Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule

https://fuelarc.com/cars/only-tesla-exempt-from-new-auto-tariffs-thanks-to-85-domestic-content-rule/

by abduhl • 1 year ago

645 538 1 year ago

rectang4• 1 year ago

I have zero faith in "free market" ideologues, because what we actually get when they gain power is just favoritism for "free market" ideologues.

aswanson• 1 year ago

Same. This era has exposed them as the shameless hypocrites they are.

resters• 1 year ago

There is not and has never been any trace of free speech or free market "ideology" from Trump. Perhaps as a talking point but never in any policy or action. Trump is the anti-libertarian, severely authoritarian and moving things toward a centrally planned economy!

kristopolous2• 1 year ago

It was always about power accumulation.

Integrity, honesty, and principles is literally what they mean by the word "woke" when they harass people for being it.

intermerda• 1 year ago

You can extend the "free market ideologues" to include more groups such as those who were very concerned about free speech for exactly four years from 2021-2024. Same people were concerned about politicization of justice department, but only when certain Presidents are in office. Same goes for "respect for constitution". "Family values" was abandoned quite a while ago.

Wilhoit’s Law has never been truer.

sidibe• 1 year ago

Can't forget being "for the rule of law".

torben-friis• 1 year ago

Freedom of religion as well, and the age and mental acuity of the president. And handling of secret information. And being involved in foreign conflicts.

eli_gottlieb• 1 year ago

As a 20th century political theorist once said, "the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy." If you hear someone talking high-minded rhetoric and idealism but they won't make a friend or an enemy over it, they don't believe it.

bunderbunder3• 1 year ago

I have come to believe that many people's political attitudes can be boiled down to a single uniting element: an overwhelming fear that other people might do to them the kinds of things that they would absolutely do to other people if given half a chance.

leereeves4• 1 year ago

Funny thing about the fictional "Wilhoit’s Law". It's not a law of science. It's nothing but an Internet snipe from a blog post by a music composer. It wasn't even written while the political scientist Frank Wilhoit was alive.

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...

It's just half of a truism: people apply different standards to "their side". As true of the left wing as the right.

mindslight8• 1 year ago

Don't forget Kenneth Walker's second amendment rights. You could understand some failing to live up to their values if they were minor issues, but it's like all of their core issues. About the only thing that seems consistent is wanting to harm their fellow citizens that they perceive as different.

istjohn• 1 year ago

Wilhoit's Law:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...

throw109203• 1 year ago

You can extend the "free market ideologues" to include more groups such as those who were very concerned about free speech for exactly four years from 2021-2024.

What groups? What people? Are they on HN? Are you responding to them?

This is just sneering. You're not responding to a particular argument or person - you're you're just creating a fictional (in that they don't exist as a coherent, self-identified group, and are only a group in your own mind based solely off of these attributes) until group of people with some alleged hypocrisy and using them to dog-whistle indirectly attack a group of people based on some political ideology that you don't like (and which is largely irrelevant to the alleged hypocrisy that you're inventing). This is some of the most anti-intellectual drivel possible and the diametric opposite of what belongs on HN.

legitster• 1 year ago

Trump was never actually a "free market" idealogue. And the GOP officially dropped any mentions of it from their party platform a few years ago.

If anything, they are doing exactly what they promised. They were against globalism and elites and international agreements and governance and they are being true to their words.

fullshark2• 1 year ago

The “libertarians” who are in bed with Trump however…

ryandrake2• 1 year ago

If I was forced to say one good thing about the guy, it's that he is quickly and faithfully delivering on his campaign promises, moreso than any other president that ever served in my lifetime. He's blasting right through the Project 2025 checklist and doing exactly what he said he'd do. Those campaign promises are destructive, thoughtless, cruel, and self-serving, but he said he'd do them, was elected, and then subsequently did them. So, I'll give him that.

tchock23• 1 year ago

Like launching a private $500k membership club for elites:

https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/donald-trump-jr-m...

