– Elon Musk Makes Trump’s Case for Tariffs: No Level Playing Field with China:
In a surprising turn of events, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken to social media to make a case for President Trumps recently proposed tariffs.
President Trump published a tweet yesterday stating that China was asked to develop a yearly plan for the One Billion Dollar reduction in their trade deficit with the United States. President Trump was well received during his visit to China earlier this year and notes this by saying that U.S. relations with China are very good and that he looked forward to seeing what ideas they came up with. But, President Trump urged that the United States must “act soon” to increase tariffs.
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Musk gave an example of this noting that a car produced in the United States and imported into China pays a 25 percent import tax but that China only pays a 2.5 percent import tax when sending their cars to the U.S.
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Also, no US auto company is allowed to own even 50% of their own factory in China, but there are five 100% China-owned EV auto companies in the US
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H/t reader kevin a.
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Does anyone remember the case of the designer shirt manufacturer who set up in China to cut costs, but they could only own 50% of their factory and only operate day shifts?
After a few months the market was flooded with cheap copies of the shirts, so the company bought some for forensic examination.
The result was that the forgeries were actually being produced at the same factory at night, using same labour force and the company could do nothing about it.