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I think a lot of people are missing the broader point here. This isn't simply “China cheats, therefore Chinese cars are cheap.”
Yes, China has heavily supported its auto and battery industries. But industrial policy isn't uniquely Chinese. The US has protected and subsidized its own auto industry too, including the interventions during the 2008–09 crisis and, much more recently, huge incentives for EV and battery manufacturing.
The bigger question is what automakers did with that protection and investment.
Detroit spent years concentrating on high-margin pickups and large SUVs while affordable cars gradually disappeared from their lineups. Then EVs arrived and many manufacturers tried to repeat essentially the same strategy: large, expensive vehicles with large batteries and high margins. That left a huge opening at the affordable end of the market.
Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers invested aggressively in batteries, electric platforms, vertical integration, manufacturing scale and smaller EVs. You don't have to agree with Chinese industrial policy to recognize that this created real technological and manufacturing capabilities. Reducing all of that to “cheating” doesn't explain the product gap.
The quality argument is also becoming increasingly difficult to make as a blanket statement. GM itself has spent decades working with SAIC in China, and SAIC-GM-Wuling has become a major part of GM's Chinese operations. Chinese manufacturers aren't simply producing primitive cheap cars anymore.
Brazil is particularly interesting because we can actually watch this competition happening in an open market. BYD's Dolphin Mini and Dolphin compete directly against cars from Chevrolet, Fiat, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Toyota and others. Consumers aren't being forced to buy them. They're comparing purchase price, equipment, performance, warranty and operating costs.
And now the traditional manufacturers themselves are reacting. GM is bringing products developed through its Chinese partnerships, Stellantis is using Leapmotor technology and products, and other legacy manufacturers are developing cheaper EVs because they know this segment cannot simply be abandoned.
So tariffs can keep Chinese-built EVs out of the US market, but they don't solve the underlying product problem. If Detroit wants to remain competitive globally, eventually it has to build affordable vehicles that people actually want to buy at competitive prices.
You can criticize Chinese subsidies without pretending that every competitive advantage Chinese manufacturers have today comes from “cheating.” Those are two very different arguments.

I don’t hold it. But I’ve been watching it very powerfully.
Their energy pivot is interesting. If the car industry only remains stable, I could see a rise to $20+ by 2029/2030.
What concerns me longer term is I believe autonomous vehicles will change individual car ownership. I can see around 30% of the population relying on services such as Uber for AV transportation by 2035-2040 in lieu of purchasing a vehicle. Right now Ford appears behind other legacy giants like VW, Mercedes, Toyota, Hyundai, and GM right now.
But Ford and GM’s development of sodium batteries is very exciting. Sodium is obviously more abundant and cheaper than lithium. Whichever one of them takes the lead will likely do well even if they fall behind in AV development.

This is the biggest thing, imo. They don't have the GM to really afford to wait out the shot clock of your garden leave, unless you're going to be locked in for a longer performance period.

That's actually very close to what makes me ask this question in the first place.
I'm from Brazil, and we're seeing another version of this experiment here. Chinese automakers are competing directly with the established brands, and they're putting a lot of pressure on the market through price, equipment and electrification.
But here's the part I find interesting: keeping those companies out of the US doesn't protect Detroit from that competition everywhere else.
GM, Ford and Stellantis have been trying to compete in Latin America for decades. Ford even stopped manufacturing vehicles in Brazil in 2021, long before the current wave of Chinese EV competition here. So the difficulties of American automakers in this region can't simply be blamed on Chinese companies.
Now they have another problem: BYD, GWM and other Chinese manufacturers are expanding in markets where American, European, Japanese and Korean brands already compete.
That's why I'm not convinced that keeping Chinese cars out necessarily makes Detroit stronger in the long run. It may protect the extremely profitable US market, but GM, Ford and Stellantis still have to face those manufacturers in Mexico, Brazil and the rest of the world.
And your Mexico example is especially interesting for that reason. If American automakers increasingly depend on protected or particularly profitable segments at home while losing ground in competitive segments abroad, protection may preserve their US business without actually solving the underlying competitiveness problem.
That's the distinction I'm trying to make: keeping Detroit profitable in America and making Detroit globally competitive aren't necessarily the same thing.

