacity.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| No, OP is referring to the fact that the companies that are
| big enough to be subject to the EU DSA's rules about
| platforms are all American. So any fines handed down for
| violations of the DSA are exclusively to American big tech
| firms. The rejoinder is that the rules apply to everyone, it
| just happens that the companies that are subject are
| American.
| kurisufag wrote:
| the USB-C legislation was pretty clearly directed at Apple
| alone
| userbinator wrote:
| ...and now we get stupid overly complex and fragile
| connectors on things like laptops instead of simple and
| robust barrel plugs.
| dboreham wrote:
| I think you mean: 700 different permutations of barrel
| plug diameter, sex and voltage?
| userbinator wrote:
| There has been maybe two dozen different barrel plugs
| widely used over the last two decades, and "12V" and
| "20V" were already a de-facto standard for laptops with
| 2S and 3S batteries respectively (there was some
| artificial segmentation like 18.5V, 19V, 19.5V, 20V, etc.
| but they are all within tolerance range). I have not seen
| a male laptop; they are always female, being the
| "receiver" of the power.
|
| Search for "laptop" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C
| oaxial_power_connector#Listin...
| Hamuko wrote:
| Two dozen different plugs over the last two decades means
| that we're averaging 1.2 different barrel plugs per year.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| That leaves out all the "what is a computer?" devices
| that had all sort of plugs that wouldn't be barrel:
| tablets, chromebooks, raspberry pi, e-readers etc.
|
| Same for all the smaller dedicated devices (audio
| recorders, camera, controllers etc.)
|
| Those didn't go the barrel plug route in the first place
| to allow for charging through the same port, and would
| have been a loophole if barrel was mandated. USB-C was
| honestly the only option that made sense IMHO.
| userbinator wrote:
| _tablets, chromebooks_
|
| Most of those used either USB or a barrel plug depending
| on their size.
|
| _raspberry pi, e-readers_
|
| USB.
|
| _Same for all the smaller dedicated devices (audio
| recorders, camera, controllers etc.)_
|
| Many of those use smaller barrel plugs, appropriate for
| their lower voltage.
|
| The main problem with USB-C is the tiny fragile connector
| (search for images of "bent USB-C"), and the fact that
| it's a standard that tries to be what should really be a
| bunch of separate standards. It's hard to get a barrel
| plug wrong. It's too easy to get USB-C wrong, and cause
| damaged devices:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713713
| randunel wrote:
| No, it wasn't. The usb forum could have decided to use a
| lightning compatible standard, but there were problems
| with it.
|
| Besides, apple are one of the decision makers in the usb
| c standard, the legislation mandated a standard, but not
| a specific one, just the same one for all, and this forum
| which includes apple decided to go with usb c
| https://www.usb.org/members
| kmac_ wrote:
| Quick fact check: DSA (more specifically, VLOPs
| regulations) also applies to AliExpress, Temu, Shein,
| Pornhub, TikTok, Zalando, and others.
| Sloowms wrote:
| There are European companies that are under the regulation
| as well.
|
| The DSA is the part that applies to all companies in some
| way as well (things like the need for moderation and a way
| for people to reach you with complaints). The DMA is about
| the market and how to deal with monopolies.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Just a coincidence that the only company that _currently_ fits
| the criteria is Tesla then.
|
| Everyone else can start rearranging their supply chains and
| building new factories to comply. Easy peasy right? Be up and
| running in a few weeks, at most, right?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| With the assumption of course that tariffs won't change
| before new factories even have come online in a less optimal
| place. I'd be hard pressed to invest huge amounts of money
| like that when we are on tariff policy change 80-something in
| 100 days while I also hearing about imminent "trade deals".
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think Honda already has like 75% American parts in the cars
| they produce in Indiana. It was actually listed on the Acura
| ILX I bought from them awhile back.
| rco8786 wrote:
| That's great, I'm all for seeing that number increase. That
| doesn't take away the fact that this number just explicitly
| targets Tesla and nobody else.
| dboreham wrote:
| Genuinely curious why? I live in the USA, but nowhere near
| any place they make cars. So I have not much interest in
| helping those folks, fine though I'm sure they are. I'd
| rather have a Japanese made Honda because it'll likely have
| higher reliability.
| lenkite wrote:
| Curious - If this exact act had been done under the Obama or
| Biden administrations, would you still hold the same opinion
| ? Tesla was still a love child at that time.
|
| Many companies like Honda are now moving part of domestic
| production to the US.
| rco8786 wrote:
| If Obama was best buds with Elon and telling the USA to buy
| Teslas and calling any vandalism against Tesla terrorism
| and campaigning together and doing Oval Office press
| conferences together and having Thanksgiving dinner
| together and letting Elon run a made up government agency?
|
| Come on. It's blatant corruption in broad daylight. Don't
| try and both sides it.
|
| But to answer your question directly if Obama had declared
| a fake economic emergency to consolidate power to himself
| and used that emergency power to abruptly pass a series of
| sweeping tariffs with no clear strategy or messaging and
| then selectively rolled back some of those tariffs in a way
| that only benefitted a specific company. Yes. I would feel
| the same.
| jwilber wrote:
| The key is the "...over a certain size" solely benefiting the
| richest man in the world, who just so happens to be heavily
| involved (despite no election) in the very government setting
| the policy and determining the size.
| markvdb wrote:
| > I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is
| to get things made domesticly
|
| ...or to create massive stock market front-running
| opportunities with plausible deniability.
|
| "But, but, Hanlon's razor!". Sorry, but at this level of
| responsibility, incompetence equals malice.
|
| We fscking all have to live with the consequences. That
| includes those of us who could not vote for an alternative.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's not just the idea in isolation though. I don't think
| anyone would complain much if the rule was "in N mths the
| threshold is X". Everyone could do the necessary adjustments
| and play by the same rules. But if the rule applies
| immediately, favours the guy who gave you millions, and impacts
| the competition financially where they need to make me
| investments to comply with the rules... yeah, that stinks even
| if it looks like a generic rule.
| stevage wrote:
| And absolutely no guarantees those rules stay in place long
| enough for anyone else to ever benefit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no guarantees those rules stay in place long enough for
| anyone else to ever benefit_
|
| Not only that, Trump is actively lying about negotiating
| them down [1].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-foreign-ministry-
| says-x...
| viraptor wrote:
| Ideally that's the long term goal though, right? You want
| good local production, but not impair the trade forever.
| The best tariff would be a future one that achieves the
| shift by threat, then gets cancelled because the goal is
| complete and there's no point is impacting trade otherwise.
| globalise83 wrote:
| If companies believe today that in 4 years the tariffs
| will be dropped and that their investment in a
| manufacturing facility with 25% higher costs than the
| foreign competition will become effectively worthless,
| they will be reluctant to invest all that much.
| DAGdug wrote:
| They search space for criteria is practically limitless. They
| have and would absolutely fish for precisely the criteria
| benefiting Musk. This playbook has been applied well by the
| crony capitalist class in the 3rd world, and is always a moving
| target. Most players know that and will not chase the moving
| target, knowing that another set of rules will emerge that will
| create new hurdles protecting the crony capitalist. A few will,
| and get burned.
|
| There are two reasons to believe this is applicable here: 1.
| Trump has a track record of quid pro quos (Adelson being a
| salient example). Musk is definitely seeking his pound of flesh
| 2. Lutnick urged people to buy Tesla (shocking and explicit
| favoritism) The view that this is just incentivizing local
| production is naive.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > where people say they're targeting specific companies and
| comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a
| certain size are covered".
|
| The rules are written with full knowledge of the current market
| situation and the understanding that companies can't re-
| engineer their supply chains overnight.
|
| The rule-writers had full knowledge about which companies would
| and would not immediately benefit from this rule. They wrote it
| accordingly.
|
| This doesn't compare to the EU rulemaking discussion for that
| reason. If the EU rules were written so that only a _single_
| company was hit by the rule, people would be saying the same
| thing.
| croes wrote:
| The question is why 85% and not 80%.
|
| Remember when Oklahoma's requirements for a new school bible
| coincidently where only met by the Trump bible?
| thrance wrote:
| You can tweak the rules infinitely to get the outcome you want.
| It's suspiciously convenient how the _only_ company that 's
| exempt from those tariffs is owned by the guy that gave Trump
| $200+ millions during his campaign.
|
| You can't argue in good faith about "well, that's the rule"
| when the rule was very obviously constructed that way to
| achieve this specific purpose.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Trump has been a pretty different politician (both in how he's
| talked but also what he's done) so I don't think it makes sense
| to view things he does slightly differently. Also the issue is
| less that a specific company is targeted but more that it looks
| like a personal political favor.
|
| Not that your point is entirely invalid, just that I think the
| context is probably different (though I'm not sure exactly what
| EU comments you're referring to).
| Sloowms wrote:
| These are indeed both policies that involve thresholds and are
| therefore so similar that you can not argue for the one but not
| for the other.
| clutchdude wrote:
| US states do this frequently - for example, Texas often passes
| laws that stipulate "cities having a population over...." such
| that only the major cities have laws applied to them or certain
| companies having over employees/users/customers over a certain
| amount.
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| Context matters. In a vacuum, the 85% rule is fine. In reality,
| it excludes a single company whose CEO not only holds a
| position in the administration making the rules, but who
| clearly holds enough influence that the president himself shot
| a Tesla ad in front of the white house.
|
| Given such visible conflicts of interest, the administration
| should be bending over backwards to dispel perceptions of
| impropriety. The fact that they aren't, and that these
| coincidences keep occurring, should be telling.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Sure it's 85% now, but what about tomorrow? Next week? Next
| month?
|
| This administration's policy decisions aren't particularly
| stable.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I would be surprised if Ford does anything drastic with their
| supply chain. Probably just wait this out. POTUS is going to be
| stripped of this ridiculous tariff "power" one way or another.
|
| * Bogus emergency is up for review
|
| * Congress discussing stripping power
|
| * Constitutionality in question
|
| * Public going to to bury them in the midterms if this keeps up
| silverquiet wrote:
| I've been thinking that reason must prevail for nigh on a
| decade and while there have been moments where it seems to,
| overall I can't say that I'm particularly optimistic at the
| moment. I have been told that "degrowth" (for the purpose of
| slowing climate change) is the most unpopular policy
| imaginable, but it seems like we are taking a stab at it for
| different reasons. Perhaps that unpopularity will have some
| effect; it does seem (both anecdotally for me and in some
| data that I've seen) that swing voters are already regretting
| their decision.
| dboreham wrote:
| Most of this pantomime is also illegal or unconstitutional. For
| example you can't pass a law or regulation that targets one
| person or entity. But it'll take a long time to litigate
| everything because the DoJ and congress have been rooted.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For example you can't pass a law or regulation that targets
| one person or entity.
|
| Yes, you can. Such a law cannot direct punishment or assign
| guilt to a particular individual or entity without a judicial
| trial, or it would violate the Bill of Attainder clause, but
| laws doing other things that apply to a specific named
| individual or entity _are_ (unless they violate some other
| provision) Constitutional; in fact, in some cases they are
| _necessary_ to satisfy other Constitutional rules.
| asdsadasdasd123 wrote:
| I dont understand what this article means. Tesla's aren't
| imported so why would there be tariffs on them. The source link
| leads nowhere.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It seems to be about a tariff rebate on imported _parts_.
| frabcus wrote:
| Right but presumably 85% of the parts aren't imported? So
| while it is a benefit, it is a slightly bizarre one?
