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WarmWash 38 minutes ago [-]
The entire article doesn't once stipulate that the grounds for banning a Chinese owned car is having telemetry that phones home to China.
Maybe Volvo still does and it's a mystery why they can still sell here. Maybe Volvo doesn't and there is no story here.
But if the car talks to China and gets updates from China, the US doesn't care if it's built here.
Anoian 3 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
jfengel 2 hours ago [-]
If you waited until today to get terrified... Then I guess you're one of today's unlucky 10,000. Congratulations, or something.
Eufrat 51 minutes ago [-]
The policy of the United States is currently a roulette wheel suffering from dementia that believes that Siri is a Norwegian supermodel they can use to seed the future Herrenrasse.
AnotherGoodName 2 hours ago [-]
What makes a car ‘made in China’ (therefore over 100% tariffs) vs ‘assembled in the USA’ (therefore no tariffs)?
The battery, engine and everything else is absolutely Chinese made. I don’t know how much assembly there is honestly but i feel the Geely, err i mean Polestar was a little close to that line.
I will say the laws around this indicate just how ridiculous tariffs can be. There’s always some line to press up against and honestly if electric motors, batteries, car bodies and wheels from china have different tariffs to a car as a whole it’s always going to lead to china shipping those parts in an easy to bolt together way to ‘make a car’.
I think my favorite part would be where they were unbolting entire seats and feeding them directly into industrial shredders.
"Ford imported all of its first-generation Ford Transit Connect models as "passenger vehicles" by including rear windows, rear seats, and rear seat belts.[1] The vehicles were exported from Turkey on ships owned by Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), arrived in Baltimore, and were converted back into light trucks at WWL's Vehicle Services Americas, Inc. facility by replacing rear windows with metal panels and removing the rear seats and seat belts.[1] The removed parts were not shipped back to Turkey for reuse, but shredded and recycled in Ohio.[1] The process exploited the loophole in the customs definition of a light truck; as cargo does not need seats with seat belts or rear windows, presence of those items automatically qualified the vehicle as a "passenger vehicle" and exempted the vehicle from "light truck" status. The process cost Ford hundreds of dollars per van, but saved thousands in taxes.[1]"
khuey 35 minutes ago [-]
Ford ended up paying $365 million (roughly $2200 per van) to settle a lawsuit from the government over that.
bagels 37 minutes ago [-]
I wonder if manufacturers are using LLMs to find all the dumb loopholes in the laws that they can.
mattas 1 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of this.
There's a whole industry around reverse engineering tariff classifications to find ways to minimize all-in manufacturing cost.
For example, let's say you sell air purifiers.
Option 1 is to import an air purifier and pay the 25% tariff (or whatever the actual duty rate is) on air purifiers.
Option 2 is to import a widget that gets classified as a fan (with 5% duty) and import a widget that gets classified as an air filter (with 10% duty), then put them in the same box somewhere in the US.
Both are sold to consumers as an air purifier. But one of the options minimizes total cost to the manufacturer.
ifwinterco 29 minutes ago [-]
The solution is to tax the capital account instead (tobin tax) or at the very least put the same tariff on everything.
But politicians can never resist exceptions and carve outs and then the game starts again
AnthonyMouse 14 minutes ago [-]
> The solution is to tax the capital account instead (tobin tax)
Isn't that just going to further advantage multinational corporations that don't have to move currency in order to move resources because they're all within the same corporation?
I would be more terrified if they didn’t spare a manufacturer who designs and makes cars in Sweden and the US since decades just because the majority owner is Chinese.
queenkjuul 8 minutes ago [-]
Polestar designs cars in Sweden and builds then in the US for many years, it's still strange
chvid 16 minutes ago [-]
If you go to China you will see plenty of KFC, Starbucks, Apple, and Tesla. American companies that all make billions out of the Chinese market.
Yet the US government seems happy to play games like this; there must be someone thinking - hey the shoe could soon be on the other foot? Maybe we should cool it a bit ...
ronsor 9 minutes ago [-]
Those are the exceptions that prove the rule. It's very difficult for US or Western companies in general to do business in China without opaque restrictions, corruptions, and share ownership hoops. If the US is playing games, then it's closer to kids playing soccer on weekends; China is already in the pro leagues.
chvid 4 minutes ago [-]
The simple story is: If you go to China you will see US brands everywhere. If you go to the US, you will see Chinese brands nowhere.
jleyank 4 hours ago [-]
Might it be that one sells EV’s and the other sells ICE cars? Or perhaps stupidity re Volvo’s ownership? Or a missing bribe?
linzhangrun 2 hours ago [-]
Volvo also has BEVs, which are rebadged Zeekr (Geely) and mainly sold in China.
dcrazy 2 hours ago [-]
Volvo’s EX line of EVs is sold here in the U.S.
cuu508 53 minutes ago [-]
Or maybe somebody at the decision table had sentimental feelings for Volvo. Like Kyoto.