True to their word!

jayd16• 1 year ago

Against elites but appoints billionaire cronies. Make it make sense.

watwut2• 1 year ago

They are not against elites. They are elites vaging war on their ennemies who are not elites.

nostromo2• 1 year ago

Trump is in no way a free market ideologue and has made that very clear. Or are you talking about Elon?

rectang4• 1 year ago

The wider Trump administration, and Musk in particular for his DOGE work which has included firing regulatory enforcers.

vkou4• 1 year ago

I'd categorize Elon as more of a free speech ideologue who bans any speech that makes him uncomfortable.

_2d304• 1 year ago

Trump has literally been prattling about his love of tariffs for decades and was explicit about his plans to heavily leverage tariffs during his campaign..

I think you might just want an excuse to believe what you already believe

fullshark2• 1 year ago

I just think a lot of democrats really haven't paid attention to how Trump has morphed the Republican party and the realignment that has been going on. They still think of a Republican as George w. Bush / John McCain / Mitt Romney even though they have all been effectively excommunicated from the party. I think part of it was hope was Trump was a momentary blip but that's obviously no longer the case.

tim3334• 1 year ago

It's hard to label Trump a free market ideologue. He's more Mr tarrif man.

If you want free markets look more to Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore (#1 on the "Index of Economic Freedom").

One of the virtues of proper free markets is the markets largely figure which companies win in a relatively non corrupt way, rather than politicians leaning on the scales.

digianarchist2• 1 year ago

The Singaporean government's hand in it's own economy is larger than a lot of self-professed communist states - Temasek Holdings, Mediacorp, DBS Bank, Singapore Airlines etc etc.

loeg3• 1 year ago

Trump isn't a free market ideologue and never has been. I'm not sure what you expected. He didn't conceal his viewpoints; if you are surprised, I think you weren't paying much attention.

grugagag• 1 year ago

I don’t know about markets but he claimed to be a free speech ideologue. But then he bought twitter and proved otherwise.

afavour2• 1 year ago

The Republican Party on the other hand is very much in favor of the free market… or was. Many long time Republicans turned on a dime and deserve to be called out on it.

__MatrixMan__3• 1 year ago

Such has been the US agenda in the developing world since the 70's. It's sort of odd to see them do it to themselves though. It's as if they became confused and started believing their own cover story.

nosefurhairdo2• 1 year ago

Tariffs are antithetical to free markets.

0xDEAFBEAD3• 1 year ago

Arguably, a similar problem exists for "big government" ideologues, except more severe.

https://fee.org/articles/10-crazy-examples-of-unrelated-wast...

afiori2• 1 year ago

Every voice on that (except the last one as it is too vague) is popular with the relevant electorate. I dislike how a bunch of random unrelated shit is stuffed together into a single bill but that is because the US is a vetocracy.

wesselbindt• 1 year ago

Ideology is their sales pitch, it's for you and me to consume. It has nothing whatsoever to do with their goals and intentions. This has been true of Thatcher and her deeply protectionist policies all the way up to today with Trump and his tariffs. We're not choosing between regulations and no regulations, we're choosing between regulations that benefit the working class and regulations that benefit the owning class. (Although I suppose it could be argued that in the US you choose between regulations that benefit the owning class and regulations that benefit the owning class more)

throw109203• 1 year ago

What "free market" ideologues are you talking about? Seems like you're just intentionally making the hasty generalization fallacy (same one that leads to racism) to attack a group that you don't like for ideological or emotional reasons, especially because Trump was never a free market idealogue, and the tariffs are evidence of that.

joshdavham• 1 year ago

This is crony capitalism.

throwaway484762• 1 year ago

It is but it always has been. I would also appreciate if the big 3 American car companies had 85% American content.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

would also appreciate if the big 3 American car companies had 85% American content

Versus 80%? Those five percentage points are worth a double-digit tariff.

qwerpy2• 1 year ago

What should we call it when the other side does things in the opposite direction? https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legisl...

Punitive legislation? Lawfare? Crony capitalism but for the other companies?

queenkjuul4• 1 year ago

Do you have evidence Ford and GM bribed their way to getting that law passed

jfyi• 1 year ago

It blatantly is, and the responses to you pointing that out are insane.