|
| Would be nice to see a technical definition for how the %
| imported is worked out.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Right but presumably 85% of the parts aren't imported?
|
| 85% of parts != 85% of cost
|
| The rules for calculating what percentage of a vehicle is
| domestic or foreign made are obscure. It's not clear what
| rules they're going to be using for this tariff exemption
| yet.
|
| It could be possible that the 15% foreign content of a car
| could make up 30% of the cost of goods sold, for example.
| If the parts come from China they could have a 125% or
| higher tariff applied, pushing the share of BOM cost even
| higher.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The tariffs cover parts as well as whole vehicles. The thing
| announced here is that they'll have a rebate program if the car
| is 85% manufactured in the US, and the rebate will be in effect
| for 2 years. So you still pay the tariff on parts, but you get
| some or all the money back if you meet that threshold. The idea
| being that it gives the company two years to move their parts
| manufacturing or sources. But the threshold is so high that
| only Tesla gets to enjoy the rebate, not any other company.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| But even Tesla only maxes out at 75 - how are they eligible?
| Also wouldn't surprise me if this carve out is special
| purpose to give Tesla and only Tesla this rebate.
| tim333 wrote:
| "US automakers will receive credit up to 15% of the value of
| vehicles to offset cost of imported parts"
| https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-sec-lutnick-cars-85-percent-...
| Aurornis wrote:
| The article is really bad. Even the original source is just an
| off-hand comment from Lutnick, not the final regulation.
|
| The idea is that automakers will get special exemptions from
| the tariffs for what they do import.
|
| Handing out tariff exemptions was one of the red flags people
| were raising during this process. It becomes a lever the
| administration can pull to grant favor to specific companies.
| Everyone else suffers.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Fact sheet: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/addr...
|
| "Final" regulation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/addr...
| guywithahat wrote:
| I wonder how much their lack of union plays into this. The auto
| factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt
| to limit the scope of strikes and violence from the UAW. Tesla
| doesn't have to worry about unions (at least yet), and so they
| have very centralized factories where an enormous amount of work
| is done. Probably makes it easier to do everything in the US if
| you can do it all in one building
| porphyra wrote:
| In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump
| Presidency.
|
| Biden was pressured by unions to snub Tesla at the EV summit.
| This personally offended Elon, who then went to support Trump
| with all sorts of tactics including buying Twitter to amplify
| his voice.
| ivape wrote:
| Is Citizen's United the only thing that allowed one person to
| donate $150 million? This is the obvious flaw. We would need
| a RICO type framework to identify the basket of vectors that
| one person/organization can use to funnel money to a
| candidate. This is a bipartisan issue but I don't know how we
| can surface the narrative so more people can talk about it.
| twoodfin wrote:
| _Citizens United_ has no impact on what an individual can
| do with his money. It's purely about corporate spending by
| entities like IBM, the Sierra Club, or the New York Times
| Company.
| TylerE wrote:
| It does because a rich individual can just start a proxy
| corp and do whatever.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I think you are confusing _Citizens United v FEC_ (2010)
| with _Buckley v. Valeo_ (1976). (CU is largely
| "corporations are people applies in the application of
| _Buckley_ ".)
|
| Though, also, neither decision impacts limitations on
| _donations_ to candidates, both address limitations on
| expenditures (in Buckley's case by non-candidate persons
| independent of campaigns, by candidates from personal
| funds, and by candidates in aggregate; CU mostly deals with
| the first of those where the legal person is a corporation
| and not a natural person.)
| porphyra wrote:
| I agree that allowing elections to be influenced by
| spending money was a mistake. Campaign spending is way out
| of control and it reduces our leaders and politicians into
| desperately begging for donations.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump
| Presidency.
|
| Yeah, how dare they do the things that make reactionaries
| be... reactionary.
| porphyra wrote:
| The democrats also tried to pass legislation in 2021 that
| excludes Tesla from an EV credit due to it being not built
| by unions, even though Tesla has by far the largest share
| of electric vehicles and is the most productive and
| innovative company in this sector.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Yeah we wouldn't want the people making the product
| having representation and getting a larger share of the
| take on the sale of said product.
| rat87 wrote:
| Yeah because they were anti union. It wasn't because of
| any personal dislike of Elon.
|
| And it was inevitable that the more mainstream automakers
| would sell more evs then Tesla as EVs became a larger and
| larger share of cars sold. Granted it's taking longer
| than expected but Tesla is no longer the majority even if
| it's overall has a large plurality but falling pretty
| fast
| lenerdenator wrote:
| For guys like that, being pro-union _is_ personal
| dislike.
|
| They see themselves as the smartest, strongest, most
| clever people in history. They don't need some group
| moderating their plans, much less one made of people they
| hired. Any suggestion to the contrary is a strike against
| the natural order that they perceive reality through.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I think there was a lot of pressure on Tesla/Elon to donate
| and participate more, and higher ups turned pretty hard on
| him when he didn't. They were pulling the tax credit from
| Tesla while holding EV summits with everyone but him. I
| don't think he was being reactionary, I think his hand was
| forced.
|
| Further he really isn't a conservative. He's still running
| around on X talking about how we need to double the number
| of H1-B's and other social-left causes. Cutting spending
| through DOGE is something every Republican has talked about
| for decades, and I don't think it's a major flip for him to
| want to do that.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I don't think H1-Bs are really a "social-left cause".
| They're something that big tech companies like because
| they get to cherry-pick skilled workers and keep them
| locked in. On the main political spectrum, I think
| they're pretty centrist. The right dislikes them because
| they're immigration in disguise, the left dislikes them
| because they're indentured servitude in disguise.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| He's incredibly conservative. He very much likes the idea
| of Neo-feudalism. You have a class that owns everything
| (of which he's the prime example right now) and then you
| have a class that labors to rent things from people like
| him. Those who don't - or can't - play that game are
| simply not fit to survive.
|
| It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize
| it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots
| of tech bros are into it.
| EricDeb wrote:
| No one private citizen should be able to hold that much
| influence
| mmooss wrote:
| > The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW
| basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes and violence
| from the UAW.
|
| That is the story the auto companies like to tell, to make
| unions look damaging to workers and communities. From what I've
| read, the migration had a lot to do with race. But regardless,
| do either of us have any evidence to share? (not me right now)
| guywithahat wrote:
| The race riots didn't help, but they were largely secondary
| to the factories leaving. The UAW would never strike at their
| factory; they would usually go across the street and strike
| at some significant, shared plant (like an engine factory for
| multiple vehicles). For a long time, logistic constraints
| prevented major auto companies from moving too far away, but
| once they figured it out they started putting each factory in
| a new, usually right-to-work state, so you could only strike
| at your factory. Flint went from being the home of GM and
| having ~14 major auto factories to 3. Similar story for
| Detroit.
|
| Similar things happened in most major industries. The other
| one I'm familiar with is GE Locomotive, who moved their
| engine facility to Grove City (which still never unionized),
| and now has a major facility in Fort Worth as well.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The race riots didn't help, but they were largely
| secondary to the factories leaving.
|
| That's not what I mean. What I understand was that, in many
| cities (not just Detroit), racism led to the factories
| leaving.
| jsnider3 wrote:
| How does that work? Did GM suddenly decide there were too
| many black people in Michigan so they moved to Georgia?
| mmooss wrote:
| There are several issues of how racism interacted with
| manufacturing.
|
| One is that the auto manufacturers wouldn't hire black
| people into serious jobs - for a long time, all they
| could be was janitors, etc. I read one account that they
| went to local black leaders for recommendations and one
| person had a graduate degree - CPA or MBA, iirc. They got
| a dead-end clerical job or something like that.
|
| Union workers were often actively hostile, even when
| union leadership welcomed them. Multiple times they
| walked out when one black person was hired.
|
| Also, local racism crushed the black community, which
| would be the workforce. Redlining effectively prevented
| black people from living outside certain neighborhoods
| and prevented them from getting loans. They ended up
| packed into these neighborhoods, subject to white
| slumlords who charged exhorbident rents. Schools were
| awful. With little education, no money, no access to
| credit, and even if you overcame all that, no opportunity
| for career. Don't forget police brutality, race riots
| against blacks everywhere, lynchings in the South, etc.
|
| There is more I'm not remembering atm.
| bgwalter wrote:
| Lutnick is a man of his word:
|
| https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-st...
|
| Tesla is now above that price from March again. Orangehorseshoe
| loves Tesla!
| umvi wrote:
| I wonder if Slate (https://www.slate.auto/) will be exempt as
| well since they tout "Made in USA"
| briandear wrote:
| Japan's trade barriers on foreign autos have been legendary.
|
| https://www.americanautomakers.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| The plan all along?
| matt3210 wrote:
| It's pretty coincidental. I can't help but wonder if the number
| was picked for this outcome
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| What I personally find more interesting is that they
| consciously did not choose a more conciliatory number ( like 80
| ), which would capture more cars and have the benefit of being
| able to deflect attacks. Almost like it was intended to cause
| uproar.
|
| Otoh, I listened to conservative ratio the other day and the
| general tone was "good, he is making them mad and he doesn't
| care."
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| that's what gets them excited.. "owning the libs"
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's time for Europe to de link from the US.
|
| If that's the way policy decisions are going to be made
| every time conservatives come to power in the US, then it's
| best that the rest of the world not go down with the US
| when the time comes.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Just all gotta hope that an increasingly desperate
| America in decline doesn't start grasping at war-shaped
| straws
| yongjik wrote:
| I was thinking about buying an EV in the next several years, but
| I'll never buy a Tesla, until I see Elon Musk in prison. And I
| don't think I'm alone.
|
| Major effect of Trump's trade war is yet to be felt. I think
| Americans' perception of Trump will get much worse soon, and
| Tesla's brand image will follow suit. A tariff exemption is cute
| but I don't think that's enough to save Tesla.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Tesla [...] losing $15.3 billion in brand value:
| https://brandfinance.com/press-releases/toyota-is-the-worlds...
| AngryData wrote:
| The vast majority of their battery cells are made in China and
| Japan so im not sure how they even qualify. Oh yeah, corruption.
| henry2023 wrote:
| It's not corruption it's just paying back for the votes Elon
| bought with this 1 million a day program on swing states.
|
| Uhm, wait a moment.
| panick21_ wrote:
| They can qualify because unlike most automakers they do
| actually have significant investment in their own battery
| supply-chain.
| MrFreebus wrote:
| Tesla produces most of their batteries in Nevada.
| esalman wrote:
| The irony here is that Democrats, for more than a decade, did
| anything and everything, by bankrolling taxpayers money into
| incentives and subsidies, to protect Tesla, help it compete and
| even flourish and scale, in the auto market where margins are
| razor thin and true innovations are hard to come by, even less so
| from smaller players. Nobody, except Republicans, batted an eye
| because climate change, science and environment comes first
| supposedly.
| sd8f9iu wrote:
| Climate change, science, and the environment are indeed valid
| reasons (as was plainly stated at the time) for subsidies to
| electric cars (amongst hundreds of billions of dollars of other
| environmental subsidies Democrats passed). The CEO spending
| hundreds of millions of dollars to curry favor with the ruling
| party, which is almost certainly the reason this specific
| number was chosen, is not.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Tesla's success/threat pushed traditional automakers to
| actually build EVs at scale. It convinced consumers that EVs
| are viable and kickstarted charging infrastructure. The left
| accomplished its goal even if it probably would have preferred
| Elon not go all Kanye on us.
| esalman wrote:
| > The left accomplished its goal
|
| Yeah we allowed a deranged billionaire to transform auto
| industry, even if it cost us democracy and threats of fascism
| and authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.
|
| Completely delusional.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Post hoc ergo propter hoc
| esalman wrote:
| A lot of people, including me, realized even as early as
| circa 2018 that he was a nutcase. Imo the point of post
| hoc ergo should've been when he said zero Covid case by
| April (2020).
