Michigan politicians want to ban Chinese-badged cars from even visiting the US
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KitsuneHime
Smack-Fu Master, in training
If it's about the car spying for beijing, couldn't they just put restrictions on them?
Or would that just make everyone flock to chinese cars knowing their made for US models are the only ones in the country which can't spy on you?
Or would that just make everyone flock to chinese cars knowing their made for US models are the only ones in the country which can't spy on you?
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Sorry, from what I am hearing, it turns out that those packages are imperative to Michigan jobs, and anyway you can trust American companies with your data way more than Chinese ones. Trust us!
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It's trivial to set up a fully independent company in the US that buys the data and oops we just got hacked.
It's a tiny bit harder to find an IT employee at Flock who is on hard times and somehow ensure they suddenly can buy themselves a house.
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If the days of cheap gas are really ended, we are going to need a lot more congressional action to make $80+K 6000lb behemoths the most attractive things on the market for the average buyer. How people on 20 hr/week, $10/hr gig jobs are going to be able to afford Detroit's output is also questionable. Maybe juggernaut ownership can be made compulsory? A yearly minimum milage, which you are allowed to achieve by jacking up the driving wheels, and rolling coal in place? If that is the progressive answer, one awaits the regressive one with a certain sangfroid anticipation.
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Even that's a capitalist myth. Businesses have been using governmental (or mob or cartel) force to fuck better products out of the market since the beginning.
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Capitalists have only ever wanted a 'free market' when they've already monopolized it. The second any sort of potential competition appears on the distant horizon, they're the first cry foul and push to further entrench themselves. Because that's how the profit motive works, and that's the only motive that exists under capitalism.
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Why make good cars when you can just forbid people from knowing good cars exist? America 250! Yasssssss
Imagine the Cybertruck (typed this as Cybertrick by accident and almost didn’t go back to fix it) was instead in the model of those sweetass BYDs with all the trimmings. I would actually be a little jealous when I saw one instead of laughing at the ineptitude of “American-made” as of 2025.
What complaints can I have about China that I can’t immediately assign to my own country? Concentration camps for undesirables? Check and check. Human rights abuses going back decades, check and check. Militaristic bullying of neighbors? Checkity check-check. I can say with confidence that we have them beat on gutter racism. You could make a case that we had less official corruption, but GUESS WHAT.
Ugh. I am just cranky this morning, and stories about inept scaremongering by elected officials trying to flagwrap themselves into office again is pissing me off because it means I can’t get a cheap electric vehicle here for another 10 years.
Imagine the Cybertruck (typed this as Cybertrick by accident and almost didn’t go back to fix it) was instead in the model of those sweetass BYDs with all the trimmings. I would actually be a little jealous when I saw one instead of laughing at the ineptitude of “American-made” as of 2025.
What complaints can I have about China that I can’t immediately assign to my own country? Concentration camps for undesirables? Check and check. Human rights abuses going back decades, check and check. Militaristic bullying of neighbors? Checkity check-check. I can say with confidence that we have them beat on gutter racism. You could make a case that we had less official corruption, but GUESS WHAT.
Ugh. I am just cranky this morning, and stories about inept scaremongering by elected officials trying to flagwrap themselves into office again is pissing me off because it means I can’t get a cheap electric vehicle here for another 10 years.
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One might think that any Chinese spy worth his or her salt would modify something with a Dodge Hemi in it to use the sensors for spying. Or maybe buy the info from Vlad after the neoNazis in the military (or Kegsbreath's Pentagon) have sold it to him.
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You're not expecting sensibility out of those people are you? It's just whatever makes for good sound bites aimed at people who don't really do that thinking thing.
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Visiting the US around 1980 I didn't believe it when I was told that we had to ditch our company car for a rental Oldsmobile in order to visit the Olds plant in Lansing. But it became clear that it was true; friendly signs informed you that any non-GM cars would be modified with a sledgehammer. At this time Oldsmobile was extremely successful.
How is that HQ doing now?
How is that HQ doing now?
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They are not talking about willful foreign agents. They are talking about the Chinese car manufacturer using the car built-camera to record video and sharing them with the Chinese government. The person driving around can be any ordinary, unwilling participant.
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Under the conditions of those commerce department rules, I very much doubt that's true now. If you know of Chinese connected components in Fords etc, please share that info.
