Timothy Birdnow

China has become a top producer of cars, especially EV's, and until we get rid of these toy vehicles China will dominate the car market.

In the last 20 years China's grip on the auto market has risen from 1% to 39%.

Even Japan is suffering as the Chinese overtake their ev industry.

This is interesting in that In 2023, there were almost 294 million privately-owned motor vehicles registered in China, out of a population of 1.41 billion. So one out of four people own cars. But in the U.S., with a population of 339.4 million, there are 278,870,463 privately owned vehicles - So every 1.5 peoople own cars here. China's sales are predominantly based on exports.

Exports that may not survive the end of "green" dream cars.

Much of China's success stems from heavy subsidization by government, as well as government research and development. In short, it's artificial. Once Trump's tariffs kick in the Chinese grib on auto manufacturing will start to crumble.

China also enjoys the benefits of low-paid labor, and tax breaks. The labor costs are way belong American costs, which are driven by powerful union contracts. According to Reuters:

"A Reuters analysis of the estimated income included in recent job adverts from 30 auto firms showed hourly salaries of 14 yuan ($1.93) to 31 yuan."

So certainly auto workers there cannot afford to buy any of their own products.

By comparison the average U.S. auto worker earns
$49,095 per year with top pay averaging $62,500, according to Ziprecruiter. It takes 50 workers to build one car in the U.S. I was unable to find how many it takes in China, but it is probably more than that (it takes 100 in Japan) but who cares when you are paying them two bucks an hour and they are happy to get it?

I've said it before and I'll say it again; China is a paper tiger; it's success has been entirely built on the mistakes and assistance of the Western elites and it will fail spectacularly once the policies that provided China with what it needed are changed. If Trump squeezes China it will fold. Of course it might be most unpleasant in it's death throes.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 377 words, total size 3 kb.