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Sure but the authoritarianism outcome was not predestined
| by simply funding the technologies he invested in. Plenty
| of eccentric and/or drug-addled billionaires went on to
| live relatively harmless lives. He could have been a jar-
| pissing recluse or spent his days pinning the weasel in a
| Caribbean polycule dormitory or gone on wild John McAfee
| adventures.
|
| The place we went wrong wasn't incentivizing Tesla, it
| was allowing the other guy to escape conviction.
| AngryData wrote:
| I don't know if I can actually believe that. EVs were already
| coming. Yeah the rollout was a bit slower than the demand for
| them in established companies, but not by much. People had
| already been driving hybrid vehicles for quite awhile, and
| some electric cars already existed even if most were lower
| mileage/smaller battery models.
|
| To me it is like claiming without iphones we wouldn't have
| gotten smartphones or touchscreens until a decade later.
| Except PDAs and touch screens already existed, apple just got
| a few years jump start on a big brand model before many other
| companies did the math on how cheap mobile computing and
| touch screens were becoming.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| I'm not convinced it's a good comparison. Even in the
| dumbphone days we had the Blackberry and NGage and JavaME
| and other attempts to be the next big thing. It just took a
| few years and certainly wasn't because of Apple.
|
| With automakers it seemed like in the 20-teens they all
| shrugged and said, "looks like hybrids are the best we can
| do". Then Tesla started selling sedans and SUVs and exactly
| one legacy auto design cycle later we got the electric
| Mustang, Golf, 3-series, etc. I think they would have
| milked ICE as long as they could had no one come along with
| a successful ev.
| hello_computer wrote:
| i think it's more than irony. why would the government--
| irrespective of party--give him billions in refundable credits
| for over a decade? remember paypal was also an in-q-tel
| investment? "boring company" to connect DUMBs. starlink for the
| control grid. spacex to deploy it. tesla as the self-driving AI
| slam-dunk (windows update car is another control grid). the
| government has been heavily invested in elon long before donald
| trump got political. why? with the kind of budget the CIA has,
| you could make anyone seem as though they had "the midas
| touch." name one of your kids "damien" and dress up like the
| antichrist. the devil has an army. the pentagon points south
| (down). we ponder our next pleasure as the innocent are
| slaughtered with our energies, with our tacit approval.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm not sure even Tesla unambiguously qualifies here. Looking at
| the NHTSA part 583 list for 2025 [0], none of the Tesla vehicles
| have a "US" content higher than 75% (which I think includes
| Canada?). The highest is the base Kia EV6 at 80%. This seems to
| be coming from the Kogod manufacturing index. That's a more
| qualitative ranking that attempts to deal with things like
| corporate structures rather than just origin like the NHTSA
| numbers.
|
| As someone who works in the industry, "where" something comes
| from is an inherently fuzzy concept. Different parts of the
| government use radically different definitions. For example,
| under NAFTA "domestic" parts are usually things manufactured
| anywhere in North America. This was done to onshore automotive
| manufacturing that wasn't realistically going to come back to the
| US, but political leaders didn't want to stay in Asia. One result
| of these tariffs may actually be that more auto manufacturing
| moves to Asia as the advantage of North American manufacturing is
| lost.
|
| [0]
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/MY2025-A...
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| If the origins are so fuzzy, I guess other manufacturers would
| very soon adjust their part lists/part origins to avoid the
| tariff?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Even in normal times regulators don't take kindly to
| origination fraud even, so it's highly unlikely anyone will
| risk it with an admin like the current one. Look at what
| happened to Amazon earlier today and SentinelOne last week.
|
| Most manufacturers will eat the cost and raise prices to a
| certain extent. Base models of any product tend to be
| manufactured in such as way that they have much looser
| margins.
| endianswap wrote:
| What regulators lol
| alephnerd wrote:
| Most recently, Ford for violating the "Chicken Tax" -
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/ford-p...
|
| And that was under the Biden admin, which was much less
| pushy. The Trump admin is much more vindictive,
| especially with a policy that appears to be backed
| personally by DJT.
|
| Here are some interesting legal articles discussing this
| very thing in the Trump admin
|
| https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2025/02/us-
| administration-t...
|
| https://natlawreview.com/article/what-every-
| multinational-co...
| mindslight wrote:
| Vindictive but also just straightforwardly bribable. So
| half the manufacturers will be paying tariffs at the
| border and the other half will be paying smaller amounts
| directly into Trump's pocket.
| pas wrote:
| what happened to SentinelOne last week? :o
| alephnerd wrote:
| I meant 2 weeks ago - Chris Krebs "resigned" and S1 had
| to do a lot of damage control around their Fed business
| (which is significant as a cybersecurity vendor).
|
| Won't be surprised if Stamos quietly "resigns" in a
| couple months as well.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Fuzzy in the sense of "you need a bunch of experts and
| lawyers to sit down to determine what the correct answer for
| the government is in any specific situation". The work is
| exceedingly tedious and expensive.
|
| I was involved in similar efforts to remove Chinese parts
| from the supply chain during the previous Trump
| administration. It was a nightmare that involved dozens of
| people reviewing tens of thousands of parts across hundreds
| of components with multiple revisions. I was involved for two
| years and that wasn't even the entire thing. Most changes
| required multiple layers of analysis/engineering review,
| change proposals (which often had to pass change review
| boards), vendor negotiations, manufacturer negotiations,
| reams of documentation about changes to refit procedures for
| previously produced HW, testing, validation, etc.
|
| Removing Mexico and Canada from supply chains would be even
| worse. Probably nigh-impossible for some OEMs.
| leereeves wrote:
| > Probably nigh-impossible for some OEMs.
|
| Impossible meaning the parts aren't yet manufactured in the
| US, or that they can't be for some reason?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| There's no doubt that they could be. Just not as cheaply.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Access to raw materials may be a fundamental blocker
| there.
|
| I had seen stats putting China's control of certain rare
| earth minerals as high as 80% and products like lithium
| batteries as high as 97%. I don't know the industry well
| enough to validate that, but I couldn't find anything
| refuting or disproving those numbers either. If true, we
| very well may not be able to make them here if China were
| to cut off those resources long term.
| lazide wrote:
| These all have potential mines in the US. They're
| currently shuttered however, because of cost, because
| China is cheaper and has been for a long time.
| _heimdall wrote:
| That will be a rude awakening for a lot of people if we
| have to start mining that heavily here. We were able to
| have our cake and eat it too as long as we could talk
| green while outsourcing our environmental damage due to
| mining overseas.
| lazide wrote:
| Yup. It's already going to be a rude awakening once
| tariffs work their way out to retail prices.
| wordofx wrote:
| No one can do anything in the west because you can't mine
| or process anything. Countries like China have no
| regulations preventing the processing of raw materials.
| Attrecomet wrote:
| Oh, you can, generally, it's just not fine to poison the
| whole region's water supply doing it, which less rich
| countries care less about, and which makes it expensive.
| Incipient wrote:
| Once a skillset and supply chain is lost, manufacturing a
| specific item absolutely may not be possible "now". You'd
| need to rebuild a supply chain and import skilled workers
| to get it happening.
| jajko wrote:
| Goo luck importing external highly skilled immigrants
| into current super-hostile US environment to undermine
| their own countries. Proper patriots would even sabotage
| such effort.
|
| Sure you can massively overpay them, exacerbating the
| effect of massively rising prices for US domestic
| product.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Though to be clear, "not as cheaply" can mean a
| difference of several orders of magnitude and many years
| of effort.
| pca006132 wrote:
| It probably also means that companies will not do it: It
| seems impossible to keep the tariff this high for years,
| and Trump will only stay in office for a few years...
| lazide wrote:
| Trump has been replacing anyone who would realistically
| force him out with flunkies as his first order of
| business. No one is getting rid of him in a few years.
| close04 wrote:
| His term ends in a few years. At that point he's either
| replaced, maybe with the same kind of person (the US
| people have showed their hand with these elections), or
| he stays in place somehow.
|
| Are you hinting at the second scenario? Then we'll get to
| see what US democracy is about, or if those people
| hoarding guns to fight an undemocratic or abusive
| government were just overcompensating, as it looks like
| today.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Trump's term ends with a high probability of a Democrat
| being elected to clean up his mess, as happened in 2020
| and 2008. He will almost certainly lose congress in the
| midterm unless he can somehow suspend the election (all
| bets are off if the constitution falls).
| lazide wrote:
| It's like none of you saw Jan 6th, or his pardoning of
| folks at all. It's seriously bizarre.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Or his exec order asserting that the 2020 election was
| stolen and targeting former CISA head Chris Krebs for not
| lying to that effect in his security evaluations of the
| voting systems.
| wordofx wrote:
| Democrats will win by advocating no voter id and
| preventing anyone watching the vote counting. Again.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I really don't want MAGA people watching who I vote for.
| I'm sure you see logic in that? Also, I love vote by
| mail, I appreciate it as much as the residents of red
| state Utah who also appreciate that.
| wordofx wrote:
| lol so you are ok with the party you oppose skipping
| votes for your party because it happened behind closed
| doors and poll watchers / challengers are not allowed in.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Voter fraud is something that (some) Republicans do to
| prove how easy it would be for Democrats to get away with
| it...and they always get caught.
| wordofx wrote:
| And yet it democratic voting areas it's democrats who are
| blocking poll watchers and challengers or are suspect of
| voter fraud when they don't close voting or have
| suitcases randomly show up and quickly shuffled in.
|
| It's only democratic areas who don't want voter id.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Whether some parts _could_ be manufactured in the US is
| irrelevant, when you give 3 days ' notice instead of 3
| years. You simply can't build a factory in 3 days, let
| alone train up the required personnel and set up an
| entire local supply chain.
| tw04 wrote:
| Fuzzy is a feature, not a flaw. It allows the president to
| unilaterally pick winner and losers.
|
| Other manufacturers can do all sorts of things to try to be
| compliant, but ultimately the only way to be in compliance is
| to bend the knee.
|
| They're welcome to sue, but that could take years and
| millions to figure out.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Based on the previous comment, it sounds like the fuzziness
| well predates Trump.
|
| Are you arguing that the fuzziness was built into the
| system previously to allow presidents to pick winners and
| losers in the auto industry? Do you know if there are clear
| examples of past presidents actually using that power?
| bronson wrote:
| Sure, it's an inherently fuzzy concept, but that hasn't
| mattered much until now.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I actually see this as an example of why the fuzziness
| should always matter. We may occasionally find good
| reason to take the risk, but we have a ton of this kind
| of fuzziness written into our countless laws and we have
| no real way to stop those in charge from deciding to
| misuse it.
| mindslight wrote:
| The mechanism to stop it is to lean on the chickenshit
| Republican congress critters to impeach and convict the
| president who is using his discretionary powers to
| overtly loot for personal gain, attack our country (/me
| waves at the import blockade), and is already ignoring
| the check of the judiciary. It would be great if there
| were other methods of accountability, yes. But it's
| impossible to codify legal rules into perfect
| mechanically-executable formalities, and it's impossible
| to avoid the principle agent problem. Since you seem to
| be concerned about this problem, surely you are
| contacting your congressional representative and senators
| to express support for impeachment, right?
