Michigan politicians want to ban Chinese-badged cars from even visiting the US
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I agree that the fact that they have programs to help people is of course better than not having them at all, but the whole social credit aspect is just dystopianly terrifying!
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[closing-barn-door-horse-bolted.jpg]
Others have already mentioned how easy it would be for foreign agents to just bring their own spy kit or how foreign government can buy information that private businesses like Flock vacuum up on us. But they can also just hack into domestic automakers' networks, as it has been show repeatedly how terrible they are at securing their own networks and the vehicles they build.
This is just performative legislation that will piss our neighbors off even more. Visits from Canadians to the USA are already down. I really hope that the Michigan travel lobby tells these two to STFU.
Others have already mentioned how easy it would be for foreign agents to just bring their own spy kit or how foreign government can buy information that private businesses like Flock vacuum up on us. But they can also just hack into domestic automakers' networks, as it has been show repeatedly how terrible they are at securing their own networks and the vehicles they build.
This is just performative legislation that will piss our neighbors off even more. Visits from Canadians to the USA are already down. I really hope that the Michigan travel lobby tells these two to STFU.
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Oh 100%. Their treatment of some ethnic and religious minorities is also hideously, well, familiar.
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Are those circuit boards designed in China by a Chinese company, or designed in the US and manufactured in China? There is a difference. (Though not saying one is completely safe and the other isn't.)
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Now take this a step further and ban all cars from being surveillance packages.
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At some point, Smartyflix, the wealthy aren't going to want American electric cars. They're not going to stand there and wait longer than 15 minutes to charge if they can just apply pressure to friends in congress for an exception. Then this law, like so many before it, will only apply to the poors.
Or they'll just buy gas fueled cars with other fancy bells and whistles. I'm not sure how much EV benefits matter to them TBH.
Or they'll just buy gas fueled cars with other fancy bells and whistles. I'm not sure how much EV benefits matter to them TBH.
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Brought to you by Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).
So now some idiot democrats are joining the GQP in their great "FREEDOM OF CHOICE" for "Real Americans (tm)". We are free to buy whatever we want just as long as they make the choice for us. Coal burning Land Barge SUVs and giant pickups for ALL. A 10,000 pound GM Hummer will soon be reclassified as a sub-compact economy car. /S (There are not enough "S"s for these morons.)
So now some idiot democrats are joining the GQP in their great "FREEDOM OF CHOICE" for "Real Americans (tm)". We are free to buy whatever we want just as long as they make the choice for us. Coal burning Land Barge SUVs and giant pickups for ALL. A 10,000 pound GM Hummer will soon be reclassified as a sub-compact economy car. /S (There are not enough "S"s for these morons.)
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Plus, it presumably wouldn't be very hard for the hypothetical MSS undercover operatives to set up a scheme installing or hijacking the very same surveillance devices in a non-CN vehicle. From something as simple as just renting and secretly modifying US cars themselves (thus slowly "seeding" the pool in an area of interest), to outright setting up their own or acquiring an existing car rental or a car repair shop servicing a rental company via an oblique network of investment firms.
If they really wanted to pull something like this, restrictions on obviously Chinese products are probably the easiest problem to solve for whoever would be tasked with a mission like this.
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What was never addresses here nor is ever addressed anywhere I've articles like this: Chinese cars visiting from Canada/Mexico, why? What do they think is going to happen? What about the Chinese Teslas that are on their way to Canada?
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Can't compete, huh. Now if everyone had access to Medicare and manufacturers weren't burdened with bloated health insurance costs...
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This administration is greatly assisting China to become the next Japan. Remember when the Japanese products were considered junk? The US manufacturers took that as their target goal while Japanese manufacturers did the opposite. And here we are, in a complete reversal.
"Ford set a record in 2025 by issuing 152 recalls, affecting nearly 13 million vehicles, which is more than any other automaker that year." Not to worry, other US manufacturers have been catching up and moving all manufacturing to locations outside the US (including China).
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Oldsmobile was bought by GM. That plant (Lansing Car Assembly) has since been shuttered in favor of 2 newer plants in Lansing. I live in the Lansing area, and think Slotkin is just being a good Michigan politician here. The GM plants are unionized, and a UAW endorsement is actually useful at the margins to get some more folks to vote D. So Tagbert has it right!
This is the same thing as Kentucky politicians advancing interests of the bourbon industry, NY politicians advance finance, etc. Honestly, as a Michigan voter, I'd be more upset if my elected politicians were not interested in ensuring the economic well-being of their constituents!
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Nora Lenderbee
Ars Tribunus Militum
San Antonio, Texas, an easy drive from the border, is also chock full of military, And just a bit more driving gets you from Juarez to Albuquerque (Sandia labs), the White Sands missile range and Los Alamos. If someone is a bit paranoid, all they need to do is browse the maps.
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Yeah, this is what they were elected to do. Having said that, the fact is US businesses monitor the shit out of us and no one seems to care. Shrug.
