this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
63 points (89.9% liked)

Canada

9662 readers
919 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Canada relies on foreign auto executives for its auto industry. It already provides huge taxpayer subsidies per job. There is certainly a possible future where all of those foreign loyal companies side with US to destroy Canadian auto production/investment.

  1. China could help save Canadian auto industry by providing motors and batteries for Canadian made EVs. Chinese investment to make goods from Canadian resources in Canada is a path for scale that includes global export potential of autos and other industrial goods to whole globe including China.

  2. If it doesn't make economic sense to make our own tube socks, it doesn't make sense to make overly expensive cars, either. There is a stronger national security argument for apparel, that needs yearly replacements, than solar, batteries, and autos that last 20+ years. More so, when they are not dependent on continuous international fuel supply chains/geopolitics.

Pressure on foreign executives to support Canadian production includes access to Canadian market. The stability of status quo will appeal to most people. But the threat/plan B of cooperation with China is both a path to manufacturing and resource FDI paid by China instead of taxpayers, and better quality of life through better value goods.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I feel like they def have issues, Taiwan, Tibet, Uyghurs, human rights record, general authoritarianism.

They also seem to have a better climate change story than anyone in north america, and USA has totally shown itself to be a mercurial alley.

I don't see what advantage high tariffs have on something we want more of (EV's). If the standards suck, then I'm ok with bringing them up to standard and charging for that.

Making this an either or "they are or aren't our enemies" seems unnecessary, when we could buy their things and put pressure on them to do better on the things at the top.

[–] tleb@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They also seem to have a better climate change story than anyone in north america

They lied about covid numbers, so I don't really trust their pollution numbers either, but they make some kind of "one step forwards, two steps back" progress because they keep building new coal power plants.

and USA has totally shown itself to be a mercurial alley.

The US is absolutely a shithole now, I don't think we should look to them for EVs either.

I don't see what advantage high tariffs have on something we want more of (EV's). If the standards suck, then I'm ok with bringing them up to standard and charging for that. Making this an either or "they are or aren't our enemies" seems unnecessary, when we could buy their things and put pressure on them to do better on the things at the top.

So, Trump kind of ruined saying tariffs as a solution to anything, but they are a tool to apply pressure to trade partners. Huge tariffs on Chinese EVs isn't contributing to our cost of living crisis, because we can get EVs from elsewhere for decent prices, and because EVs are a super luxury item anyway.

There's no pressure applied if we buy their EVs at cost. We don't realistically have enough global political power to apply any political pressure either.

[–] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We don't realistically have enough global political power to apply any political pressure either.

Right, so why bother, it seems like we are just hurting canadians by having tariffs on evs

[–] tleb@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

Because we can apply economic pressure.

No one is being hurt by not being able to buy a cheap Chinese EV.