Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla, I have an alternative: open the door to Chinese EVs
Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla, I have an alternative: open the door to Chinese EVs
A Canadian candidate for Prime Minister has proposed implementing a 100% tariff on Tesla vehicles in response to US tariffs...
Why not both
I think we should build them ourselves.
I obviously don't understand the economics of it and I realize that China will always have the upper hand on price but is there a reason every western EV has to be $40,000+? Like surely it's possible to build a barebones model for less than 30k right - especially if I don't need or even want touch screens or fancy interior materials or heated seats or anything.
Why would Canadians want cheaper EVs that may or may not be reliable when they can have American assembled ones that are more expensive and may or may not work?
I hope EVs don't get a bad name out of all this. EVs are one of the few good things to come out of the last decade or so.
The world needs to tariff ALL elon companies and move away from American products/offerings in general. We need something to replace AWS in the worst way. The world needs to remember the corporations foreign and domestic that helped faciliate this and freeze them out because if they do it here in the US they WILL do it in your countries too. Toyota helped fund 1/6 for example. I will never buy a toyota because of it and elons companies will never get any patronage from me either.
Electrek (the publisher of the article) seems to be a bit of a shill for Chinese EV companies, or he's getting some kind of commission. He's repeatedly promoted Chinese factories, goes on Chinese factory tours, etc... I don't know what the angle is, but it's vastly different from similar sources like Electroheads out of the UK.
That said, fuck Tesla.
Also, Canada should invest in building more micromobility devices here, like e-bikes, e-scooters, etc. The future isn't cars, and we need more affordable, accessible modes of transportation.
The benefit of a tarrif on Tesla vs opening the market to China is that we can easily undo it if there is a US coup, Trump gets medicated, gets burned, whatever. There's still the potential that this is a temporary situation, not the new reality. If we open up to a third party, we can't put the genie back in the bottle.
The whole “China bad America good” concept has been put in a different light of late.
Does EU/North America fear truly China because of its expansionist policies, or simply because their skin is a different colour? It’s not like the USA is above tampering in foreign government and bugging electronics.
I say go for it, Canada. If only because it’ll push Tesla off the scoreboard without the tariffs. They can’t compete.
The thing is, if Trump wants to kill Canada's role in US car manufacturing, then it will cost him the car markets in Mexico and Canada. If there's no jobs here to protect, then we'll just drop the tariffs on Chinese EVs. (This is speaking like 20 years down the road). We'll all be driving Chinese cars in that scenario. The tariffs are a total lose-lose situation, so dumb.
"Open the door to Chinese EVs" isn't a simple solution because it has wider reaches than restricting Tesla-imports. There's a reason Germany just effected tariffs on chinese EVs, namely because they are arguing that as china subsidizes their EVs, naturally non-subsidized local companies could never be price-competitive.
I don't know how that situation is in canada, but I bet similar things have to be looked at.
I like the solution, but it's not a simple one.
Good, the tariffs that is.
How about japanese ones? :P Better invest on our own infrastructure, we need Canadian EVs!
I AM MANIFESTING THIS PLEASE 🙏
I think Europe or Canada should make EVs, and Greenland being given incentives to tap into their minerals to feed the materials necessary for the project. Greenland gets closer to independence, and whoever makes the cars gets to piss on Musk. Win-win, no need for the risk of CCP becoming too influential within democratic governments.
...While trade is a good thing, I think that maintaining at least a moderate level of manufacturing industry and sciences within your nation or cultural sphere to be very important. Just in case things get weird, like how 2025 has been.
Why not do both? I like public transit idea but does not work for smaller/rural communities
Switching from one Authoritarian to another is never the solution.
Or maintain and drive the car you already have. There are more options then Tesla and BYD. These are probably the worst options.
The main reason why Chinese cars (all of them) aren't allowed in North America is most don't pass our strict Safety standards. What needs to happen is provinces need to allow mini EV's. There are wonderful little single or two seater EV's that only do 30 Kmh, and can do 50 to 100 km's in range. But aren't allowed legally on the road. You can get them for like 5K.
If they care about the environment at all they will. If they care about their people at all, they already would have.
We know that new(er) cars have spyware controlled by some government or corporation. If my privacy is going to be violated, I’d rather have a hostile gov/co do it. I’m not a government employee. When it comes to national security, I’m a complete nobody. I don’t give a shit what Beijing knows about my life, because they don’t care, and probably won’t share info with the West. Maybe they’ll share it with Russia, but again, that’s irrelevant to me.
I want Washington (and, to a much lesser extent, Ottawa) to know as little as possible, because I don’t trust them, and it’s much, much easier for them to make my life difficult if they want to.
I’d like to hear your opinions on this take.
In that article it is mentioned that Trump is going back on an agreement he signed a few years ago.
Therefore agreements made with Trump do not mean anything. He will choose not to honour them if and when it is convenient to him.
But then I guess we already knew that from his business practices.
The art of the deal is to make the other side believe you are honourable, use that credibility to offer more than you intend to give and leverage them to give you what you want. Then invent a pretext to cancel the deal and keep your ill-gotten gains.
The problem with governments dealing with trump is that they trust him to be true to his word. I do not believe he will. I fear he will use this approach with Ukraine to hand them over to Poo-tin. Then when it's to late for the international community to do anything he'll just say Zelenskyy didn't hold up his end of the bargain.
I still want diy builds to be eligible for hov lane sticker and rebates when they have those
I was thinking the same thing. I always thought one of the main reasons for the 100% tariffs was to be in line with what the US wanted. But with things being the way they are, I think we should open the door for Chinese EVs. If it benefits Canada, we should do it. I'm not well versed on the Chinese EVs, but from some of the documentaries I've seen, the quality is comparable to the US models, if not better, due to the features that they pack into their base models. I know that there are concerns about eavesdropping and data collection, but isn't that a risk with the US too? And especially the way the US is now, I'd trust them even less. Because it goes beyond the data collection, it goes to their intention of annexation.
I'd rather we open the door to Chinese EVs, or any other competitors, just so our trade is more diversified. (I'm not familiar with the infrastructure investments that would be required for Chinese EVs, or policy adjustments, I just think it's something that should be seriously explored and implemented, just so we're not so dependent on the US alone).
Why not both?
Is 200% not legal?
Why not 10,000%?
Why not both?
There needs to be some coercion of Canadian present (foreign) auto industry to make a committment to their Canadian operations.
The UAW said that despite the looming price increases, it will be companies that raise the costs that are ultimately to blame, not Trump.
There's certainly a danger for industry to cower to Trump, and help sacrifice Canada. A tariff level that is meant to raise revenue while still making Canadian industry/dealer network competitive, is a good starting point to "semi-welcome" dealership/repair or bigger investments from China into Canada. Trump has said he wants to get China to invest in EV manufacturing in US. Holding evil attitudes towards China because the US told us to apply their same tariffs without even talking to China, is simply an anti-Canadian attitude.
Overall tariff reductions on China is path to get a stronger Canadian retail sector that gains volume from US crossborder shopping and lower prices for Canadians as they also dump US alternatives. Deleting America program should be our common mission, and it is only through that mission, that "sense" will take place in Trump's cabinet, and then "undelete America" can happen again.
Get them to help build factories in Canada