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Not disputing the conclusions, but number of recalls is a bad way to measure reliability. It's a number, not a percentage, and most recalls are very minor. When you make the single best-selling vehicle in the US, one bug in the software ends up being 4.4 million recalls. (Trailer control module in the F150 series, fixed by an over-the-air software update.)
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Some truly idiotic democrats think that the way to get more votes is to become more like the GQP. And given that the majority of US adults actually have less than 6th grade reading and comprehension levels, they could be correct.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
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Addressing the fears/needs/desires of your constituents is generally good politics. On one hand I'd like to think going about it in such an obviously pandering and asenine way would be punished by voters with even a tenuous graps on reality... on the other hand I just need to look at political history the world over. sigh
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I would love to see better privacy laws promulgated in the US. That said. . .
While this is little comfort given what we see day to day with the current maladministration:
US companies ARE subject to US laws. We might not be able to trust them any more than foreign companies, but if the political will is there, we can certainly regulate them better.
Right now we are NOT regulating them better. But we could.
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Why should foreign agents bother to do anything at all anymore? The American electorate is already destroying the country and much more efficiently that any agent ever could.
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Btw, speaking of protectionism and national security...
Congress is at present enthusiastically forcing the US to obligatory purchase, forced access and integration with it's greatest ally with the 2027 NDAA.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-us-military/
Congress is at present enthusiastically forcing the US to obligatory purchase, forced access and integration with it's greatest ally with the 2027 NDAA.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-us-military/
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ReadandShare
Ars Centurion
[Edit to add: China is our fiercest competitor (and not just us but Japan, Korea, EU, etc., etc. as well). I have my doubts, but after gutting out Biden's Chips Act, I sure hope Trump's "programs" will work - because we can't win by blocking and tariffing!]
[Edit to correct my erroneous use of "co-opting".]
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thelongdarkteatimeof
Ars Scholae Palatinae
And Pete Hoekstra doesn't understand why Canadians are simultaneously laughing, disgusted, and fed up with these petulant hissy fits.
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"National security" is just the new, "Won't someone think of the children?"
That said, we already have legislation opposing the import of Chinese vehicles. There are already huge tariffs on them. I'm not sure we need to go a step further and go for the 'don't even let them enter the country, even as tourists' angle. That's kinda wild and reeks of desperation for public sentiment and not like actually something that has any meaningful chance of passing and/or being reliably enforced even if it does.
That said, we already have legislation opposing the import of Chinese vehicles. There are already huge tariffs on them. I'm not sure we need to go a step further and go for the 'don't even let them enter the country, even as tourists' angle. That's kinda wild and reeks of desperation for public sentiment and not like actually something that has any meaningful chance of passing and/or being reliably enforced even if it does.
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Once again, as the story explains, these protectionist moves from Democrats predate Trump taking office a second time. They're not co-opting anything, this is one of the few bipartisan issues left.
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The dude's job description is to shit on Canadians and keep us pissed off. He's not great at it, but it's an easy job so he manages.
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Shoot you in the street when helping a fellow protestor? Or when driving away in your car? Damn, sorry, that was just here, this year, in Minneapolis. In a country that's already supposedly a democracy.
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They started under Trump 45, though there were grumbles before.
Biden was happy to also be protectionist; that was a point of friction between him and the core establishment wing of the party. He, of course, was far smarter about it than Trump is, adding industrial policy to work with the tariffs and achieve the goal of reshoring.
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I'm sorry...I can't hear Sen. Slotkin over the sound of her vote to confirm Kristi Noem... and all the gunfire and ambulance sirens that resulted from that vote.
A lot of us won't be visiting for a long time regardless who made the car we're in.
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BS Detector
Smack-Fu Master, in training
Growing up I got all of my ideas about how to drive from Bullit and Vanishing Point. I’m up for the challenge.
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Nice that we have Abdul El-Sayad running as a Democrat as well. The simple solution in this state is not to vote for two mainstream Democrats (whose records indicate they will be mostly center) and instead vote for the third candidate who has actual progressive cred and has a completely different message, indicating he's much smarter about looking at each individual issue, and not from the perspective of corporations and lobby groups, but from that of the people.
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Oh, so that's what that USB port on the dash is for. I've just been plugging my phone into it.
(I wrote that in jest but I have a friend in the UK who bought a thumb drive to flash the ECU in his BMW to unleash a lot of horsepower because the engine is crippled by the firmware. So it's very possible, if not common.
Pity the upgrade did nothing for his brakes though).
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Wonder how long until there are exemptions for US car companies similar to this one for routers?:
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy...om-ban-on-foreign-routers-doesnt-explain-why/
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US municipal, county, state, and federal policy has been doing contortionist knots for 90 years for the Detroit autos.
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Voting for him is honestly my plan. I don't categorically dislike Slotkin necessarily, but she is definitely not progressive.
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