Nah. You’re not going to go down that route. Your roads are too deadly in their design for a large scale modal shift to micromobility. You’ll just all end up driving ancient giant clunkers and spending a fortune on them. Like all the cars that people drive when they get visited by Secret Santa on East Idaho News. Poverty everywhere, that’s the future, especially when the healthcare costs go shooting up next year.

Can you name 5 cars under 4.2m (165in) in length in the US market? You know, A or B segment cars.

EVs are no more susceptible to remote kill switches than ICE vehicles

We see, and have seen, growth in markets whether or not there were financial incentives, including as those incentives were phased in and out over time. Incentives don’t explain changes in growth rates very well, nor the large differences between countries. When the UK removed incentives in the dog days of the Tory government, growth continued, and it continued after a new incentive was put in place by Labour.

And pretending that the cars aren’t actually being sold is just the weirdest kind of cope. I don’t know where you are in the world, but I’m in London and can promise you that EVs are absolutely commonplace round here, and becoming more and more common over time. Well over a quarter of the cars on my street are EVs now.

If you’re going to argue incentives skew the market, I’m going to argue that the unfunded externalities of ICE vehicles are a massive distortion in favour of their predominance, and if ICE purchasers had to cover the care costs of the associated morbidity and mortality from tailpipe emissions and noise pollution, they would be ruinously expensive (and that of course excludes their major contribution to climate change costs).

Nope. Not even close. This is cope & propaganda taking a word with obvious negative connotations and applying it to a situation where it doesn’t apply to make US consumers, who might otherwise be very happy to see Chinese affordable cars on the US market, accept the protectionism.

Dumping has never meant “offer low prices” or even “offer prices below cost”. Doing the former is fundamental to how markets are supposed to work, and the latter is typically completely acceptable, so much so that we are all familiar with the term loss leader to describe one version of it.

I think the term you and others are groping for is predatory pricing, not dumping. Very hard to prove, though. But even then it doesn’t apply to Chinese companies seeking to win in a new geo, because predatory pricing comprises these three things:
1. Seller has significant market power (e.g., a near-monopoly)
2. They’re doing it with the intent of driving competitors out
3. It is likely to succeed in reducing competition long-term

So it’s an incumbent strategy, not a new entrant strategy.

I don't know what you think is a better indicator of consumer preference than consumer purchases, which have been increasing year on year and show no sign of slowing.

I don't disagree with any of that, but I don't think it contradicts what I was saying above, where my focus was on the European market, which as you yourself now point out is very different from the US market.

The enthusiasm for electrification among European *OEMs* has waned for several of them, and was never very high to begin with. But not all of them -- eg Renault -- and the enthusiasm among European consumers, as evidenced by sales, continues to grow. After all, market share across Europe for 2025 YTD is about 18%, 4 percentage points higher than 2024. As more non-premium models become available, I expect things to accelerate further. Politicians care more than they should about OEMs and less than they should about consumers, both in the US and Europe.

No, dumpging doesn't mean selling below cost. That's not a definition you'll find in any legal or economic textbook, it's not the definitions used in any laws or treaties, etc. It's a misconception.

Dumping is what I described above. Here's what is written into UK law, for example:
"(2)For the purposes of this Act imported goods shall be regarded as having been dumped—

(a)if the export price from the country of origin is less than the fair market price there (whether the country of exportation is the same or a different country); or

(b)if the export price from the country of exportation (if a different country) is less than the fair market price there"

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.legislation.gov.uk... [legislation.gov.uk]

No reference to production costs. All that matters is the export price being less than the fair market price in the country of origin.

There's tons of weird incentives from the Chinese state, for sure. But it doesn't amount to dumping. And of course the US has long provided incentives (and bailouts!) to its own OEMs.

Agree re Toyota / Geely and local manufacture. But obviously the US government is, erm, not very committed to encouraging overseas direct investment in the auto sector at the moment, as amply demonstrated by the Hyundai fiasco, and the specific route you describe ain't open to Chinese OEMs and doesn't look like it will ever be opened.

Even if all this were true, which I strongly dispute, how does the US OEM response prevent the cornering of the Li market? It doesn't begin to. If anything, the US OEMs have been pushing for divergence, a recommittment to ICE drivetrains. If ICE drivetrains provided any kind of meaningful defensive moat, there wouldn't need to be this call for protectionist measures. It's all stuff and nonsense. OEMs produce giant crappy ICE vehicles with fat margins for the US market and want to keep it that way. They want to split the market off from the rest of the world and keep it as a cashcow feeding the rest of their business (in the case of global OEMs like Toyota) or their only source of profit (in the case of US OEMs).

None of this benefits US consumers and drivers.

The economic and legal definition of dumping is as I stated it. Subsidies don't affect this, unless the subsidies are only for cars bound for the export market. This is how the WTO operates and its member states. For example, in the UK, here's what the legislation says:

"(2)For the purposes of this Act imported goods shall be regarded as having been dumped—

(a)if the export price from the country of origin is less than the fair market price there (whether the country of exportation is the same or a different country); or

(b)if the export price from the country of exportation (if a different country) is less than the fair market price there"

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.legislation.gov.uk...

No reference to subsidies. All that matters is the export price being less than the fair market price in the country of origin.

Calling what the Chinese are doing "dumping" is just a massive, massive cope. It inverts the economic reality, which is that Chinese OEMs are looking to compensate from insanely fierce price competition at home by exporting cars at a higher price, so they can make back some margin.

There's also the blunt truth that this all amounts to self-imposed diseconomies of scale for the big 3. Not just tariffs, but the move away from EVs. It means parts are amortised across the scale of a 330m person market, ignoring billions of people elsewhere. Of course, Americans drive more than others and are very rich relatively as a society, and spend a lot. But still, that's not enough. Screws being produced for a market of billions are going to be cheaper than screws produced for a market of hundreds of millions.

Dumping means *selling cheaper abroad than you do at home*. Chinese EVs are definitely *not* sold cheaper in export markets than at home.

This difference really matters, because without it, anti-dumping measures can be broadened to prevent legitimate price competition. Which is exactly what’s being attempted here.

They were as upfront as you could have wished for. No mention of the pros or cons for American consumers and drivers. Nope, it’s all about the interests of the manufacturers who managed to get in the castle and are trying to pull the drawbridge up after them. The extraordinary chutzpah of Japanese OEMs being in this group is something to behold. The 80s was absolutely dominated by debate about Japanese OEMs trying to enter the US auto market, and US OEMs trying to keep them out.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: the US is going to diverge from the rest of the world’s auto markets even more, just as Cuba has. But it’s been forced on Cuba by the US, while here the US is doing it to itself. Crazy stuff.