nanotuber's comments

That's a good point.

Both the ROK and Japan though are cases where the US "pivoting to Asia" from Europe would make them less, not more, likely to pursue such a breakout. And in both cases, their incentives has existed prior to Ukraine.

The implication is that nuclear proliferation is linked to the US pausing Ukraine aid.

That's a gross mischaracterization.

I'll bet you 10 to 1 that Ukraine won't end up with nukes.

Disagree with the implication here and expect the opposite.

Ukraine peace (even an imperfect one) allows the US and Russia to work together to prevent Iran from getting a nuke. Ukraine won't get nukes in either scenario.

An ongoing war forces Russia to rely on Iran, limiting its ability to work with US (and China), on isolating its nuclear program.

DPRK nukes already exist and ROK is pressuring the US for permission for them (neither Biden or Trump want to give them).

I don't know of any other latent nuclear states.

Note: Tesla does get the $7500 and gets it immediately, from the customer, who is then reimbursed later by the US government. If you check Tesla's website they count on this: they advertise Tesla prices after the rebate, even though the customer will go out of pocket for more.

This may be a moot point though. Before Telsa gets this $7.5k, Tesla gets a subsidy of $1.5k in regulatory credits per vehicle from the US government for producing electric vehicles (around the same / more than BYD gets per vehicle from the Chinese government).

A BYD buyer would not get $7500 from the US government. It is not a qualified manufacturer, which are companies from the US and allies (Germany, Japan): https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04012024/inside-clean-ene...

Is it just a "subjective point of view about an apples-to-oranges comparison" or is there a very clear way to objectively base the criticism of China?

> I think ascribing a unit price to the Chinese government's grants is what is misleading.

Could you expand on this? I do not understand it.

Hmm. I appreciate the response but it does not address my concern. The reason is I'm trying to quantify the subsidization. I think what you are trying to articulate is that a $1k subsidy (in the form of a corporate credit card analogy) is equivalent to or greater than a $9k subsidy (in the form of reimbursement analogy). That's not as obvious to me as it is to you, because I have trouble quantifying the end market effect. It's also an order of magnitude difference in the actual amount of subsidy: the analogy I guess would be a company allowing you to spend $100 with the corporate card for dinner, or reimbursing you $900 for dinner? Again I'm struggling to see how one is obviously anti-competitive vs the other.

I'm very interested in hard, quantifiable numbers. I've read lots of articles that have various types of qualifications/characterizations but they don't help. For example, the fact that China's economy is producing 4x the battery capacity as domestic need is forecast - in terms of competitiveness what does this mean for BYD? Does it amount to their being able to sell a car for $10 cheaper? $100? $1000?

The subsidies are a different structure, but they each allow the companies to sell a more expensive car for a lower price - which is the global competition we're discussing.

The billions in funding (~2) for BYD is what I was discussing regarding about $1k/vehicle subsidy.

I would be very interested in any data you have regarding the amount of money the Chinese government has paid toward raw materials that have been consumed by BYD. Do you have a source you can link?

I was looking into this the other day. China's subsidies for BYD amounted to approximately a $1k subsidy per electric vehicle (not counting battery subsidy, looking for numbers). America subsidizes electric vehicles up to $7.5k per electric vehicle in tax credits and 1.5k/vehicle in regulatory carbon credits (not counting battery subsidy, looking for numbers).

I'm trying to believe the story that subsidization is creating unfair competition. But right now the Chinese Foreign Ministry explanation of comparative advantage looks more consistent with the numbers?