Michigan politicians want to ban Chinese-badged cars from even visiting the US
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I still don’t forgive General Motors for the 1978 Buick I drove in high school —a product of the same lax attitudes and entitlement to domestic car manufacturing that’s on display here.
Slotkin isn’t perfect by any long stretch. Let’s elect someone better and more progressive.
Slotkin isn’t perfect by any long stretch. Let’s elect someone better and more progressive.
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and who knows how many Chinese-made devices these bits had to pass through so you can read them...
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Americans have always expected This One Neat Trick should be theirs and theirs alone.
Even today we call it "The Cuban Missile Crisis"...in order to absolve the USA from admitting that they started the entire thing--by planting Jupiter missiles in Turkey 90mi off the USSR years before hand.
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Lifelong Michigan Resident here.
It's funny that the national security comment got so much traction. Even here there were people cracking jokes about the absurdity of it (at least in relation to the camera issue). I don't think it was mentioned in the article, but the comments were made in/adjacent-to the Mackinac Policy Conference, which is the state's big yearly business and political get-together. It's usually never even known to anyone who isn't already paying attention.
That being said, there is a type of national security issue that is legitimate, and that's maintaining a sophisticated manufacturing base in the United States (and everywhere else for that matter). There's no question at this point that the US has fallen behind China in a number of areas. At the same time, there's this weird refusal to acknowledge that a large part of this (and I've said this before) was/is due to the fact that China has had an industrial policy over the past two decades with an almost singular focus on becoming the world's producer. It's even been causing problems in China internally because it's led to their economy becoming unbalanced (a bit too technical to detail here, but a lot of great analyses have been written about it). The rest of the world needed a strategic policy response to this at least a decade ago, but that never happened, so here we are.
Also, for the people who are bringing out the holier-than-thou bits, most people in Michigan remember the impact that de-industrialization had on Flint and Detroit. It's estimated that around ~25% of Michigan's economy is tied to the auto industry. Unless you've seen first hand what half a century of stagnation/decline looks like up-close and what effects it has on people and communities, save your criticism for where it actually belongs, which is the people making the inept policy decisions. Michigan is a competitive state politically, even within parties. That's an easy out not available in this case.
The ideal way forward here would be to supercharge R&D and have structured government incentives and mandates to make our cars more competitive with temporary tariffs in the meantime to avoid an industry apocalypse, but that's not going to happen under the current administration. The stated motives from Slotkin and similar are laughable and obviously deceptive, but they're trying to keep large swaths of people from suddenly finding themselves without employment, and if that isn't one of the primary jobs of a politician, I don't know what is.
It's funny that the national security comment got so much traction. Even here there were people cracking jokes about the absurdity of it (at least in relation to the camera issue). I don't think it was mentioned in the article, but the comments were made in/adjacent-to the Mackinac Policy Conference, which is the state's big yearly business and political get-together. It's usually never even known to anyone who isn't already paying attention.
That being said, there is a type of national security issue that is legitimate, and that's maintaining a sophisticated manufacturing base in the United States (and everywhere else for that matter). There's no question at this point that the US has fallen behind China in a number of areas. At the same time, there's this weird refusal to acknowledge that a large part of this (and I've said this before) was/is due to the fact that China has had an industrial policy over the past two decades with an almost singular focus on becoming the world's producer. It's even been causing problems in China internally because it's led to their economy becoming unbalanced (a bit too technical to detail here, but a lot of great analyses have been written about it). The rest of the world needed a strategic policy response to this at least a decade ago, but that never happened, so here we are.
Also, for the people who are bringing out the holier-than-thou bits, most people in Michigan remember the impact that de-industrialization had on Flint and Detroit. It's estimated that around ~25% of Michigan's economy is tied to the auto industry. Unless you've seen first hand what half a century of stagnation/decline looks like up-close and what effects it has on people and communities, save your criticism for where it actually belongs, which is the people making the inept policy decisions. Michigan is a competitive state politically, even within parties. That's an easy out not available in this case.
