Shaun Rein on trade with China: "I'm hopeful that Trump is going to realize the pragmatism"

I also think that Trump is pragmatic and he's going to see U.S.-China trade eventually is good for the American population.  If you look at it, inflation is a major problem in the United States right now.  Partially it's because what I consider to be an irresponsibly loose monetary policy by the Fed in the last five years during the Covid era where we've added - almost doubled - almost $18 trillion to the American deficit.  Part of it is because of high energy prices from Russia because of the Russia-Ukraine war.  But a large part of it is tariffs.  It's no surprise that there's major inflation in the United States when there's tariffs on $350 billion of Chinese-made goods.

I'm hopeful that Trump is going to realize the pragmatism.  If you look at it, in the United States the average SUV costs $43,000.  The average sedan costs $38,000.  BYD, a Chinese NEV maker, just announced that their $9,000 model.  It's going to have full autonomous driving as good, if not better than Tesla.  Wouldn't it be great for the everyday American is they could buy a $9,000 car from BYD and that would help solve the massive inflation problem that's hitting the United States.

[...]

I'm hopeful that under Trump that an accommodation can be made, that a trade deal can be made.  I'm not sure it's going to happen in year one, I'm not sure it's going to happen in year two or even in year three, but Trump has a pathological need to say that he got a trade deal and he beat the Chinese.  And I think he's going to say that to the American population even if it's not really a defeat of China, but it's more of a win-win deal.

~ Shaun Rein, "Why China Brushes Off Trump's Tariffs," Thinkers Forum, 10:30 mark, March 1, 2025

BYD Seagull EV

Jeffrey Sachs on China's success in electric vehicles

Q: One of the underlying themes or conclusions that I'm reading from the various media reports criticizing the health of the Chinese economy it that the China model, which worked for the past few decades, is not working anymore.  And the Chinese leadership, by sticking to that model, is stifling the Chinese economy.  What exactly are they trying to get at?  And what exactly is the Chinese model that they believe is not working anymore?

A: I think if I could interpret it, maybe the claim is that there's too much government intervention in the economy or China's stifling entrepreneurship.  Again, I think that this is Western rhetoric, not reality.  Let me take a very pertinent and quantitatively important example.  China is now the world's leader in electric vehicles.  During the past 10 years, there were around 400 electric vehicle companies in China.  They were competing like crazy.  Of course, there's now kind of a shaking-out process where a few companies are becoming dominant.  But the competition and the entrepreneurship has been absolutely intense.  And the result is that China is taking the leadership in worldwide sales of electric vehicles.  Also, China's domestic market now is remarkable in that more than 40 percent, I believe, of new car sales, are electric vehicles.  And when I recently visited Beijing, you see them everywhere with the green license plates and you see a tremendous change in a short period of time.

Since this is the direction that the entire world is moving towards because of the need for zero-emission vehicles, China's in a very strong position.  What is happening?  The U.S. is putting on tariffs.  Europe is putting on tariffs.  Is that a sign of failure of China?  No, quite the contrary, it's a sign of remarkable success.

~ Jeffrey Sachs, "Jeffrey Sachs on 'China collapse' theory," CGTN, December 8, 2024

Phil Butler on how lithium is tied to the Russia-Ukraine War

The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle.  Lithium.

Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia.  The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia.  These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally.  If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point.

What’s most significant about this is that the EU, and Germany in particular, desperately need the rare mineral to manufacture green energy technologies such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, and a wide variety of electronic devices.

~ Phil Butler, "The EU Is Willing to Go To War Over Lithium?," LewRockwell.com, January 3, 2023

WSJ on how Tesla alums are cleaning up on green energy

Governments everywhere are trying to build domestic clean-energy industries, from electric cars to solar panels.  No company has had more recent success doing that than Tesla, and no executives are in greater demand than the auto maker’s alumni. 

More than 30 companies led or launched by former Tesla employees have raised more than $26 billion in the past decade, most in the past few years, a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from PitchBook shows.  Much of that money went to a handful of companies in the electric-car and battery supply chain: luxury electric-vehicle company Lucid Group, European battery upstart Northvolt and battery-recycling firm Redwood Materials. 

Many of these companies focus on domestic manufacturing, as Tesla has for more than a decade.  They are well-positioned to take advantage of last year’s U.S. climate law and Europe’s response to it.  A key goal for both is to whittle away at China’s dominance in critical clean-energy industries. 

~ The Wall Street Journal, "Tesla Alums Win Big in Green Energy Bonanza: Executives who survived EV maker’s dark days have raised billions from investors," by Ed Ballard and Amrith Ramkumar, August 15, 2023

Statista on lithium-ion battery imports to the U.S.

The United States imports hundreds of millions of lithium-ion batteries each year, with the volume ever increasing. According to data extracted from the UN Comtrade Database, China accounted for the vast majority of U.S. battery imports last year, with a total trade value of $9.3 billion. South Korea and Japan are also popular sources with batteries worth $1.3 and $1.0 billion imported to the U.S. in 2022. The total import value of lithium-ion batteries nearly tripled since 2020, reaching $13.9 billion last year.

~ Felix Richter, "Powered by China," Statista, March 10, 2023

Eric Savitz on the costs of electric vehicles

As the electric-vehicle market grows, cracks are emerging in the sector’s business model.  Stellantis (STLA) CEO Carlos Tavares noted that it costs legacy car makers about 40% more, on average, to build an EV than a comparable gas-powered car.  He says auto makers are in the untenable position of either passing along those costs, resulting in high-price vehicles that won’t generate a mass market, or eating the additional outlays and hurting profitability.  He says that companies must find ways to absorb the extra costs while protecting margins and not pricing at levels unaffordable to the middle-class car buyer.  And they have to do that, he adds, while navigating through sharp swings in battery-related commodity prices.

~ Eric J. Savitz, "CES Returns With a Bang. The Optimism? Not So Much.," Barron's, January 7, 2022