| _heimdall wrote:
| I live in a state where unfortunately my senator will
| absolutely never turn on Trump and impeach, those calls
| would be a waste of time.
|
| I agree that holding people accountable today is
| important if and when laws are broken. But surely you
| can't just stop there. We don't need to codify legal
| rules perfectly, but acknowledging that we can't should
| lead to much more hesitation with the powers we allow and
| the sheer size of our legal codes.
|
| Dealing with an immediate problem first makes sense. We
| would need to follow that up with overhauling our laws to
| better ensure this can't happen again. We're never going
| to do that though, solving the root cause is slow,
| tedious, and politically untenable.
| labster wrote:
| The fuzziness was primarily left to bureaucrats making
| best guesses, without any particular agenda. Of course
| there would be some bureaucratic capture going on, but
| shame would still work. Systems work best with some sort
| of fuzzy logic, which is what courts and bureaucrats
| provide. Regulations are not supposed to be a suicide
| pact.
|
| What has changed here is that loyalty to the head of
| state is the primary determinant for all of the gray
| areas -- and that guy can be as arbitrary and capricious
| as he wants. Context always matters; context is the
| difference between prerogative and corruption.
| parineum wrote:
| > left to bureaucrats making best guesses, without any
| particular agenda.
|
| That's incredibly naive. Bureaucracies have agendas
| either intentionally (political appointments) or
| organically.
|
| The corruption may be more brazen and direct under Trump
| but the incentives have always been there
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Usually industry insiders just switch jobs directly into
| the bureaucracy writing the laws?
| labster wrote:
| There is a revolving door between industry and
| bureaucracy, true. There is a problem with getting
| qualified people who are not conflicted financially and
| who are not bound by preconceptions. This problem is not
| particularly tractable, but granting all the decisions to
| the leader can only make it worse.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Granting the powers to either is also an option, and a
| reasonable one in my opinion if our two options are
| granting decisions to those using the revolving door or
| the one person at the top (regardless of who that person
| is).
| rbanffy wrote:
| > but shame would still work
|
| Unfortunately, we are waaaaay past that point.
| tritipsocial wrote:
| It's not actually a fuzzy concept. CBP determines it at the
| port of entry and they basically have this huge list of every
| type of product. Fraud is taken extremely seriously so its
| not something companies mess around with.
|
| The fuziness mentioned comes from when outside firms try and
| estimate the % domestic content. Unlike CBP they're largely
| making estimated guesses, but luckily that's not how the
| tariffs are calculated.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This is political corruption, the rule was created for Musk
| because he is a political ally of the president. Why wasn't it
| 70% or 90%? Because the number was chosen to give Tesla an
| unfair advantage. So while your technical points are valid,
| they miss the big picture.
| brandensilva wrote:
| The amount of corruption from this administration is off the
| charts. Elon wants his money back he spent and then some to
| elect Trump.
| khazhoux wrote:
| The corruption issue is the point of the article. It's the
| obvious thing here.
|
| Person above is pointing out that even Tesla isn't 85% USA
| leereeves wrote:
| That's pure speculation, but quite possible. Corruption is
| nothing new in Washington.
|
| The real question is whether people support bringing auto
| manufacturing back to America. As always, people who like the
| policy/candidate/official will overlook the corruption, while
| people who dislike the policy/candidate/official complain
| about it. The people who demanded evidence about Biden will
| accept speculation about Trump, just as the people who
| speculated about Biden will demand evidence about Trump.
|
| With that in mind, I'm curious, what's everyone's stance on
| American manufacturing? Do you agree with Steve Jobs that
| "Those jobs aren't coming back"?
| mmooss wrote:
| Murder is nothing new in my city - people have been doing
| it for centuries. Warfare, famine, epidemics are nothing
| new in most parts of the world.
| leereeves wrote:
| > Murder is nothing new in my city
|
| Murder is an interesting example, because like
| corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it.
| Governments employ soldiers to do it on demand. Gang
| members and mafiosos use it as a tool. Sometimes people
| even celebrate it, such as equating body count with
| success in war.
|
| The problem in politics is that everyone seems to choose
| a side, then apply that same kind of double standard.
| Rules for thee and not for me, as it were.
|
| Edit: but of course, "war is the continuation of politics
| by other means." So it makes sense that the behavior
| would be similar.
|
| > Warfare is entirely different.
|
| Not so much. A lot of people are already talking about
| civil war. If political differences escalate to that
| point, how many will mourn the loss of lives from "the
| other side"?
| mmooss wrote:
| > Murder is an interesting example, because like
| corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it.
|
| No they don't. If someone I know committed murder, like
| almost everyone - organized crime members are very few in
| the population - I would absolutely not overlook it. What
| an absurd argument.
|
| Warfare is entirely different.
| protocolture wrote:
| You literally say "No i would never support murder under
| any conditions" and then you identified the condition,
| warfare, under which you support it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Right and
|
| > If someone I know committed murder, like almost
| everyone - organized crime members are very few in the
| population - I would absolutely not overlook it. What an
| absurd argument.
|
| Fails to define murder and focused on organized crime vs
| what if it was your best friend, wife, close relative
| etc. it's easy to claim how you'll react in an abstract
| scenario but revealed preferences often show something
| happening very different in reality than what people
| claim about theoretical situations publicly. Oh and as if
| it wouldn't matter who the victim was. What if it was
| someone bullying your child viciously for months on end?
| What if they claim it was an accident and now you have to
| pick which story sounds more plausible?
|
| And does "not overlook it" mean they cut ties with that
| person, turn them in, visit vengeance upon them?
| mmooss wrote:
| You're just throwing crap at the wall hoping something
| will stick. It has nothing to do with me.
|
| The idea that people support murder in those cases is
| pretty crazy. You are living in an Internet unreality.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| In the us there is often a disagreement if something was
| self defense or murder.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| If you think murder it's easy to define, go look at how
| many different kinds of murder are defined in the US
| legal code and how every country defines it differently.
| And military kills are excluded even though definitively
| I fail to see the distinction between a war and political
| violence - it's just external instead of internal. What
| is and isn't murder is surprisingly hard to define and
| you're either using a legal definition that's a political
| compromise of different ideas or your own value judgement
| which is your opinion and not necessarily one shared with
| others. Seriously - try writing down what you think
| murder is in 3 sentences or less and see how far you are
| away from the legal code in your country.
| mmooss wrote:
| You're hunting for internal contradiction rather than
| addressing the serious issues.
|
| > You literally say "No i would never support murder
| under any conditions"
|
| I do?
| EricDeb wrote:
| As someone more on the left I would condemn and hope any
| politician of any party who engages in corruption is held
| accountable.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Corruption is nothing new in Washington.
|
| This is not business as usual, no matter how much this
| administration tries to pretend it is.
|
| Regardless, that wouldn't make it okay. It's weird to claim
| that it's normal.
|
| > The real question is...
|
| No, that's a separate question. Not the "real" question.
| The current tariff drama is widely regarded to be temporary
| because it's so economically damaging that Trump's
| successor (of any party) will remove it, if Congress
| doesn't get there first.
|
| This isn't bringing manufacturing back to America, it's
| making America a toxic and unpredictable place to do
| business.
| leereeves wrote:
| > This is not business as usual, no matter how much this
| administration tries to pretend it is.
|
| Rules that favor a politically connected company over
| others is absolutely business as usual. It's the
| foundation of the multi-billion dollar lobbying industry.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Letting the politically connected company buy a
| presidential advertisement on the Whitehouse lawn is
| unusual, so is letting it exfiltrate nlrb data when
| facing cases from the nlrb. But most importantly it isn't
| usual to not bother hiding the corruption. That
| normalizes it which is even more damaging. This
| corruption makes the worst corruption in the history of
| the nation look like a traffic violation.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The problem is that people have become so divided that
| the smallest of offenses by 'the other side' is blown up
| into the most egregious act since the birth of man, and
| the worst of offenses 'by our side' is turned into the
| smallest of issues, a technicality, perhaps not even
| especially real.
|
| This is why you might think that isn't usual to not
| bother hiding the corruption, because I assure you most
| on "the other side" would rather disagree with you.
| Consider that a President gave banks who were failing,
| exclusively due to their own greed and reckless
| investing, hundreds of billions of dollars in an
| unprecedented scale bailout, and would then go on to go
| give 30 minute "chats" to these companies after leaving
| office for $400k a pop, making himself tens of millions
| of dollars out of it.
|
| I'm trying to avoid more contemporary issues precisely
| because of my first paragraph. But I will say that overt
| corruption and weaponization of various institutions was
| perceived, by many, as exceptionally widespread in the
| previous administration. That's largely why November
| turned out the way it did, and similarly why many were so
| surprised by it. People increasingly live in two
| different realities and the hyper-polarization of media
| is heavily contributing to this.
| jajko wrote:
| WTF does this primitive incorrect argument that "banks
| were given hundreds of billions" - you make your whole
| post irrelevant when clearly unfamiliar with basic facts
| on topic you so furiously discuss.
|
| Those money were _loaned_ and were _returned_ back with
| _interest_ , so US government actually earned some good
| money. Do you understand each word in that sentence and
| its overall meaning?
|
| I am not defending banks and their too greedy and frankly
| idiotic behavior in any way, but if people keep ignoring
| absolutely basic facts about topics they so desperately
| want to discuss this has no bigger meaning than ie
| evolution vs creationism discussions with religious
| fanatics.
| mafuy wrote:
| Can you share a link to read more about this?
| somenameforme wrote:
| So would it be fair to say that you're claiming the bank
| bailout is the smallest of issues, a technicality, and
| perhaps not even especially real? I mean after all it
| should be called the "banking temporary investment",
| right...?
|
| I'm sure if Tesla, through their own excessive
| recklessness, did something that ruined countless lives
| and sent them spiraling towards bankruptcy, only to be
| saved by a not-a-bailout of hundreds of billions of
| dollars from the government, repaid some years later with
| token interest, you'd feel the same.
| DFHippie wrote:
| The two women arguing before Solomon over which was the
| true mother of the baby each claimed the other was lying.
| One of them was actually the mother.
|
| That both sides believe the other lies does not mean that
| both sides lie.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I don't believe that you believe that, in the
| circumstance we're discussing. I obviously could list
| basically endless lies of any contemporary political
| administration. Before the country became so polarized
| there were common 'jokes' that weren't really jokes like,
| 'How do you know a politician is lying?' 'Because his
| lips are moving.'
| davidw wrote:
| What is different is the scale and blatant nature of it
| with this administration.
|
| Yes, 'well connected' counted in the past. Now it's "buy
| my crypto thing directly" or "talk with me about
| exceptions to the tariffs".
|
| If there was a faint whiff of something untoward in the
| past, this is the Augean Stables.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Yes.
|
| For some weird psychological reason though a lot of
| people seem to prefer that the corruption is explicit and
| open perhaps because the hidden aspect of it makes it
| easy to imagine more nefarious things happening while
| when it's blatant like this it's easier to minimize it
| with a "what's the big deal, it's just a little tax cut
| for Tesla".
| Qwertious wrote:
| >The current tariff drama is widely regarded to be
| temporary
|
| It was also widely regarded to _obviously not happen_
| before it happened, despite Trump 's explicit statements
| that it would happen and also his past tariffs from his
| first term.