The ideal way forward here would be to supercharge R&D and have structured government incentives and mandates to make our cars more competitive with temporary tariffs in the meantime to avoid an industry apocalypse, but that's not going to happen under the current administration. The stated motives from Slotkin and similar are laughable and obviously deceptive, but they're trying to keep large swaths of people from suddenly finding themselves without employment, and if that isn't one of the primary jobs of a politician, I don't know what is.
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So, Mad Max movies came too late for you? If you didn't already know, the US favorite Nazi racist even had a Mad Max Mode installed in Teslas. Discontinued, but now brought back. And some idiots still insist that the Muskrat is a "jenius" and a very serious person.
https://electrek.co/2025/10/16/tesla-mad-max-full-self-driving-mode-ignores-speed-limits/
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The Chinese have been investing in the entire EV supply chain for years. BYD itself started as a battery manufacturer. Unless the US pushes back on the oil industry and works on the entire infrastructure, China will continue to leave us in the dust. Designing a swanky new car that meets a price point is only a part of the problem.
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Meh; just have politicians freely invite you to the signal chat.
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So if I buy a BYD I'm not permitted in the US? Sounds like more of a feature than a deficiency.
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What would you expect of a nation that only exists due to its residents irritated over being subject to competing blockades by foreign powers and pernicious tariffs?
Y'all want to pretend America invented this stuff. Far more of us understand Trump is among those who refuse to learn from history than detractors want to admit.
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So we’re just doing the Iron Curtain now? BYD cars are the new West German kitchen appliances and Levi’s blue jeans? Can’t let the proles find out how much better life is on the other side of that razor wire fence.
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I wonder if BYD offered to open a factory in Michigan, how these people would respond. Are they actually seeking to protect factory jobs or the corporate entities? My guess is it's the latter, and they don't really care about the factory jobs.
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The CPC* runs a Confucian government. They call it "Communism with Chinese characteristics". It has significant differences from a capitalist autocracy, as the founder of Alibaba found out when he tried to get too rich and was advised to pull his head back. No Musks, Zuckerbergs or Thiels in China.
Confucius (Kung Fu-tse) was an early technocrat. He advised that governments be run by bureaucrats selected by competitive examination. To a degree that was also how the British Empire really worked when it was successful. The best graduates from Oxford, Cambridge, Sandhurst and Woolwich went out to administer the Empire.
He also advised that rulers take care of the problems of the peasantry rather than put all their effort into squabbles with the neighbours. One of his sayings is "In The Spring and the Autumn are no righteous wars." On the face of it this was sensible advice; wars must not interfere with sowing and harvest. But The Spring and the Autumn was also the title of the official history of China - Kung was saying that all wars were bad.
And, finally, he placed great emphasis on decorum, correct behaviour and complying with the state religion.
(This incidentally is part of why I don't think China will invade Taiwan. They will try to persuade it to integrate.)
*There's a subtle point here. CPC is the Chinese preferred Anglicisation: Communist Party of China, i.e. part of the worldwide communist movement. CCP is the American usage: Chinese communist party with the emphasis on the Chinese.
It's a warning that China sees itself as part of an expanding international movement, not at all like the Stalinist USSR.
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Yeh instead let’s give our money to buy Nazi cars from a fascist who’s such a great guy and not anti immigration.
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America didn't invent it no.
But dear lord do Americans love to lecture the rest of the world about how they are the: freest country, greatest and bestest country in the history of the world, and how Free Markets are the panacea to everything....And then kvetch and moan about how: expensive their healthcare is, how no one can afford housing, whine about paying for taxes for things they demand like schools and roads and police, how dare the rest of the world "steal" their jobs, and so on.
Other powers invented this stuff long long ago...but they aren't so mind mindbogglingly arrogant as to spew self-flattering lies about themselves and how their systems don't-actually-work.
I say that as a Fellow American, well until I get denaturalized for saying unpatriotic state secrets out loud.
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Its almost like there may be more than 1 american and they may disagree on things. This is a theory, I know all data suggests Americans are highly unified currently and seldom have disagreements.