Yes. Where my family is from in Mexico the vast majority of people switched to Chinese cars in general because they are cheaper. GM, Ford, and Stellantis are basically extinct now except for their trucks used by the government or businesses. If you introduce Chinese cars in the US, you’d cause Detroit to go bankrupt…again

Asian (Han Chinese). I am making my son the youngest quant ever, preferably before 10. Pathway:
Before sex: find a high IQ Asian woman with no chronic diseases
Before birth: genetically modify the embryo, then use fengshui to find a good date to be born, and let my son to be born at a target hospital (Mayo Clinic/PUMCH/Gleneagles HK/London St Thomas)
3 mo: arithmetic (at least 4 digit multiplication in head)
6 mo: middle school math (algebra and so on)
1 y: highschool math (pre-calc)
2 y: calculus, stats, linear algebra
3 y: multivar calc, ODE, regression analysis, analysis. Qualify for AMC and AIME
4 y: real analysis, stochastic calc, PDE. Qualify for national MO training
5 y: IMO (Gold, silver, or disownment). Start to grind on codeforces, should reach Expert/GM within 1 year
6 y: IOI/IOL (side quest). Networking with recruiters and quants, win IQC and IMC Prosperity
7 y: quant discovery days, to be fast tracked for internships
8 y: intern at a large prop shop as QT, get return offer
9 y: QT with 6 figure bonus. Done
Throughout his life he is to be homeschooled and he won't have insta/tiktok/threads. Twitter is only for understanding market sentiment for quant trading. I will also use conditioning to educate him and impose corporal punishment if he underperforms.
How can I optimise the schedule so that he can become a quant ASAP? Any idea is welcome!
/s

Out of all companies GM is by far the worst at any innovations and any logical decisions.

Ford and GM are just going to become the new Lada and Aurus Motors. What? You haven't heard of these prestigious Soviet car brands? Well then, that's your loss. In Soviet Russia, car drives you!

That's a much more reasonable concern than simply saying “Chinese car = spy device.”
Connected vehicles absolutely create privacy and national-security questions. Cameras, GPS, cellular connectivity, driver-assistance systems and other sensors can generate enormous amounts of data, and I understand why the US would want strict rules governing where that data goes and who can remotely access the vehicle.
But I don't think this is inherently a Chinese-car problem. It's a connected-car problem.
The FTC has already taken action against GM and OnStar over allegations involving the collection and sale of precise geolocation and driving-behavior data from millions of American vehicles. So American cars can create serious data-privacy problems too.
The important distinction, in my view, is between regulating the data and simply banning the product because of its nationality. If a Chinese automaker wants to sell cars in a country, require local data storage where appropriate, cybersecurity audits, restrictions on remote access, transparency about what the cameras and sensors collect, and compliance with that country's privacy laws.
If a particular manufacturer can't comply with those requirements, then that's a concrete security problem. But “this car has cameras and LiDAR, therefore Beijing is mapping everything within 100 feet of it” requires evidence of what is actually being collected, transmitted and accessed.
Otherwise we'd have to ask the same privacy questions about every highly connected vehicle on the road, regardless of whether the badge says BYD, GM, Ford, Tesla or something else.

That's actually the historical comparison I had in mind when I wrote the post.
Japanese competition exposed a real weakness in Detroit's product strategy, especially when American consumers suddenly cared much more about fuel economy and smaller cars. Detroit eventually improved enormously in quality, but today the Big Three have largely retreated from several mainstream passenger-car segments where Toyota and Honda remained strong.
What makes the Chinese situation interesting to me is that the competitive pressure doesn't disappear just because those cars are kept out of the US. BYD, Geely and others can continue competing against GM, Ford and Stellantis in Brazil, Europe, Southeast Asia and other markets.
So Detroit could remain very profitable at home selling trucks and large SUVs while simultaneously losing competitiveness elsewhere in smaller EVs, affordable EVs and PHEVs.
That's the part that makes me wonder whether protection is buying Detroit time to catch up, or simply delaying the moment when it has to respond to the same kind of competitive pressure that Japanese manufacturers created decades ago.