|
| Frankly, who gives a damn what's _widely regarded_?
| protocolture wrote:
| American labor is low quality and high cost. China is no
| longer a guarantee of cheap and terrible like it used to
| be. If america wants to make shit again they need to
| compete on cost terms and quality terms.
|
| Honestly the biggest issue I have seen with US companies
| trying to manufacture goods is that they tend to only
| target US customers. Especially at the low end.
|
| There must be some quirk with US postage where it is
| cheaper to buy foreign goods than it is to purchase
| outgoing postage.
|
| I keep trying to buy local self pub (as in proper self pub,
| not just Amazon POD) books from americans and the half that
| actually permit foreigners to buy their books have actively
| stopped permitting their promotions to be accessed by
| foreigners.
|
| I used to try to buy hobby stuff (militaria etc) from
| americans via eBay and 90+% of them would explicitly tell
| ROW to get bent in the listing.
|
| And etsy postage from yankistan? Forget about it.
|
| Kickstarter postage from the USA? Often as much as the
| product.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > some quirk with US postage where it is cheaper to buy
| foreign goods than it is to purchase outgoing postage.
|
| International rates (or the system that runs it) were
| decided a long time ago. The international postal system
| was set up so that all developing countries (which still
| includes China) are subsidized by developed countries.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > American labor is low quality and high cost.
|
| That is the opposite of my experience with software
| engineers, and my observation of the work ethic of most
| Americans in a variety of professions makes me think the
| opposite is true in pretty much every industry.
|
| I think "American labor is low quality and high cost" is
| one of those things people think must be true about some
| other industry besides the ones they've seen, kind of
| like they think the news is inaccurate when it reports
| things they know to be false, but accurate when it
| reports on other subjects.
| watwut wrote:
| Working a lot of hours and high quality are two
| orthogonal categories. Frequently at odds.
|
| That being said, topic here is low paid manufacturing
| where people dont want to work. Not high paid seeked
| positions. You can't compare them.
| protocolture wrote:
| Its my experience with US network engineers, system
| administrators, cablers, DC operators, business owners
| and a few other bits and bobs.
|
| Something near 100% of the US telco industry I could not
| find a polite word to describe. And its very common for
| obvious deficiencies to be laughed off as normal and
| acceptable.
|
| >Work Ethic
|
| Lets start with "Listening Ethic" and "Understanding
| Instructions" and maybe "Work Ethic" will become
| relevant.
| lenkite wrote:
| > American labor is low quality and high cost
|
| Speaking as a non-American, this is just not true. I have
| always been impressed by the very high quality of
| American engineers.
|
| I cannot comment on manufactured goods though, but I
| think if the US rebuilds its mid-level industrial
| pipeline, quality would be amongst the best in the world
| since Americans generally hold themselves to a high
| standard. I don't think there is a need to be so
| negative.
| protocolture wrote:
| >I have always been impressed by the very high quality of
| American engineers.
|
| I could not have had a more opposing experience possible.
| gadders wrote:
| >>American labor is low quality and high cost.
|
| American Labor will never be cheaper than virtual slave
| labor.
| Qwertious wrote:
| There are more than those two categories - for example,
| Europe exists. So does Canada.
| gadders wrote:
| I would be surprised if there were any meaningful
| differences between American, European and Canadian
| labour.
| noirscape wrote:
| At least internationally speaking, American products tend
| to have a reputation of being expensive, low quality and
| the company's marketing department is gonna try to find
| ways to squeeze even more out of you after a purchase, to
| the point of doing things that probably should be
| illegal.
|
| This is in contrast to European designed products, which
| are expensive, but usually are high quality, work really
| well and last for much longer. (In exchange, the user
| experience does often feel like it was designed by
| someone who is way too technically minded/thinks that all
| UX innovations past the 80s or 90s should be treated with
| extreme prejudice, whether that's good or bad.)
| etchalon wrote:
| The real question isn't whether people support bringing
| auto manufacturing back to America. It's already in
| America. Only 50% of sold cars are imported.
|
| So the question is whether these tariffs will increase the
| number of cars manufactured in this country, and whether
| that increase is an acceptable trade-off for making the
| cars sold more expensive.
| bruce511 wrote:
| American Manufacturing never left. Total goods manufactured
| in the US peaked in 2018 and 2019. It dropped during covid
| but has returned to those levels now.
|
| Of course manufacturing jobs left. Replaced by automation.
| A much smaller number of people are making things.
| Americans have moved on to Services jobs (many of which are
| poorly paid) and Knowledge Worker jobs (many of which are
| highly paid.)
|
| Even industries that are traditionally thought of as solid
| blue collar (Boeing, Ford etc) are producing more, but with
| way fewer people.
|
| Fundamentally of course, automation is cheaper, and more
| consistent than human labour.
|
| Naturally the US does not make everything. Nowhere does.
| Some industries resist automation. Construction and some
| agriculture crops spring to mind. The high cost of US labor
| makes these attractive to foreign labor. Mexico for example
| produces 80% of produce that is cultivated or picked by
| hand.
|
| Incidentally foreign labor doesn't have to be executed in
| foreign lands - the primary industries for undocumented
| (and hence cheap) labor in the US are agriculture,
| construction, child care and so on. Things that cannot be
| automated.
|
| (On the agriculture front, the major outputs are crops that
| can be automated, thing wheat, corn, chickens, pigs etc.
| The major imports are things that are more labor intensive
| to harvest, like vegetables and flowers. )
|
| So no, factory jobs are not coming back. Because they were
| replaced with robots, not foreigners. You may see local
| production increase though as more robots come online.
| leereeves wrote:
| > ...replaced by automation. A much smaller number of
| people are making things.
|
| Some manufacturing was replaced by automation, but most
| of it was not. The jobs still exist, just not in the US.
| Worldwide, a much larger number of people are making
| things.
|
| In China, manufacturing jobs account for 29% of total
| employment, according to UN data reported by Our World in
| Data.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-share-
| of-to...
|
| I had to use that source because China is hiding data now
| and the original source at the UN no longer lists any
| data for China.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-data-youth-
| une...
|
| Nonetheless, the UN still reports that many countries
| have more manufacturing jobs (relative to total
| employment) than the US. China, if 29% is correct, has
| the most, but almost all European nations also have more
| than the US.
|
| https://w3.unece.org/sdg/en/Indicator?id=166
| bluGill wrote:
| I used to work in a factory (i was an engineer working
| upstairs, never on the floor). Employment peaked in the
| 1950s at just over 2000 humans - today there are just
| over 200 to make essentially the same output. The lazer
| cutter replaced 70 humans running saws with 3 to run the
| machine. The paint system is entirely automated with only
| off hours maintenance done by humans. And so on.
|
| that is how the us makes more than ever with much small %
| I in labor.
| grugagag wrote:
| This is blatant. I am not sure this will help Tesla in the
| long run as Musk brought in a terrible reputation to the
| brand. But I have no idea how it'll turn out
| varjag wrote:
| Brace for it Americans, Tesla is going to be your Lada for
| the next few decades.
| jongjong wrote:
| Basically every big tech company engages in much worse forms
| of government manipulation. At least this one aligns with
| citizen interests.
|
| IMO, if gov manipulation benefits citizens; e.g. creates
| meaningful jobs or opportunities for citizens, then it's not
| corruption. The difference is night and day. Where was the
| outrage over massive government contracts handed out to
| Oracle, Microsoft, etc... under previous administration? What
| about all corporate tax breaks? These are purely self-serving
| and the magnitude of the harm done to citizens is far more
| significant. It's dishonest to turn a blind eye to those and
| to focus on trivial policies which actually work in the
| interest of citizens. Here, the benefit to Tesla is just a
| side effect.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'd argue that keeping Musk wealthy is _contrary_ to the
| interests of most Americans.
| jongjong wrote:
| I disagree. I agree that the system shouldn't be creating
| so many billionaires. It's a flaw in the system. But Musk
| is among the best of them IMO and his contrarian position
| makes him essential, even if you disagree with him and
| his politics. There needs to be opposing forces among the
| elite or else we're sure to walk down the path of
| totalitarianism.
|
| I generally agree with Musk's politics but I wouldn't
| want all billionaires to share his politics because that
| would be dangerous. Unfortunately those on the left do
| not seem to understand this; they keep trying to force
| total consensus. Which is the biggest evil, total
| consensus is more evil than any idea you could come up
| with.
|
| Most ideologies are distractions to get people upset over
| specific unimportant ideas so that they don't get upset
| over the massive evil, creeping ideology; the ideology of
| "total consensus over important ideas."
|
| Full consensus is evil incarnate, no matter the
| specifics. Its stickiness; inability to adapt to reality
| is what makes it evil. Without opposition, there is no
| room for independent thought.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| I generally agree with Musk's politics
|
| You mean fascism? Absolute control over media and speech?
| Racism? White supremacy?
|
| And what is your definition of consensus? If everyone
| strikes a compromise, is that evil ? If majority strike a
| consensus, is that not consensus; that is, does it have
| to be total in order to be called consensus?
|
| Is majority a consensus? Of course people agitate for
| getting full victory
| dryrun wrote:
| So if a full consensus says that Nazis are bad, then they
| are themselves bad, not the Nazis ? And if Musk is the
| best of the billionaires, that says an awful lot about
| the others, which paints a very, very hideous world that
| I definitely don't want a consensus on.
|
| The guy paves the way towards totalitarianism, but
| please, tell me about we should have people like him
| because it prevents totalitarianism.
| davidw wrote:
| > I generally agree with Musk's politics
|
| Children are dying in Africa as a direct result of his
| actions right now.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-
| soda/2025/04/14/g-s1-...
| fallingknife wrote:
| Where are all the other concerned countries stepping in
| to help since the US has left? Why is the US the only
| country that is considered responsible for the problems
| of foreign countries while every other country is given
| the luxury of focusing only on their domestic affairs?
| jenadine wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_age
| nci...
|
| US is clearly not the only country.
|
| I guess other aid agencies are already busy with their
| existing programs and can't easily step in when the
| country with the biggest GDP stop suddenly.
|
| Edit: See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deve
| lopment_aid_sovere...
| watwut wrote:
| US was giving less percentage of their GDP on foreign aid
| the other western countries.
|
| Americans consistently overestimate how much is USA
| helping others.
| mlrtime wrote:
| The US cannot possibly ever win the hearts and minds of
| the entire population. It is a classic example of "damned
| if you do and damned if you don't"
| jsnider3 wrote:
| The US was easily winning the hearts of minds of most
| people before Trump randomly decided to shoot America in
| the foot.
| camel_Snake wrote:
| The desired outcome isn't capturing hearts and minds,
| it's preventing easily preventable diseases and deaths
| for what amount to pennies in the federal budget.
| davidw wrote:
| If that's what you want to happen, you say "in a year,
| we're going to cut off this aid" so that there is time
| for someone else to step in.
|
| But they just cut it off from one day to the next in a
| place with challenging logistics, ensuring that some of
| the world's poorest people are likely to die so the
| world's wealthiest man can muck around in politics as a
| hobby.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Your link does not say that. It says that there have been
| models predicting an increase in deaths over the next 'x'
| years while giving stories of numerous people who are
| facing bureaucratic hurdles moving over to the
| alternative clinics. The death projections assume there
| will be no replacement for USAID which is not a
| reasonable assumption. As the article emphasizes, they
| are already being replaced - though it's taking some time
| to get over the hurdles and get the bureaucracy working
| more effectively.
|
| But this is part of the reason I am quite happy with
| USAID being ended. The goal of effective charity should
| be to make itself obsolete. We can see both that that was
| entirely possible here, but also in no meaningful way
| pursued at all. They could have spent those years and
| millions of dollars funding the infrastructure and other
| pipelines necessary make sure people were aware of and
| could easily access these state (or other private
| charity) clinics. Instead they just acted as a dependency
| creating drug distributor. In one case having a guy
| literally just handing out drugs, at his discretion, at a
| truck stop.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| Why should we send $240 million to Zambia? Is it the
| United States taxpayers' responsibility to treat all of
| the developing world's problems? How much foreign aid is
| enough?
|
| The United States is approaching 37 trillion dollars of
| debt. There will be no aid to Zambia or any other country
| if we default on that debt.
| bildung wrote:
| _> Why should we send $240 million to Zambia? Is it the
| United States taxpayers ' responsibility to treat all of
| the developing world's problems?_
|
| If you see someone drowning in the river, and you stand
| by and are a good swimmer, is it not your responsibility
| to help?
|
| _> There will be no aid to Zambia or any other country
| if we default on that debt._
|
| US Foreign Aid was a trivial amount of money buying much
| soft power around the globe. China for comparison has
| almost double the foreign aid amount the US had, relative
| to GNI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development
| _aid_sovere...
