More here on the historic bipartisan US turn to protectionism, strikingly represented by the increased tariffs on Chinese green goods - notably on EV’s, but also on lithium-ion batteries, critical minerals, and solar cells: https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/great-green-wall/
While most mainstream commentators have seen Biden’s embrace of protectionism as an election ploy to counter Trump’s appeal to working class voters in Michigan, Arizona, and other swing states, on a more fundamental level it is not only about protecting the US from cheaper Chinese EV’s but about catching up to and overtaking China’s lead in the most advanced technologies. According to industry analysts Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay, “for the US, this is too big to get wrong. Firms are no longer competing for dominance on the level of vehicle technology, but for the entire ecosystem.” The US, they say, is trying to do "what every developing country that wants its industry to catch up has done: form joint ventures with leading foreign firms and throw the best engineers at the shop floor to absorb their technology. This is what the US has done with chips.” The CHIPS Act was designed to attract leading semi-conductor firms like TSMC and Samsung to move production to the United States, Together with the other major piece of Biden administration legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, it offer generous subsidies to industries on the cutting edge of advanced technology. But foreign and domestic investors have been worrying about cheaper Chinese imports outcompeting even heavily subsidized green industries. "The combination of new protective tariffs plus subsidies is meant to buy time for US-based firms to catch up in green technologies”, say Mackenzie and Sahay. They’re less than optimistic, however, about the US intention to build a green wall "stretching from mines to the factory floor” by pressuring other countries to reorient their supply chains away from China and to the US. “When it comes to green technologies”, they conclude, "the whole world lags dramatically behind China, which has revolutionized green industries. For now, there is nowhere else to go but China, and if the US were to insist other countries refrain from partnering with Chinese firms, it would only face isolation. "China will continue to have a dominant position in all parts of the EV and battery supply chain even if Chinese-branded EV's will be a difficult sell in the nation with the biggest ‘overcapacity' in crude oil”, they note ironically. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30409): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30409 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106185417/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