Protectionism is a useful tool for infant industries that has been used since the industrial revolution to protect domestic production. The problem is GM, Ford, Chevy and the like are not infant industries, they don't give a shit about the US economy and it's national security beyond their own share prices and profit margins. 
As a result of this, any US protectionism is used purely to stifle competition, not to actually innovate or gain a foothold in new markets like it has in China. This is what happens when protectionism is done to prop up failing businesses. You get companies that are unable to innovate because resting on their laurels has become their bread and butter instead of competing.  

The domestic US auto industry is a pickup truck industry that makes cars as a money-losing hobby, thanks to mix of chicken tax (banning imported trucks) and the weird math of the CAFE standards (that makes cheap light pickups technically unfeasible), and the fact that everybody else can make cheaper, better cars. And the fact that rednecks love their F-150s and Dodge Rams, and will into debt to buy them.
Pickups are 50% of GM's profits, and 80% of Ford's. Large SUVs are 45% of GM's profits, and 15% of Ford's. Cars are under 5% of each brand's profits.
Basically, Ford's and GM's profits already sit in a protected bubble.
An influx of Chinese imported cars, assuming the truck/car balance doesn't shift, would seem to hurt the companies that actually sell cars: Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Tesla, BMW, VVW, Nissan.
The overlap I see with China's EVs is Ford's SUV division (45% of profits).
Ford and GM could innovate more in the mini-pickup category, where CAFE would no longer apply (small trucks would be allowed), but which are still protected by chicken tax.

As an American, I'd rather buy a cheap Chinese EV than a car/SUV, from GM or Ford. There's like 6 actual car models still available for sale in the US - it's all SUVs, trucks, and crossovers. There's like 2 minivan models left. The US vehicle market is so cringe.

lmao gotta love this dumb takes that are completely ignorant on a subject and end with "you're uneducated on the subject" hahaha
First and foremost, I don't have time to correct all the propaganda that you're repeating (everything that you have said is factually wrong), but I'm just going to tell you what's actually happening in the real world:
All the western car companies work in China, all of them, all of them are designing, building, exporting and selling in China, even for a couple of them China is their biggest and most important market, for most of them all of their progress in electrification comes from their China's ventures and developments
All of these western car makers have Chinese models, they're usually cheaper and more technologically advanced, they sell these cars not only in China, but all over the world, and lately they have been so good that they're the best sellers in the markets they're sold, and not only that, GM is starting to build their Chinese models now outside of China, starting this year they'll build the Aveo and the Groove in Mexico, because they're just better than their US models, and their best sellers by much
I could list every western company and how they're growing thanks to their partnerships and business in China, Toyota, VW, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Tesla, you name it.
All the propaganda you're parroting is designed to make it seem like China is destroying western car makers, when the reality is quite the opposite, most of them are able to move forward thanks to their Chinese links, but obviously most of them are dragged by their stupid constraints, overpaid executives, bloated portfolios, inefficient logistics, chronic lack of innovation and a long ass etcetera

I think that argument is hugely overblown. The lithium in batteries can be recovered to 90-95% through new recycling practices. Lithium is abundant in solid form in the ground and in liquid form from wells in California, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The oil companies are clinging to disinformation while the walls crumble around them. GM and Ford will lose their global markets and be left with only the USA. The rest of the world zooms past us. Pure electric vehicles are far more efficient and have about 70% fewer moving parts, meaning low maintenance.