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There is a bizarrely large part of the population that still holds a deep and irrational hatred of China. Like, there's plenty to criticize and dislike, but there are a lot of people who are convinced that China is the fucking Empire or something.
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I'm so tired of "China is trying to steal your data!!"
As though any of our data were private at this point.
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Long standing anti-Chinese racism going back deep into the 19th century. That little thing with the boxer rebellion when the locals decided they didn’t want to be colonized any more and literally every single industrialized empire, US included, lined up to massacre them. Then 80+ years of reds under the bed propaganda. They were supposed to remain a permanently cheap powerless workforce to be exploited by American oligarchs. Not staying in that box is the highest of crimes.
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Easy. The more of the Chinese vehicles I see visiting (and I do see them at least once a week these days) the more I understand Chinese vehicles aren't necessarily the cheap crap I am being told it is.
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Like all the toxic waste gushing from our current fascist-wannabe regime, this is irrational, appalling, and stupid, but not without its amusement value.
Who willingly visits America? It's certainly been years since any of my overseas friends did. Over the past decade, we've established a tradition of getting together someplace none of us live – never in the U.S. Those with children, particular, need not explain why. The reasons they take their kids elsewhere are the same reasons I, as an American, have none.
Who willingly visits America? It's certainly been years since any of my overseas friends did. Over the past decade, we've established a tradition of getting together someplace none of us live – never in the U.S. Those with children, particular, need not explain why. The reasons they take their kids elsewhere are the same reasons I, as an American, have none.
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Actually competing requires investment and R&D which cut into those fat executive bonuses and stock buybacks. Detroit’s repeated greed and failure cycles have well proven that pattern by now. What better way to break the cycle than banning the competition before it can enter the country at all this time? Even easier if you extend that to preventing people from even learning there’s competition at all.
They still paid lip service the “free market” back when the Japanese and Koreans showed up. They’ve learned their lesson and acquired more pet politicians since then.
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Also it’s great if you give us subsidies regardless!
Oh… and if you’re a vindictive manchild president, we will absolutely let you be as interventionist as you like! Please don’t punish us, we promise to obey the emperor of free markets!!
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When Rolls-Royce was the world's premier aero engine manufacturer, a US general visited expecting to find the organisation was run by a member of the aristocracy. The chairman of Rolls-Royce informed him that he had started as a plumber. That was part of why the Royce-Packard collaboration was so successful in WW2. RR turned out to have a foundation story more like early American companies than British ones. And RR is still there, unlike Rootes and Austin and BSA.
Many Chinese companies seem to have similar origin stories to Rolls-Royce and to be run by the equivalents of the man who became Lord Hives.
There's a lesson to be learned there for the USA, but it seems the business schools and governance committees are determined that it should be forgotten.
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Senator Joe McCarthy is on the Ouija board for you, Sir.
And then there's the guy who is just involved in abolishing freedom of religion in the US armed forces after blocking the promotion of all non-white and women officers.
And the President trying to starve out Cuba.
It isn't whataboutery if the country you chose to live in is just as bad as the one you want to criticise.
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That would require the cars to be designed and manufactured by much cheaper labor, white collar and blue collar, overseas and would destroy the United States economy due to the unfair government subsidies in China. It's obvious that because the Chinese market is tapped out and can't support the large number of car manufacturers, those manufacturers are now looking to dump their cheap products in other countries.
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And most importantly, ALWAYS bought used. From the 1990s to about 2021 (wonder what happened that year?) the prices of new vehicles almost perfectly tracked inflation. In other words, inflation-adjusted autos were one of the few products that didn't increase in price at all while adding numerous improvements and features in the same period. Yet, still endless complaints about how people couldn't afford new cars.
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Michigan dems worried about Michigan jobs seems to be exactly how you win elections in Michigan.
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Like most American things, we simply outsourced the social credit scores to private corporations. Try getting certain kinds of jobs, any apartment or rental, etc. with a horrible credit score.
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