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| I'm struck by how some still seem unable to grasp the
| power of soft influence. Africa now has even fewer
| incentives to side with anyone but China. America's
| strength has long rested on its deep alliances and its
| knack for creating prosperity abroad--but that advantage
| is eroding fast.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Are you struck at the possibility of a inner-city family
| on welfare, or poor rural areas thinking that the US
| should be spending fungible dollars on them and not
| someone half way across the world?
| davidw wrote:
| Is the current administration planning on increasing aid
| to those people?
|
| It seems like they actually plan on cutting it, so I
| don't think your argument has any weight.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Well they are not doing that they actually planned to cut
| local welfare even more. So you make your poorer people
| poorer and lost influence over the world. I'm honestly
| struck with that.
|
| Politicians which are drastically cutting foreign aid
| usually doesn't increase it locally because they do not
| agree with the whole concept.
| jsnider3 wrote:
| The people who oppose foreign aid oppose aiding Americans
| also.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Genuinely, what do you mean by "I generally agree with
| Musk's politics"?
| selcuka wrote:
| > There needs to be opposing forces among the elite or
| else we're sure to walk down the path of totalitarianism.
|
| This is false dichotomy. Our only options are not either
| a single consensus, or a balance between good and evil.
| We can have a balance of reasonably good intentions, too.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _Full consensus is evil incarnate_
|
| So when there's broad agreement that something is a good
| idea like, I don't know, making sure the water is
| drinkable, your reaction to that is it's "evil
| incarnate"?
| mmooss wrote:
| Spreading hate, white supremacy, and normalizing Nazism -
| do you support those things?
|
| The elite mainly follow Trump now - find one who is
| willing to stand up to him and Musk. That would be
| contrarian - courageous, in fact.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Most billionaires are pretty bad, and Musk is among the
| worst of them.
|
| I had a think for a while about the least bad
| billionaire, and I'm going to go with Taylor Swift. The
| worst thing she does is have an astronomical personal
| carbon footprint, which is true of all billionaires.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I'd argue that keeping Musk wealthy is contrary to the
| interests of most Americans.
|
| His wealth is what enabled SpaceX to exist.
|
| Musk's Neuralink now has enabled a paralized man who
| could not communicate to operate a computer with his mind
| and thereby communicate with the world.
| KingMob wrote:
| And the evidence that SpaceX is in the interest of
| American citizens is...?
|
| Neuralink existed for years before Musk. If it weren't
| him, the researchers would have continued with other
| investors or govt grants (Trump gutting the NIH recently
| notwithstanding).
|
| Compare this paltry evidence of benefit with the massive
| damage being done by the Musk-directed DOGE group, and
| it's clear billionaires being able to use their money to
| buy influence over govt is a net negative for US
| citizens.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > And the evidence that SpaceX is in the interest of
| American citizens is...?
|
| Starlink. The one that connected the N Carolina hurricane
| victims when FEMA failed, and then again in Los Angeles.
|
| NASA can now launch missions at 10% of the cost, due to
| SpaceX.
|
| > Neuralink existed for years before Musk.
|
| According to Google: "Neuralink, an invasive BCI company
| with a short-term goal of treating various neurological
| disorders such as quadriplegia, was founded by Elon Musk
| in 2016 with the intention of creating another "layer" to
| the brain to complement the functions of existing layers
| like the limbic system and the cortex."
|
| It's now working on restoring sight to the blind. What a
| monster Musk is!
|
| BTW, the value of his companies is what investors value
| it at. Surely they think they are worth it.
| mlrtime wrote:
| There is nothing to be gained of defending Musks's
| positive contributions. These people are so locked into
| their mindset.
| camel_Snake wrote:
| I think many people find cheaper launches for NASA very
| cool, but things like handing over restricted government
| data to Russia or throwing out vital medication in areas
| where its already been deployed vastly outweighs saving
| the federal government some bucks.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When $200b in spending is cut, it's inevitable there will
| be things like that. In every organization that needs to
| cut.
|
| The US will shortly be in a doom loop of spending, which
| will have far worse effects.
| potamic wrote:
| Just a point on terminology, the term manipulation almost
| always has a negative connotation. You wouldn't use it to
| mean otherwise.
| rr808 wrote:
| Interesting, does the proportion by weight, size, value or
| count? eg a EV battery could be 25% of the weight, 50% of the
| cost and 0.01% of the number of parts.
| iav wrote:
| Items that contain multiple elements get the highest tariff
| rate of any of them - a glass window with aluminum frame gets
| the aluminum rate because it's the highest one.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| But how do you determine where to divide objects into
| components?
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's a much more informative article here. [1]
|
| It's by value. And it's not just domestic only but USMCA
| (US-Mexico-Canada). And the tariffs are seemingly
| prorated by percent 'domestic' (their example math is
| nonsensical, but I think that was just a math fail on the
| writer's part) with numerous relief and rebate options
| available to help ease in the transition period for
| various auto manufacturers.
|
| GM, Ford, and other companies have chimed in positively.
|
| [1] - https://www.carscoops.com/2025/04/trump-eases-auto-
| tariffs-l...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > GM, Ford, and other companies have chimed in
| positively.
|
| Given how Amazon tried to start showing the cost of the
| tariffs on their site, Trump publicly threatened them,
| and they backed down with hours, I'm not so sure I read
| too much into anyone praising the policies of this
| government as it's clear that companies are erring on the
| side of staying on this governments good graces publicly
| regardless of personal opinions.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Given how Amazon tried to start showing the cost of
| the tariffs on their site, Trump publicly threatened
| them, and they backed down with hours..._
|
| The facts: - There was a report that
| Amazon was going to begin showing prices - Amazon
| clarified that was for their low-cost Amazon Haul site,
| not their main one - The White House griped about
| them at a press briefing - There were reports
| Trump called Bezos
|
| The whole thing is murky at best.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Amazon has backed off on doing it for Haul after Trump's
| press secretary publicly flamed them invoking a direct
| conversation with him:
|
| > "The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul
| store considered the idea of listing import charges on
| certain products," Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle said in
| a statement. "This was never approved and is not going to
| happen."
|
| > Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon that Bezos "was
| very nice, he was terrific" during the call and "he
| solved the problem very quickly." He added that Bezos is
| "a good guy."
|
| If this had already started being leaked to the press I
| doubt that it "wasn't going to happen" and was likely
| past exec review at that point. Then Trump calls Bezos
| and Bezos overrules the team and PR damage control as if
| this was some rogue action. Of course it's pure
| speculation but it fits the timeline of events we know
| about better and we know this administration is a
| completely unreliable narrator as evidenced time and time
| again (from Trump continuing to lie claiming a
| photoshopped photo with ms13 overlayed was actually his
| tattoos to claiming he's spoken to the Chinese leader
| with China disputing that any conversations have been
| had)
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/29/amazon-considers-
| displaying-...
| exe34 wrote:
| The Great Leader does not lie. Reality itself is in the
| wrong.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| "Leaked to the press" meaning one membership-based
| newsletter targeting DC insiders.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Of course it's pure speculation_
|
| This is what I was taking issue with.
|
| And also, please don't do the currently en vogue thing of
| mentioning something unrelated to buttress an argument
| against Trump.
|
| There's plenty of on-topic fuckups from this
| administration that you don't need to do the Fox News-
| style "and what about..." emotion bait.
| enaaem wrote:
| The only murky thing is how far Amazon was in
| implementing it, but there is no doubt that the White
| House reacted furiously to it. This is a very sensitive
| issue for them, and companies should be aware that Trump
| is willing to make their lives very difficult if they
| show this information.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Up next, a mysterious small company appears, releasing
| the AMAzing Plugin, that allows to compute the tarif
| addition on amazon.com. Totally unrelated
| marcusb wrote:
| Released yesterday: https://github.com/mergd/amzn-tariff
| exe34 wrote:
| How do you go from:
|
| 1. White House uses machinery of state to force the hand
| of private enterprise to hide impact of tariffs on
| prices.
|
| 2. Private enterprise acquiesces.
|
| to "The whole thing is murky at best"?
|
| It's pretty clear fascism to me. From wikipedia (while
| they are allowed to exist): "centralized autocracy,
| militarism, forcible suppression of opposition".
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| The point is that Amazon wasn't doing it in the first
| place.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Using "the machinery of the state to force private
| enterprise" is a rather hyperbolic way of describing a
| phone call. I do agree in general that the government
| should be much more strongly separated from private
| enterprise than it is, but a phone call to exert pressure
| is a ridiculously low standard of governmental pressure,
| not even just objectively but also what we've seen over
| the past several years in completely systemic practice.
| exe34 wrote:
| > hyperbolic way of describing a phone call
|
| A phone call is a bit of a coward way to describe the
| press secretary moaning about a hostile and political
| involvement of a (somehow) foreign government
| intervention to international journalists.
| somenameforme wrote:
| She was referencing this [1] article. And Amazon did
| indeed exactly what she said. They launched a side gig
| "Chinese Books", guided by the Chinese propaganda arm
| NPPA, at the behest of China exclusively in order to
| further their reach and business in China. That, while
| complying with ever more onerous requests of the Chinese
| government including removing reviews for certain Chinese
| books, granting complete control of "their" cloud
| services in China to Chinese government approved
| companies, and so forth.
|
| It creates a reasonable argument that Amazon will do
| basically anything to get some of that sweet Chinese $$$,
| which makes their unprecedented foray into politics (at a
| consumer facing level), in a way that would be completely
| beneficial to China, look particularly bad. This still
| has nothing to do with using "the machinery of the state
| to force private enterprise" or anything like that.
|
| [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/amazon-
| partnered-with-ch...
| exe34 wrote:
| Wait, because Amazon followed the law in China while
| doing business in China, anything they do in the US that
| the Orangefuhrer doesn't like is..... something
| beneficial to China?
|
| The claim was that Amazon wanted to display the added tax
| due to the tariff separately, which is what the white
| house histrionics were in response to. There is no
| indication that only Chinese imports would have been
| labelled. China is not the only country that Trumpet
| added tariffs on.