There is another part of this discussion that makes the whole “Chinese auto industry vs American auto industry” framing much less clean than it sounds.
Tesla itself is a good example.
Tesla is American, but its battery supply chain has never been purely American. Panasonic was crucial to Tesla’s early scale, and Tesla later diversified its battery sourcing to companies including LG Energy Solution and CATL. So even the most successful American pure-EV manufacturer was built around a global, heavily Asian battery supply chain.
Brazil makes this even more interesting because we are watching several versions of this industrial integration happen at the same time.
BYD took over Ford’s former industrial complex in Camaçari and is progressively localizing production. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz’s former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial relationship in Brazil.
GM itself is now assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Ceará. The Spark EUV and Captiva EV come from GM’s Chinese industrial ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling and are being assembled locally. Toyota and BYD have a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture. Nissan has had a major industrial relationship with Dongfeng in China for decades.
At some point, asking whether a technology is simply “Chinese” or “Western” stops having an easy answer.
And Brazil gives us another interesting experiment: range.
If you look only at Brazilian homologation figures, some EVs can look surprisingly short-legged. Cars with batteries in the 50-60 kWh range can receive official Inmetro/PBEV range figures around 300 km.
But the Brazilian number is deliberately conservative. Inmetro does not simply publish the raw laboratory result. Adjustment factors are applied to produce a more conservative real-world reference.
The problem is that a lot of automotive discussion here then treats that number almost as the maximum distance the EV can realistically travel.
Owner experience often looks very different.
We now have EV owners driving these cars across Brazil, including mountainous areas and routes that climb from the coast onto the plateau. There are owners and independent tests substantially exceeding the official Inmetro range, and under favorable conditions some results get much closer to WLTP. Larger-battery EVs can exceed 400 km in real use even when their Brazilian homologated number looks much less impressive.
Obviously that does not mean WLTP is guaranteed real-world range. Drive at 120 km/h, climb continuously, add headwind, temperature changes or heavy HVAC use and consumption changes dramatically.
But this exposes an interesting asymmetry in how cars are discussed here.
When a small 1.0-liter ICE car achieves an exceptionally good km/l result, automotive enthusiasts and media are perfectly happy to show what the car can achieve under favorable real-world conditions.
With EVs, I often see the opposite. The conservative Inmetro figure gets repeated as the defining range of the vehicle, while owner consumption and independent road results receive much less attention.
A much better way to discuss EV range is to show the homologation numbers and then show actual energy consumption.
If an EV does 12, 15, 18 or 22 kWh/100 km, anyone can understand what a 40, 60 or 90 kWh battery means under different conditions. That's much more informative than saying “this is a 300 km car” because one homologation system printed 300 km on the label.
And all of this comes back to the original Detroit question.
Brazil is becoming a useful real-world laboratory because Chinese manufacturers are no longer simply shipping Chinese-built cars here. They are buying former Western factories, hiring Brazilian workers and progressively localizing production. At the same time, established American, European and Japanese manufacturers are increasingly using Chinese partners, platforms, batteries, engineering or complete vehicles.
Europe is moving in a similar direction as Chinese manufacturers localize more production there.
That gives us an opportunity to separate two things that are constantly mixed together in this discussion.
If Chinese manufacturers lose most of their price advantage when they manufacture in Brazil, Europe or eventually the US with local workers, then Chinese wages, subsidies and domestic production conditions were clearly doing much of the work.
But if a substantial advantage survives localization, then wages cannot be the entire explanation. Battery costs, vertical integration, EV-specific platforms, supplier organization, procurement, manufacturing scale, automation, development cycles and margins all have to enter the discussion.
That's why I would actually find an American-built Chinese EV much more interesting than another imported Chinese EV.
Require American production. American wages. American safety and environmental standards. Apply the same rules to everyone.
Then compare the products.
If an American-built BYD ends up costing roughly the same as an equivalent American-built GM or Ford, we learn something important about where the original Chinese cost advantage came from.
But if it can still compete aggressively on price, equipment and efficiency while paying American production costs, then tariffs didn't answer the underlying competitiveness question.
They only delayed the experiment.

