In September 2009, Ford entered into an agreement with the Department of Energy and borrowed $5.9 billion

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-government-loan-department-energy-debt/5526413002/

They still hadn't paid it back in full in 2022.

like worker protections or unions

That's just patently false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-China_Federation_of_Trade_Unions

It is the largest trade union in the world with 302 million members in 1,713,000 primary trade union organizations.

You can‘t compare a bailout with an aggressive offensive. Especially since western car makers and many other manufacturers outsourced to China in the process. There are few to no parallels to be drawn here. A more accurate, albeit tasteless comparison would be the China opium wars. Because that‘s essentially what they‘re aiming to do: Making us addicts to their product. They‘re selling us the stuff at a loss because they know we‘ll come back for more and before we know it we‘re completely hooked. It‘s the exact same thing they‘re doing with Temu and TikTok.

You tankies really have a way with words.

I hate that villains set our country's laws.

Not nearly to the same amount.

Domestic US cars can't compete with foreign cars. We've known that forever. Or at least since the 90s.

Look no further than Kei trucks being illegal.

Our overengineered, over priced, unnecessarily complicated crap just can't compete with simple transport vehicles because they aren't made as a tool to serve a purpose. Everyone wants to make a Corolla into a Cadillac and sell it for Cadillac prices.

Sounds great, when do we start?

Like all things in China, this is owned by the government, making it pointless.

All of them that I know of. Which corporations do you see running unsustainable business models until they fold completely? Take your time, I'll wait.

The point is that they eventually change their tactics. In this case, they'll have to eventually increase their prices.

American cars have sucked compared to Asian cars since the 1970s. I don't understand why people are acting all surprised that this is true in respect to BYD. Sure in the past products designed in China were stereotyped as poor quality knock offs of western designed goods, but in the past decade Chinese engineers have increasingly proven themselves as perfectly capable of making solid, innovative designs that improve upon those of their competitors. I think it's kind of fucked up that everyone is so suddenly upset about China's role in the world economy since everyone was completely fine using them for cheap labor over the past several decades and are just mad that Chinese companies are beating them at high skill labor and technology. Chinese companies do have an "unfair advantage" given how much they are backed by the Chinese government but American companies receive all sorts of money from the government for all sorts of things as well.

Remember when China gave its biggest auto manufacturers $85 billion to keep them from going out of business when they made a bunch of bad financial decisions? Oh wait that was the US.

This is definitely worth mentioning but it's also good to note that it was a loan not a bailout and Ford has repaid it.

Documents filed by Ford show the company owed payments of $591 million in 2020, $591 million in 2021, and $289 million in 2022. As of this year, the loan has been completely repaid. But the compact cars it built with the original loan have since been discontinued.

Ford also received a $9.2B loan for EV battery factory projects from the government.

GM, maker of horribly shitty cars, and yeah, the Corvette, we know. We've seen it, GM.

"do you want to see the C9?"

....of course I would.

But the business model has to change in order to survive. The company cannot undercut forever, it actually needs to change in order to survive.
The business model of today is not sustainable. They may have a large warchest, they may be able to crush GM, but once they do, or the warchest runs out, the business model must change.

If you want to make the argument that their overall plan with the later change is sustainable, thats fine, but this current phase is not sustainable.

Americans have come to think of Chinese products as bad quality because of the American companies who engage them for cheaper labor. Walmart was known to order products made to a certain spec one year, then the next year demand the company increase production, but for the same amount paid as the previous year. The Chinese company, not wanting to lose the contract, obliges, but corners have to be cut. It should be called Americanesium, not Chineseum.

Derek Guy (Die, Workwear!) posted a thread a while back (I think about 6 months ago) about how the Chinese can and do make great quality products, pointing out high quality fabrics. Give them money to buy good raw materials, give them a decent wage, and they'll put out a good product. Honestly, they probably have a more fair work ethic than some American companies that just feed their CEOs massive salaries or are owned by private equity.

Whatever can be destroyed by the truth should be destroyed by the truth. (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/03/13/destroy/)

My only point of confusion is that a 20k loss on every car is insane. I'm guessing its a bit of BYD is subsidised somewhat, and everyone else is price gouging somewhat. No idea the ratio.

Also odd that other Chinese brands (really only tried MG) dont seem to have the same high quality, high pricing that suggests the same level of crazy subsidies.

Honestly, there is just so much fuckery going I just have no idea what is what.

Anytime we bail out a company, I think we should nationalize it. We should just buy it from them.

Nah man, that's not the purpose of unrestrained capitalism. The point is to get big enough that you can buy out all the competition, then make your product cheaper and cheaper once there's no one to compete against. It's a bit like an economical algae bloom.