2 hours ago [-]
ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago [-]
Related:
Feds deny Polestar authorization to sell cars in US from model year 2027
the main point to me here is that such decisions should be fully public including all the input info and all the reasoning that is behind the decision, similar to a court case. Instead we have that guessing game.
garyfirestorm 2 hours ago [-]
Corruption and transparency are polar opposites
elzbardico 3 hours ago [-]
Probably the stupid politician behind it didn't get the memo that Volvo is no longer a swedish company?
cookiengineer 12 minutes ago [-]
Maybe Volvo has some Swedish brand advertising running on Fox news?
scythe 2 hours ago [-]
I think it's half this and half that Volvo is still a recognizable brand that Americans grew up with. My mother had a Volvo when I was seven. People would react if Volvo was banned. Polestar? What's that?
But Geely can throw down the gauntlet by building Polestars and relabeling them Volvos.
onesociety2022 2 hours ago [-]
This is probably the reason. Volvo brand is well established in the USA while Polestar is new. So not very Americans would complain if Polestar is banned as compared to Volvo.
It would be better if the AI censorship was lawless, rather than authorized by the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, since that would allow the Article III branch of the federal government to be a defense against it. The lawfulness makes it worse.
AnthonyMouse 4 minutes ago [-]
Some people have been pointing out for decades that granting unchecked discretionary powers to the executive branch is a hazard. Now there is an executive using them to do things a lot of people don't like.
Are the people who don't like it going to withdraw those powers the next time they have the opportunity? The main alternative is more of this.
malcolmgreaves 2 hours ago [-]
The same kind of thinking was used on encryption algorithms in the 90s.
uproarchat 38 minutes ago [-]
Only a few of us are big enough to fit an LLM on a tshirt
andsoitis 4 hours ago [-]
It does not terrify me.
fsckboy 1 hours ago [-]
>Polestar is done in the U.S. market. Its sister brand Volvo, owned by the same Chinese parent company, was spared. No one has explained why. The U.S. Federal Government is meddling with the automotive industry, the free market, and capitalism.
I'm not saying "trust the government", not at all. But meddling in China trade is absolutely not meddling with the free market.
DangitBobby 25 minutes ago [-]
How is preventing a Chinese brand from selling here not meddling in the free market?
AnthonyMouse 48 seconds ago [-]
"Free market" implies regulators aren't picking winners and losers etc. If China subsidizes their export industry to make manufacturing in other countries uncompetitive then it's already not a free market.
SilverElfin 4 hours ago [-]
It’s because the Polestar cars have a lot more electronic surveillance than the Volvo models, which have had only minor tweaks and have mostly not been updated for years.
Terr_ 4 hours ago [-]
If it were just about electronic surveillance, a bunch of other cars/manufacturers would be getting impeded or at least get some sort of negative scrutiny.
I don't see any of those on the mozillafoundation page, per @andsoitis.
2 hours ago [-]
killingtime74 1 hours ago [-]
Oops, indeed
mukbangpervert 2 hours ago [-]
Correction: it is because a major Republican donor wants Chinese cars banned, because they beat the living shit out of his offerings on quality and value.
It is silly to credulously pretend that the excuse about Chinese software has even a whiff of legitimacy.
natch 2 hours ago [-]
It's hard to parse this without concluding that you are perhaps unaware that Volvo is Chinese.
mukbangpervert 2 hours ago [-]
I should've said competitive Chinese EVs to be precise.
(Though I thought that anybody as smart as you think you are would've inferred that without issue)
catigula 2 hours ago [-]
Why would we let China pump and dump our economy with cheap goods? We already tried that and it didn’t work.
mullingitover 2 hours ago [-]
Our cheap exports: competitive, free markets maximizing efficiency and delivering value to consumers
Their cheap exports: sinister pump and dump
kev009 2 hours ago [-]
I think a national security argument is much more sound than an economic one, although costs are externalized in a way that isn't obvious, i.e. ecological disaster that shipping everything around the world and back (components, assemblies) is, and hollowing out a local supply chain takes virtually no time while the impact or limits of it are hidden until abrupt breakage (i.e. covid-era shortages on basic supplies, wars, or heavy handed statesmen dictating preferential access to silicon or whatever today). That is, every nation has to maintain some stake in not hollowing out completely while still participating in global commerce.
Scroll down the list and look how many there are and where they were manufactured. Economic efficiency would mean only a few vendors.
BlaDeKke 42 minutes ago [-]
Notice how many brands there are, produced all over the world.
peyton 2 hours ago [-]
They have capital controls. Good luck moving yuan instead of Labubus.
onion2k 2 hours ago [-]
The alternative to Chinese goods is not locally made goods for the majority of people. It's either Chinese goods that we pretend are locally made, or it's nothing because they can't afford the local stuff.
Cheap good for decades has meant companies have been able to depress wages to the point no one can really live without them. Removing the cheap goods without also giving up massive corporate profits would just mean most people collapse into poverty.