If BYD comes in, it will really erode GM and Ford. Ford already is struggling pretty badly. GM is just treading water.
Any deal to bring Chinese cars into the US would need to require they are built/assembled in the US. Otherwise they'll absolutely destroy the competition. It's extremely dangerous to basically let China do all of the world's manufacturing

One thing I think this thread is showing is that the question is becoming bigger than simply "Chinese cars are cheap because Chinese workers are cheap."
Wages and subsidies matter. But Chinese manufacturers are increasingly moving production outside China, which gives us a chance to test that explanation in the real world.
Brazil is a particularly interesting example.
For decades, the market was dominated by established American, European, Japanese and Korean manufacturers with local factories, suppliers, dealerships and huge brand recognition. Chevrolet was enormously strong, and the Onix spent years as the country's best-selling car.
Now the structure is changing.
BYD took over Ford's former industrial complex in Camaçari and is progressively localizing production. GWM took over Mercedes-Benz's former factory in Iracemápolis. Renault and Geely are expanding their industrial partnership and investing together in Brazil.
And it gets stranger than simply "Chinese companies versus legacy automakers."
GM itself is assembling Chinese-developed Chevrolet EVs in Brazil. The Spark EUV and Captiva EV are being assembled in Ceará using products originating from GM's Chinese ecosystem with SAIC and Wuling.
Toyota has a 50/50 EV R&D joint venture with BYD. Nissan has a long industrial relationship with Dongfeng in China. Renault is partnering with Geely.
So the borders between "Chinese" and "traditional" manufacturers are becoming increasingly blurry.
Europe may become an even better test. Chinese manufacturers are actively looking for existing European factories rather than simply exporting everything from China. BYD says that, longer term, it expects to need three vehicle assembly plants and a battery plant in Europe.
That is why I don't think the wage argument settles this.
If BYD builds cars with Brazilian or European workers and most of its price advantage disappears, then labor costs, subsidies and producing in China were obviously doing a huge amount of the work.
But if a substantial advantage remains, we have to ask what else explains it: battery costs, vertical integration, platform design, automation, supplier organization, scale, development cycles, margins, or some combination of them.
And this is where I come back to Detroit.
The US doesn't have to allow unlimited Chinese imports to test this.
Require local production. Require American wages. Require US safety and environmental standards. Apply trade safeguards.
Then let the products compete.
Protection can give an industry time to adjust. But the important question is what Detroit does with that time.
Because Chinese manufacturers aren't standing still outside the US. They're localizing production, buying or reusing factories, forming partnerships with established manufacturers and becoming part of the same global supply chains that legacy automakers use.
Brazil is already experiencing that transition. Europe increasingly is too. Renault and Geely, for example, just announced another €319 million investment in their Brazilian partnership.
If an American-built Chinese EV eventually costs roughly the same as an American-built competitor, we'll have learned something important about the original Chinese cost advantage.
But if it can still compete aggressively on price and equipment while paying American production costs, then keeping the imported version out didn't solve Detroit's underlying competitiveness problem.
It just postponed the test.

Why would they diverge? That’s a false argument. They would fire the CEO for being an idiot. GM in other geographies mostly just makes the same vehicles unless they partner. Most of the partnerships are just to piggyback off the partner’s supply chain.

The reason you will NOT see GM be competitive with the Chinese brands in the short term is cost of manufacturing. The moment automatition with stuff like Optimus happens the advantage to having cars produced in China vanishes. But China knows this also which is why they are also building plants overseas anticpating this in other countries. Frankly the bigger question for countries is whether or not they decide to put up protectionist barriers to try and force local manufacturing once automatition makes production outside of China viable.
What I am more curious is if some of the larger economies like Brazel, Nigeria etc will start to have its own domestic car manufactureres come to the forfront due to automation rather then foreign car manufacturers whether they are from the US, Japan, China or Korea.