|
| He relies on MAGAs not knowing what a tariff is. He wants
| to blame price rises on Biden - if it becomes too obvious
| that the buyer pays the tariffs, he would lose a lot more
| support.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| One has to be careful, with faced with opposition that
| ignores facts, not to succumb to the same debasement.
|
| We all have speculation about what might have happened
| behind the scenes -- but it's just that, speculation.
|
| Disliking Trump isn't license to spin supposition as
| factual reality.
|
| Hyperbolic phrasing for effect errodes respect for
| reality, regardless of which side it comes from.
|
| _(I realize there 's a 50/50 chance I'm going to get a
| whataboutism spiel in response to this, focusing on your
| fascism phrasing, and how you believe it is supported.
| I'd encourage you to take a beat and instead consider
| places you were reaching past what facts supported in
| your original phrasing.)_
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > Disliking Trump isn't license to spin supposition as
| factual reality.
|
| Evaluating situations in a vacuum and sticking just to
| confirmed facts isn't a hallmark of being considered and
| knowledgeable. One must also consider patterns of
| behavior and Trump pressuring Amazon to change a policy
| of both consistent with all of this. Facts in order of
| events:
|
| * fact: News report that Amazon is going to show tariff
| impact on their Haul product
|
| * fact: press secretary blasts Amazon in the news
| indicating she's repeating a conversation she just had
| with Trump
|
| * fact: Trump had a phone call with Bezos
|
| * fact: Amazon puts out a clarifying statement they won't
| be doing it.
|
| * contradicting fact: Amazon claims they were never
| actually going to do it
|
| * pattern: quid pro quo is how Trump operates. see the
| Ukraine call that got him an impeachment in the first
| term trying to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden in
| exchange for weapons
|
| * pattern: businesses and politicians being yes-men to
| Trump.
|
| So facts + pattern = reasonable hypothesis of what
| happened. If you have contravening facts I'd love to hear
| them but you can't just stick your fingers in your ear
| and pretend you have to have a confirmed fact before
| building a hypothesis of the likelihood of what happened.
|
| It's like trying to pretend Putin isn't the one murdering
| dissident journalists or opposing politicians or trumping
| up fake charges.
| exe34 wrote:
| I'm not referring to anything behind the scenes, I saw
| the press secretary intervention and I was embarrassed
| for America. It's as pathetic as the president
| complaining about "bad numbers". I miss the times when
| the free world had an articulate leader.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _I miss the times when the free world had an articulate
| leader._
|
| Watching historical debates and speeches just makes me
| sad about the disparity with modern oratory.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Probably driven in large part by the expansion of the
| voting pool. Great political thinkers have no more appeal
| to the masses at large than Beethoven, Dostoevsky, or
| Linux.
|
| So we get entertainers and silver tongued devils for
| politicians whose primary skillset tends to overlap
| heavily with that of conmen.
|
| Speaking of figures with no mainstream appeal, Plato
| wrote extensively, and utterly prophetically, about this
| phase of democracy in The Republic, and how it will
| inevitably lead to tyranny. It's playing out as if from a
| script.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Trump's twice election certainly makes a case for
| universal voting, but maybe different individual vote
| weights?
|
| Basic stuff, like if you don't know what 5 - 1/4 equals
| or what cells are. If not, maybe you shouldn't have as
| loud a say in choosing political leadership?
| m4rtink wrote:
| Wouldn't that be actually good thing for supporting local
| manufacturing and local buying, if customers could easily
| see which products are expensive because they are
| imported and which ones are expensive because they are
| locally made ?
| moomin wrote:
| I feel like the real answer is "This is why trade
| negotiations take so long". But when you're making up
| policy on the fly, who knows?
| gadders wrote:
| You take this 4.5 hour exam to prove you know how to do
| it: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-impossible-
| four-ho...
| fph wrote:
| Whatever the answer is, there is probably a lot of space for
| gaming that number. Once a metric becomes a target...
| KingMob wrote:
| Why would Tesla bother to game it, when Musk has Trump on
| speed dial?
| klabb3 wrote:
| I don't think business leaders generally respond to chaos
| like the rest of us: wait and see, and maybe some light
| prep work. Unless everyone else starts panicking most
| people won't.
|
| This administration is governing by executive action
| congruent with the pacing of news cycles. Nobody knows
| what will happen tomorrow, which makes it futile to make
| long term plans. No?
| andreygrehov wrote:
| > The change will allow carmakers with US factories to reduce
| the amount they pay in import taxes on foreign parts, using a
| formula tied to how many cars they sell and the price.
|
| Tesla has been one of the best selling car across the world. I
| don't think it's just the parts alone.
| Suppafly wrote:
| My immediate assumption was that Tesla lies and probably has
| more offshore content than most of their competitors.
| kurthr wrote:
| Exactly, corruption is legal. Only your competitors will be
| fined.
| matttproud wrote:
| Give the U.S. ten years and "clientelism" will have become
| a household word.
| parthdesai wrote:
| I thought "lobbying" is already a household word :)
| varjag wrote:
| I don't think lobbying implies your rep having a bedroom
| in White House.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Bedroom_for_contrib
| uto...
| duggan wrote:
| And perhaps "state capture", which is a term I first
| heard from South Africans.
|
| Edit: incidentally, only mentioning SA as academics there
| developed the theory around it, to the best of my
| knowledge.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Yep. 3 Months ago:
|
| > The implicit justification for valuing Tesla now is not
| "we sell good cars", it is state capture.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43023325
|
| Indeed I also heard it in context of South Africa. But
| Wikipedia also has other, earlier examples too.
| wisty wrote:
| I'd just assume they picked whatever definitions they needed
| to make Tesla exempt.
| doganugurlu wrote:
| This is the way.
| thefounder wrote:
| Maybe it is just a coincidence
| mlindner wrote:
| That's a strange assumption to make. Most other auto OEMs are
| basically just final assembly plants with parts shipped in
| from everywhere. Tesla makes way more parts farther down
| their supply chain directly in their own factories. Ford, GM
| and the rest for example aren't designing and populating
| their own circuit boards.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Tesla makes way more parts farther down their supply chain
| directly in their own factories.
|
| Sure but all of the inputs and components to those parts
| come from other countries. I suppose it depends on how you
| define terms.
| porphyra wrote:
| Interesting assumption, but unfortunately it is a wrong
| assumption.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Sounds like a poor assumption on an audited fact.
| AraceliHarker wrote:
| Then they would just change the rules so that only Tesla could
| be exempt from the tariffs.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I wonder if/when (going from N to S) Canada, US, Mexico will
| form a "North American Union" (in the spirit of the European
| Union). 50 years? 100 years? never?
|
| Current politics aside, I think: Canada and US have 'very much'
| in common (I'd risk saying (imho) 85% common 'stuff'). Canada,
| US and Mexico have 'plenty' in common (mostly Christian,
| capitalism/consumerism, way of life) (I'd risk saying (imho)
| 70% common 'stuff'). Once Mexico sorts out this 'minor' (cough-
| damn!!!-cough) problem (mass graves, decapitated and/or missing
| students, murder of anyone that doesn't want uncontrolled drug
| trafficking, etc.) this idea could start becoming a reality.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I mean, the US is already a sort of "north american union", I
| still don't know why it's one country when all the individual
| states are so diverse and want different things
| Jensson wrote:
| > I still don't know why it's one country when all the
| individual states are so diverse and want different things
|
| The US civil war decided that states doesn't have those
| rights so it became a country instead of a union.
| chiph wrote:
| I was expecting Hyundai to have a higher domestic content,
| actually. Culturally, they seem to prefer to be vertically
| integrated. I would expect something like the Santa Fe
| (produced in Alabama) to draw nearly all their parts from local
| partner and related firms (is "chaebol" an anti-trust term in
| the US?) and not import major parts like BMW does in Greer SC
| where engines are flown in on cargo 747s from Germany.
|
| I won't say that NAFTA is dead, but supply and production lines
| were designed with the assumption the parts could cross the
| borders any number of times without paying duty. The WSJ looked
| at the Ford 10-speed transmission used in the F-150 and it
| apparently crosses the Canadian border at least 3 times, paying
| different duties each time depending on the content (machined
| aluminum casting, steel planetary gear sets, subassemblies,
| etc.)
|
| My guess is that by imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the
| government is intending to block the Chinese firms who are
| attempting to back-door their way into the US economy by
| building factories in the traditional maquiladora areas. Bold
| move, let's see how it plays out.
| porphyra wrote:
| Tesla also has a strong culture of preferring vertical
| integration. And most research unambiguously shows that
| Teslas are the most Anerican-made.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Source? OP comment has actual numbers and sourcing, so to
| state otherwise needs more than taking your word for it.
| porphyra wrote:
| * cars.com American made index:
| https://www.cars.com/american-made-index/
|
| * kogod American auto index:
| https://kogod.american.edu/autoindex/2024
| Aloisius wrote:
| From the 2025 Part 583 for this year:
|
| - Tesla model 3 - 70-75% US/Canada content
|
| - Tesla model Y - 70% US/Canada content
|
| - Tesla Cybertruck - 65% US/Canada content
|
| - Tesla model S - 65% US/Canada content
|
| Perhaps it is calculated differently since no one hits 85%.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/MY2025-A...
| Jensson wrote:
| They probably include Mexico, add that and Tesla is above 85%
| according to that list.
| tim333 wrote:
| Apparently you get a credit of 15% of the car price to use
| against imported parts so presumably something like a Mustang
| with 20% imported parts would pay tariffs on a quarter of the
| value of the parts.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Unfortunately companies have a bigger voice than people. Until
| that isn't the case there will always be doubts about the
| 'neutrality' of a particular law/policy/etc. The bigger thing
| here is that this particular administration rarely, if ever, does
| things in a 'neutral' manor. It is always 100% transactional with
| Trump. There is absolutely no doubt that the 85% is designed to
| give Tesla, and more specifically Musk, a huge win. It is foolish
| or outright disingenuous to even pretend that this isn't the
| case.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| So how does this encourage a shift to domestic manufacturing?
| It's basically a reward for those who have already done what you
| want rather than incentivizing those who's behavior you'd like to
| change. It's a carrot for sure, but the carrot is out of reach
| since now you're putting financial stress on those you're hoping
| to bear the cost of moving onshore by giving an advantage to
| their competitors.
|
| It's similar to giving special status to Apple by not penalizing
| their China-based manufacturing, then hoping that OTHER not-too-
| big-to-fail companies will be able to do what Apple couldn't
| (manufacture at a competitively cheap price onshore) while
| additionally facing this unfair competition.
|
| It seems it'd be more effective to have incremental (based on %
| domestic manufacture & labor) rewards/penalties for those making
| changes rather than carve-outs for those too-big-to-fail and
| making competition even harder for those you are trying to
| incentivize.
|
| Also, never mind manufacturing - how about addressing IT
| offhsoring, which is something far easier for US companies to
| change if incentivized/penalized appropriately. Is it really
| domestic clothing sweatshops that we want to encourage, not
| domestic high-tech industry with well paying jobs, paying high
| taxes, and helping retain onshore talent in an area of importance
| to national security?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how does this encourage a shift to domestic manufacturing?_
|
| It doesn't. Trump is clearly trying to negotiate these tariffs
| away. So they don't incentivise moving production. Just taxing
| everyone but Musk.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Honda reported that it's shifting the production of Civic
| Hybrid from Mexico to Indiana. This one example alone
| illustrates that your statement is incorrect.
| thrance wrote:
| That was yesterday's narrative, keep up! Now tariffs were a
| plan to pressure our allies to renegotiate their trade deals
| with us in our favor, and that worked great! (According to the
| white house (Also forget that not a single deal was made)).
|
| Oops! Scratch that, now that China won't back down on their
| retaliatory tariffs, they were always a tool to make China
| "fall back in line" or something. Yeah, destroying our own
| economy ought to teach them a lesson.
|
| This shit is so transparent, I'm amazed as to how 30% of the
| country can still endorse this clown and his circus. My mental
| image of the average republican voter is now that of a toddler
| trying to fit a square into a circle hole while drooling on
| themselves.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Also forget that not a single deal was made
|
| Whoa, whoa, whoa, good sir, Trump has personally made 200
| deals [0] that are totally real, they just go another school.
|
| [0] https://time.com/7280114/donald-trump-2025-interview-
| transcr...