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The rest of the world obvously still isn't quite treating the US as the pariah state it wants to be, so are we all boycotting the footy world cup yet? 
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A day trip from Tijiuana to San Diego, on the other hand...
Turns out there's a lot of military infrastructure in San Diego.
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Yeah and then there's spy satellites and. . .
The REAL spying threat isn't seeing stuff like an Air Force base at the fence perimeter - the military has long understood the threat of seeing things at a base, and anything interesting isn't really in view.
The real spy threat is tracking moving people/vehicles everywhere they go. I call out people separately, because in theory someone might ride a bus to/from an AFB, even transfer busses, etc.
The real spy threat is that instead of one vehicle following a person of interest, which might be noticed by the driver, or a security detail. . . that if you have millions of cars being driven around the US, you now have a vast spying NETWORK that can track people and vehicles everyone, with no physical tailing. And very little cost to China or any other country.
Also being able to track patterns of movements of multiple people, like seeing that a bunch of scientists and engineers that specialize in a particular field, have all started frequently going to a particular AFB or DARPA facility, suggesting some skunkworks project related to that field is underway.
That said, such bans don't address the underlying issue of millions of cars being corralled into a tracking net. Pass legislation that's comprehensive and addresses the threat across all car and mobile devices (phone/tablet, etc). Like make it much more limited what user data device OEMs are allowed to gather and transmit back to their servers. Give people real privacy, so they have confidence their devices aren't secretly spying for anyone.
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It's very difficult. The auto industry is both still significant in the state and emblematic of a broader difficulty with the visage of blue collar union factory workers generally uninterested in geopolitics or science and engineering and increasingly taken in by Joe Rogan and the like, pulled between narratives and politics of both the Democratic and Republican parties. The backdrop is an uncompetitive domestic industry and a federal government that is corrupt and at best unhelpful. Protectionist racket narratives are politically expedient for everybody in the short term. But the state is in trouble from many fronts, from this to reduced trade due to Trump's trade wars (look at the drama around the bridges in Detroit) to forced coal plant antics and politics over sustainable energy to pollution and invasive species threats to the great lakes and on and on... much of it not really the state government's fault, but very much their problem. That said, there are many advantages as well. It should be an is an amazing part of the country. But the backdrop is similar to struggles in states like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but more stark - wider geopolitics and changing industry hollowing out complacent domestic economics, and disingenuous politics commandeering those struggles. Frankly, as decent-but-bland as Whitmer's administration has been in the face of the times, it's really more that the state's GOP is utterly, comedically (even more than elsewhere) farcical - think shouting matches and fistfights and Mean Girls-style games - that has forestalled it taking hold and worse chaos. Michigan is kind of boring Blue Wall-ish midwestern state but there are ingredients here for upheaval.
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To be fair, China invented ice cream.
https://ice-cream.org/about-the-ice-cream-alliance/history-of-ice-cream/
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The exact same way these people always buy cars: by buying used.
There is no unalienable right to afford a new car in America, even though a lot of people somehow think there is? Three quarters of car buyers buy used.
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So we’re back to the 1990’s where half the cars in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Michigan had BUY AMERICAN bumper stickers printed by UAW sympathizers
Protect “our” jobs while we enjoy a free market.
Nah, I’ll pass. Tried that back then and it didn’t work out. Either build the car I want, import it or license it. Auto-makers no longer deserve special carve-outs because yet again they’ve been caught flat-footed.
Protect “our” jobs while we enjoy a free market.
Nah, I’ll pass. Tried that back then and it didn’t work out. Either build the car I want, import it or license it. Auto-makers no longer deserve special carve-outs because yet again they’ve been caught flat-footed.
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This is purely about state-level politics in an election year and the need to keep car industry workers voting for Democrats. If it were to actually pass, then politicians and rich people wouldn't be able to buy Mercedes as they are about 15% owned by the Chinese.
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The republicans are carrying out a coup d'etat with their voter suppression campaigns under the guise of redistricting and voter roll purges, and this is how fucking dems spend their limited political capital.
We are so goddamn cooked.
We are so goddamn cooked.
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I was in Florida in November and early this year to visit family. You could get a rental car, a restaurant table, or a tee time anywhere, anytime. The Canadian boycott has massively impacted Florida tourism. My younger brother used to complain Canadians were bad tippers. Now he complains there are no Canadians.