People make stuff like this abroad because wages are too high here to make a profit, not too low.
tancop 20 minutes ago [-]
real wages in western countries are down because 1. regressive inflation on essential goods like energy is faster than both wages and luxury goods and 2. rent and house prices (= mortgage costs) are up because of corporate lobbying and rich nimby homeowners.
that means if employers want to pay workers fairly they need to pay a lot more than in other countries with a cheaper economy. but even the inflated wages are not growing fast enough to catch up with cost of living. so yeah wages are too high compared to the rest of the world but also too low relative to the gdp and growth rate and corporate profits.
dmix 2 hours ago [-]
Nobody wants to do the hard work of developing industry, reducing cost of living and doing business so workers are more competitive, and changing all the rules that make China 10x more attractive for this sort of thing.
They just want to ban even more things.
wmf 56 minutes ago [-]
They're banning Polestar cars that are designed in Sweden (I guess) and made in the US... because the car's Google firmware is Chinese-owned. This case isn't about saving jobs (that's what tariffs are for); it's a misguided attempt at privacy regulation.
brookst 2 hours ago [-]
Might want to google “pump and dump”. Serious non-sequitur here.
DiogenesKynikos 2 hours ago [-]
"Pump and dump" is when Trump talks up a stock he just bought and then sells it.
lostlogin 2 hours ago [-]
You're going to be able to compare this new way with the old way.
Careful what you wish for.
mslt 2 hours ago [-]
We can’t even make expensive versions of those goods
Maybe Volvo still does and it's a mystery why they can still sell here. Maybe Volvo doesn't and there is no story here.
But if the car talks to China and gets updates from China, the US doesn't care if it's built here.
The battery, engine and everything else is absolutely Chinese made. I don’t know how much assembly there is honestly but i feel the Geely, err i mean Polestar was a little close to that line.
I will say the laws around this indicate just how ridiculous tariffs can be. There’s always some line to press up against and honestly if electric motors, batteries, car bodies and wheels from china have different tariffs to a car as a whole it’s always going to lead to china shipping those parts in an easy to bolt together way to ‘make a car’.
"Ford imported all of its first-generation Ford Transit Connect models as "passenger vehicles" by including rear windows, rear seats, and rear seat belts.[1] The vehicles were exported from Turkey on ships owned by Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), arrived in Baltimore, and were converted back into light trucks at WWL's Vehicle Services Americas, Inc. facility by replacing rear windows with metal panels and removing the rear seats and seat belts.[1] The removed parts were not shipped back to Turkey for reuse, but shredded and recycled in Ohio.[1] The process exploited the loophole in the customs definition of a light truck; as cargo does not need seats with seat belts or rear windows, presence of those items automatically qualified the vehicle as a "passenger vehicle" and exempted the vehicle from "light truck" status. The process cost Ford hundreds of dollars per van, but saved thousands in taxes.[1]"
There's a whole industry around reverse engineering tariff classifications to find ways to minimize all-in manufacturing cost.
For example, let's say you sell air purifiers.
Option 1 is to import an air purifier and pay the 25% tariff (or whatever the actual duty rate is) on air purifiers.
Option 2 is to import a widget that gets classified as a fan (with 5% duty) and import a widget that gets classified as an air filter (with 10% duty), then put them in the same box somewhere in the US.
Both are sold to consumers as an air purifier. But one of the options minimizes total cost to the manufacturer.
But politicians can never resist exceptions and carve outs and then the game starts again
Isn't that just going to further advantage multinational corporations that don't have to move currency in order to move resources because they're all within the same corporation?
Yet the US government seems happy to play games like this; there must be someone thinking - hey the shoe could soon be on the other foot? Maybe we should cool it a bit ...
Feds deny Polestar authorization to sell cars in US from model year 2027
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48678494
But Geely can throw down the gauntlet by building Polestars and relabeling them Volvos.
It's all just this lawless personal fealty shit.
Are the people who don't like it going to withdraw those powers the next time they have the opportunity? The main alternative is more of this.
I'm not saying "trust the government", not at all. But meddling in China trade is absolutely not meddling with the free market.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
Polestar is predominantly Chinese-owned. Federal Connected Car Rules instituted a ban on the company selling cars in the United States.
I don't see any of those on the mozillafoundation page, per @andsoitis.
It is silly to credulously pretend that the excuse about Chinese software has even a whiff of legitimacy.
(Though I thought that anybody as smart as you think you are would've inferred that without issue)
Their cheap exports: sinister pump and dump
Once upon a time nations understood the issues better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_telephone_switches
Cheap good for decades has meant companies have been able to depress wages to the point no one can really live without them. Removing the cheap goods without also giving up massive corporate profits would just mean most people collapse into poverty.
People make stuff like this abroad because wages are too high here to make a profit, not too low.
that means if employers want to pay workers fairly they need to pay a lot more than in other countries with a cheaper economy. but even the inflated wages are not growing fast enough to catch up with cost of living. so yeah wages are too high compared to the rest of the world but also too low relative to the gdp and growth rate and corporate profits.
They just want to ban even more things.