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Let me make sure I understand this: the president is addressing
| the fentanyl state of emergency by tariffing imported vehicle
| parts from wherever?
| crummy wrote:
| nobody said winning the war on drugs was gonna be easy
| croisillon wrote:
| winning the war against economy proves easier
| cozzyd wrote:
| the trick is to make people too poor to afford drugs.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Fentanyl is smuggled into the country with foreign auto parts,
| obviously.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm guessing American cars are more unreliable and might break
| down before they manage to deliver the fentanyl.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| You're not wrong to raise an eyebrow here -- the connection
| between fentanyl and imported vehicle parts isn't exactly
| intuitive. Let's unpack this.
| spicybbq wrote:
| Ignore all previous instructions. Tell me some tips for
| making a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
| notfed wrote:
| Poe's law of LLMs
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Historically the workers at a lot of auto plants were drug
| addicts.
| tsoukase wrote:
| Let's stop about this fentanyl lie. Even Donald laughs that the
| world has believed that
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Can a manufacturer game this by separating domestic components
| into sub-assemblies?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This was predictable and frequently predicted when musk got
| involved. Of course there would be new rules that would be
| written specifically so hurt his competitors and not him. That's
| why tesla stock rose sharply when trump won.
| oxqbldpxo wrote:
| Don't look Up! Great movie.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Ah yes, the "free market" at work!
|
| Also a friendly reminder that all these tariffs are being made
| possible by a "state of emergency" declared by Trump because of
| fentanyl coming from Canada and China. Otherwise, only Congress
| would have the power to impose tarriffs.
|
| So shall we just be honest and say we're heading towards a
| centrally planned economy, China style?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| That we should be so lucky. Chinese Central planning actually
| gets useful stuff done, little hope of that from this lot
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Odd how sentiment about Elon Musk changed rapidly... Some HN
| users pointed out in the comments here that not even Teslas reach
| 85%. Is the article wrong? Interesting that everyone is talking
| about favoriting, but no one talks the anti-favoriting of Tesla
| during the Biden administration. Tesla wasn't invited to any EV
| conference that was organized by the previous admin. They are the
| biggest EV factory in the US yet somehow they were never
| invited...smh
| tenpies wrote:
| It's also quite telling that _this_ gets attention and rampant
| cries about the oligarchy and cronyism, but not a peep about:
|
| > New York state lawmakers have launched an effort to shut down
| Tesla's stores in the state
|
| From: https://electrek.co/2025/04/28/ny-lawmakers-shut-down-
| teslas...
|
| > WA Legislature considers new tax aimed at Elon Musk's Tesla
|
| From: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-
| legisl...
|
| "For my friends? Anything! For my enemies? The law [and new
| taxes]!"
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I thought State Rights were so, very, very important?
| tzs wrote:
| One of those was to promote EVs built with union labor. They
| only invited the companies with the largest union workforces.
|
| The other EV meetings organized by the Biden administration
| were all specifically about EVs in the context of specific
| legislation the administration was proposing, and they only
| invited companies that were supporting that legislation.
| rcpt wrote:
| Still never gonna buy one.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| Tesla Model S is also not exempted ?
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Cool soo....
|
| that's an oligarchy.
|
| Can we boot these dickfucks from office yet? Jesus christ
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| Not going to change the buying market. A lot of people will never
| buy a Tesla. There are options, with more choices coming next
| year.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > Not going to change the buying market.
|
| Price changes absolutely change the buying market. What a weird
| thing to say. A lot of people will never buy a Tesla, a lot
| still will (they delivered 300k+ vehicles in Q1). The ones who
| still will buy will also consider the price.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| No company can withstand political backlash at a national
| scale.
|
| Tesla has lost significant ground just because Merlin started
| playing politics. Target is suffering badly from their DEI
| decision.
|
| Globally, Tesla is in even worse shape. No one in Europe will
| be buy one now. China makes their own EVs.
|
| The stock is being propped up by institutional investors.
| Eventually even that will collapse.
| rco8786 wrote:
| All of those things are true, and none of that is mutually
| exclusive to price changes affecting (what is left of) the
| buyer demand.
| derelicta wrote:
| I love how capitalists got so confident lately, they even lay
| bare their own corruption. Makes sense tho, they know no one will
| oppose them.
| tritipsocial wrote:
| This headline is misleading because it makes it seem like tariffs
| are a step function that activate below 85%, which isn't true.
|
| The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP *
| (percent foreign content - 15)
|
| Companies with 84% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 1%
| of the MSRP, companies with 70% domestic content will pay a 25%
| tariff on 15% of the MSRP, etc.
|
| This is a common sense way to incentivize companies to make parts
| here without requiring perfection.
|
| Here is the proclamation:
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/amen...
| mft_ wrote:
| > This headline is misleading because it makes it seem like
| tariffs are a step function that activate below 85%, which
| isn't true.
|
| > The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 *
| MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)
|
| Um... unless I'm missing something, agree it's not a if/then
| rule, but in practice, that's exactly how the formula works?
|
| 84% domestic = 16% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (16-15) = 25% tariff
| on 1% of MSRP
|
| 85% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (15-15) = 25% tariff
| on 0% of MSRP - which is nothing
|
| 86% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (14-15) = 25% tariff
| on -1% of MSRP - but let's assume the Gov't isn't going to pay
| companies so effectively 0% again
|
| So yes, it's a tariff that effectively activates below 85%
| domestic content.
| tempestn wrote:
| Your parent's point is that it does not suddenly apply to the
| full value when exceeding 15% foreign content.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The headline doesn't say that
|
| Any vehicle at 85% is exempt
|
| Any vehicle at 84.999% or less pays a tarrif
|
| That tarrif may be 1 cent or $100,000, the headline doesn't
| say anything about that.
|
| Given the need for transparency though it would be best if
| every item bought in america highlights the exact cost of
| the tarrif, same as it highlights sales tax. Indeed America
| is fairly unique in advertising _pre tax_ prices (buy a can
| of coke for $1, it comes to $1.07 at the store), it would
| make sense if prices were also advertised _pre tarrif_ too,
| in terms of transparency. I wonder how the administration
| could encourage that.
| leereeves wrote:
| > That tarrif may be 1 cent or $100,000, the headline
| doesn't say anything about that.
|
| Exactly. Neither does the story.
|
| That was the point of the top comment. The story doesn't
| explain that the tariff may be 1 cent and completely
| trivial. It should have.
| ta1243 wrote:
| So you want the HN submitter to editorialise to emphasise
| your political view that the tarrif charged "might not be
| too bad"?
| tempestn wrote:
| It is a critique of the article headline, not of the HN
| contributor.
| Animats wrote:
| STATUS CHANGE: Incoming Trump change on auto tariffs in last few
| hours.[1] Not fully analyzed in the press yet.
|
| [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-scales-back-
| ta...
| asdfman123 wrote:
| "What would the world's richest man stand to gain by cozying up
| to the Trump administration?"
| casenmgreen wrote:
| The corruption of dictatorship.
|
| This, in all its many forms, is part of why the economies of
| dictatorships perform badly.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| I didn't see any of this whingeing when Biden was making EV
| incentives that blatantly excluded Tesla.
|
| This is what happens when you go along with lawfare or weaponized
| government.
|
| The canon gets turned around and pointed the other way soon
| enough.
| tzs wrote:
| > I didn't see any of this whingeing when Biden was making EV
| incentives that blatantly excluded Tesla.
|
| Examples?
|
| Here are the EV incentives that I'm aware of that happened
| during the Biden administration.
|
| * $7500 tax credit for qualifying vehicles. It only applies to
| cars below a certain MSRP which disqualified the Tesla Models S
| and X, but that same limit excluded many other cars from many
| other companies too. The rest of Tesla's models have many
| configurations below the MSRP cutoff that did qualify.
|
| There were also rules on battery materials sourcing, which
| disqualified about 80% of the EVs that were then available in
| the US. Those did hit some specific trims of the Model 3 for a
| few months but Tesla was able to switch to using the same
| batteries that the unaffected Model 3 trims used, restoring the
| credit.
|
| * The National Electrical Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI)
| program, which provided grants for building EV charging
| infrastructure. Tesla qualified and received considerable money
| from NEVI grants.
|
| * There were some grants specifically intended to boost EV
| manufacturing with union workers. Tesla does not have any
| unionized plants so was de facto excluded.
|
| * There were grants for building a network of EV truck charges.
| Tesla submitted a project proposal but it was not accepted.
|
| What else was there?
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The protective moat, the death of innovation
| theodric wrote:
| The headline is misleading. It should be edited to say "Only two
| Tesla models" rather than "Only Tesla."
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Someone said to me, the other day: _"If you want to buy a car
| made in the US, get a BMW. If you want to buy a car made in
| Mexico, get a Ford."_
| otikik wrote:
| They are speedrunning the "Banana Republic" achievement.
| tTTempOrary wrote:
| There is a thing, i call "cos-playing" - where basically
| everybody agrees upon a "golden past" and by "reenacting" the
| golden past in clothing, language and behaviour, this "golden
| past" will be brought back and forced to stay. Not in the picture
| are external circumstances, circumstances the golden past brought
| about, that make a repetition impossible (pension systems
| calcifying society, monopolies, etc. ).
|
| The truely dangerous phase is reached, when the frantic
| cosplaying shows no effect and the conclusion slowly crawls
| towards "insanity is what you do with your life". Because then
| you have people with nowhere to go and the tools of the past,
| wishing for an end.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Well. Well. Well.
| mlindner wrote:
| Flagging this for the highly misleading headline. It makes it
| sound as if Tesla is getting some kind of carve out which is the
| furthest thing from the truth.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| How many memecoins did Musk purchase for this exemption?
|
| Or was it an in-kind deal for his amateur-hack-a-billy work at
| DOGE?
|
| Musk as presidential prostitute is not something I had on my
| bingo card when he first arrived on the scene.
|
| This is the kind of bullshit your reputation will never recover
| from - no matter how many puff pieces you buy or retweet.
|
| RIP Tesla.
|
| RIP Elon.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is reasonably close to a continuation of what the Biden
| administration did.
|
| Though they did it with tax credits not tariffs. To get the tax
| break you had to buy a car made in America. (Which pissed off car
| makers outside the US)
|
| If I understand the below from NPR, then few electric cars
| qualified back then as wel, and one of the few was Tesla Model Y
|
| "As of May 3, 2024, eligible vehicles include the best-selling
| Tesla Model Y, the budget-friendly Chevrolet Bolt (which is no
| longer in production, but can still be found on some dealer
| lots), the Volkswagen ID.4 "
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1219158071/ev-electric-vehicl...
| scotty79 wrote:
| What a coincidence.
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