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How many Canadian tourists take a trip to visit Selfridge Air Force base? (The example the senator gave)
I agree that passive surveillance is a more likely threat, but the Senator claimed the threat was someone taking a deliberate trip to observe the airbase using the car's sensors.
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And the people who buy new almost invariably depend on the used car market to resell the once-new car.
The number of people like myself who buy a car and keep it until it's junk is pretty small (and even then, my definition of junk is another's definition of a project).
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Going through national security clearance they ask about gambling, drugs, and other vices.
Want to score an asset as a foreign agent? Look for the gambling addict, the drug addict, sex addict, or a person that was scorn by the company from how they are treated by their employer and or other employees. The best are the ones that changed their personal ideology and know how to keep quiet.
Money is not the only method to gain an asset. NRA redhead Russian agent highlights this [0]. Cuba's best assist(s) are driven by ideology and not greed [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Montes.
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Define "selling outside the US".
Because if you sell to any large US corp, the stuff will go outside the US. Once it was all about projecting power and sending money and information to the mothership. Now, suddenly, there's a downside.
Years ago I was told as part of security training that the most dangerous spy was the secretary with access to the photocopier (which was before job logging started, but even so I once visited a secure government department for an audit and discovered that they were not logging print jobs.)
Now, you don't even need a photocopier. Just a helping hand in the IT department. No need to smuggle physical objects off site even.
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Its an election year, this kind of performative bullshit is almost expected at this point.
It is interesting though that of all the car companies, only Ford seems concerned enough about Chinese cars to try to make their own cars that are competitive on some level.
It is interesting though that of all the car companies, only Ford seems concerned enough about Chinese cars to try to make their own cars that are competitive on some level.
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Or lack thereof!
I was asked if my friend drank alcohol. She did not.
Next question: can she be blackmailed over her teetotaling?
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Not a socialist country.
A number of years ago the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) actually considered removing "Communist" from their name, to simply be "The Chinese Party".
China is a capitalist autocracy.
As with so many other things, they imported capitalism from the US then perfected the implementation themselves.
I leave the question as to whether the US is also a capitalist autocracy as an exercise for the reader.
(other Western states are available for questioning and criticism)
Edited to remove typo.
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Do you guys not have phones?
They do the exact same thing. Communicate, geolocate, and even take pictures! And made in China regardless of the shiny Apple logo.
They do the exact same thing. Communicate, geolocate, and even take pictures! And made in China regardless of the shiny Apple logo.
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My comment was a broad commentary on the US v. China "capitalist vs. communist" debate. I know there's far more nuance.
That said, their social welfare programs and general cultural attitude toward collective betterment are vastly more humane than the get-sick-and-die-broke attitude in the United States that's, for some disgusting reason, a point of pride for an enormous number of people.
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That only makes me want a Chinese EV even more.
I have no plans to visit that shithole country down the border anytime soon.
I have no plans to visit that shithole country down the border anytime soon.
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The Biden administration's approach to protectionism was not a bad idea; guardrail your economy from a foreign country looking to overtake a market from your own. You use that period of time to incentivize and ramp up your own production so that you can hopefully prepare yourself to remain competitive in the market.
The current administration undid all of that by rolling back all incentives, which has had the obvious effect of the auto industry pivoting away from an "all-in" approach to EVs. China has not slowed down their approach in the meantime, and if anything, has pressed down on the gas pedal (pun intended) even harder with EVs.
At this point, if the US manufacturers are just going to dabble in high-cost specialty/luxury-priced EVs and the US government isn't going to do anything to incentivize in the space, then you might as well just concede the loss, allow China to take over the auto industry, and allow US consumers to buy the cars while they're still cheap. China will, inevitably, begin raising prices once they have captured the market, but if the US isn't going to do anything to protect itself from that...then oh well.
The current administration undid all of that by rolling back all incentives, which has had the obvious effect of the auto industry pivoting away from an "all-in" approach to EVs. China has not slowed down their approach in the meantime, and if anything, has pressed down on the gas pedal (pun intended) even harder with EVs.
At this point, if the US manufacturers are just going to dabble in high-cost specialty/luxury-priced EVs and the US government isn't going to do anything to incentivize in the space, then you might as well just concede the loss, allow China to take over the auto industry, and allow US consumers to buy the cars while they're still cheap. China will, inevitably, begin raising prices once they have captured the market, but if the US isn't going to do anything to protect itself from that...then oh well.
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