this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
359 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
82250 readers
3898 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We've had of ecocomic warfare already. It was just fine for US companies to hollow out domestic manufacturing so China could build the manufacturing infrastructure that could have been built in the US.
But now that a Chinese company is building things that undercut a US company, you want protections for US billionaires that weren't afforded to US workers.
American companies only make up a small portion of the US auto industry.
Are you ignoring the whole subsidies thing on purpose? This is not BYD attacking Tesla. This is the Chinese government attacking western industries.
USA subsidized Detroit $80B since 2008, and that's ignoring state graft for building assembly plants. What the fuck did they do with that money, attack Eastern industries?
Well, it was $79.7B to be exact. And what the US government did with that was not cut checks, but rather, purchased stock in the companies.
When it sold the stock it bought from manufacturers, it sold for around $70B. When they sold the approximately $2.4B invested into Ally (an auto financing firm), it sold for $17.2B.
So the money spent in 2008 actually made a profit. It was not distributed to the manufacturers or finance companies at all. Just used to shore up their value to prevent them from going out of business – and more importantly, probably, make sure investors didn't lose money, or at least not too much.
oh, touche! but that was only after 2008, and not including previous bailouts to Ford. Then, every state, everywhere is paying to either get or keep assembly plants but that does not factor into your selective math.
When you take into account inflation and the overall market gains over that time, they absolutely did not make their money back.
When you take into account that the original assertion was tht eighty billion was given to the auto manufacturers, I don't think my comment deserves the reaction it got, not a reply like yours.
Would you rather they ended up with zero dollars?
Yes.
The only terms under which I could potential accept tax money being used to save a company from a collapse leading to massive layoffs, is if the resulting company is also made entirely employee owned.
Well, that's not how it would happen and you know it.
This is BYD selling cars for less than the billionaires you care about want to.
Nothing more.
If an American company badge engineered these cars and sold them in the US at US prices, you would be fine with it just like you're fine with the economic warfare against the poor that US manufacturers and China have been allies in for decades.
If the Chinese government is losing money on each car they export, soon China will be bankrupt. It only makes sense to buy more China cars at cheap rates and bankrupt their country.
Also, there is no proof of subsidy, it's just made up Western cope.
The US government has been propping up Detroit for over 20 years with over $100B in subsidies and tax relief, plus every state government grafts to get a new assembly plant.
BMW is not in South Carolina for the quality of workers.