#Europe in one #meme

#memes #politics #socialism

Just vote harder…

I wonder how future generations will analyze the current economic war. In the #automotive industry, the sequence over the last 20 years unfolded roughly like this:
• #China lured foreign industry leaders into its market. It presented this as a win-win: Western domestic markets were saturated, and China needed know-how to industrialize.
• Few resisted. Foreign investments flowed into mandatory joint ventures (the required structure until recent years).
• For about 20 years there was relative peace: foreign OEMs celebrated their brilliance, scooped up profits in an ever-expanding market, while the Chinese learned to build cars.
• China realized it could not beat foreign OEMs on combustion engines and transmissions, but EVs, autonomous driving, and digitalization opened a new battlefield.
• The West—#Europe in particular, and #Germany most of all—fell prey to the climate agenda. It committed economic suicide by banning combustion engines and driving up energy prices. (I am not saying China orchestrated this, but they surely welcomed the development.)
• Through clever economic policies and aggressive capital allocation (including reckless expropriation-like measures on their people), China funneled resources into the BEV industry, creating capacities to supply China, Europe, and the US—the only three markets that can absorb EVs at scale with potentially positive margins.
• The US under Biden first recognized this as an attack and imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs. Europe followed about a year later with additional tariffs of roughly 20–38%.
• China understood the message and saw the threat of significant underutilization of its industrial capacities.
• To defend those assets, China accelerated its ICE exit with penalties and subsidies favoring domestic BEV OEMs. This move risks rendering many foreign assets stranded.
This is where we stand now. In hindsight, transferring billions in capital to a market without strong property rights protection was unwise. China invited #VW and others in, then pulled the rug out from under them. European OEMs especially have few good options left. The best may be to abandon/reverse the 2035 ICE ban and relocate as many stranded ICE production lines out of China as possible. Impairments will still be massive, but China also faces limited great options: to avoid writing off its own assets, it must maximize domestic utilization and export surplus to markets like #Brazil—with limited purchasing power to absorb them.

#economy #cars #tradewar

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try to by low BS at least.