Deflection, whataboutism, sealioning with a side of demanding sources for what is essentially the use of a greater than sign.

mystraline• 1 year ago

Used cars are ALSO exempt.

And, all used goods bought at secondhand stores are tariff-exempt as well. And so is FB marketplace, Craigslist, and others.

My protest is meager, but effective for us - we just will buy used and use 'Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle' where we can. EnEnough of us doing that will slow and hamper the economy (read: rich peoples' money).

userbinator4• 1 year ago

That suggests an ecosystem may appear around making new goods "used" enough to meet some legal definition.

coaksford• 1 year ago

I think the meaning was not "You can import used cars without tariffs", but "If you buy used cars already in the country, you don't pay the new tariff, so just don't buy new cars."

rtkwe• 1 year ago

If you're importing it it doesn't matter it's condition other than it's worth less so the tariff would be less. What they mean is if you buy goods that are already here there's no tariff, but they will also go up in price too as the new item goes up.

seanmcdirmid5• 1 year ago

Isn't that actually what they've been doing in Cuba since the revolution? I'm sure those old cars should have been retired by now and replaced with cheap Chinese imports, but for a few decades, they were refurbishing American-made cars continuously.

Aurornis4• 1 year ago

The parent comment was a confusing statement. They were saying that buying a used car or goods from a second-hand store does not go through the tariff process because the produce is already here.

There was a loophole in the past where you could take delivery of a car in a foreign country, drive it for a while, and then go through the process of importing it as if you were moving back to the United States. I don't know if the new tariffs honor that loophole or not.

uxhacker• 1 year ago

So get the car delivered in Europe. Go on a driving holiday and then ship to the USA.

toast02• 1 year ago

Are you saying if I import a used car, I don't have to pay tariffs? Factory delivery programs would become a lot more popular.

Or are you just saying that if I buy a car that's already in the US and has already had any import tariffs due at time of import paid, I won't have to pay them again? That's a lot less interesting.

Aloisius4• 1 year ago

Yes. Volvo has had a program for decades where they fly you to Sweden where drive a vehicle around long enough for it to be "used", buy it then they ship it over to the US to avoid US new car import tariffs.

TimTheTinker• 1 year ago

Yes - my question exactly.

I was strongly considering importing a 25-year-old kei truck from Japan before the tariffs were announced.

jmyeet• 1 year ago

Used cars respond to market forces too.

If new cars become much more expensive, used cars will become much more expensive. This isn't even a theoretical idea. The exact thing happend in 2020-2021 when you couldn't buy a new car.

This is what many don't understand about tariffs in general: you put tariffs on foreign goods and anything exempt will simply raise their prices to match.

Spooky23• 1 year ago

Now they need a special insurance subsidy to offset the extra costs for losses.

readthenotes1• 1 year ago

Most positive take:

Someone asked what is the car model with the most American parts right now? We will make everyone meet that benchmark or better.

Animats3• 1 year ago

The CEO of Ford is very critical of Trump.

But Ford can probably get the USA content for gas-powered Mustangs up from 80% to 85%. The electric version is made in Mexico, but once Ford's Blue Oval City plant in Tennessee comes up in 2027, that will move to the US.

Of course, who knows where Trump will be by then.

bix63• 1 year ago

How long do you think that 5% will take them?

Animats3• 1 year ago

I have no idea, but I'll bet there are people in Dearborn, Michigan working on that right now.

plaurens• 1 year ago

Curious about Rivian…

cjbenedikt• 1 year ago

Won't safe his Chinese sales though

wahern• 1 year ago

Tesla builds Model 3s and Ys in their Shanghai factory using almost entirely domestically sourced components, and even exports a fair number from there. But perhaps the trade war will reduce demand.

iamtheworstdev3• 1 year ago

BYD is eating their lunch.

Brian_K_White5• 1 year ago

I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull to make him squeal like a pig, elected office or no.

I can only assume they're all actually largely ok with it.

I would not have imagined that they just never thought about things like that in general and now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of situation has happened. I have no previously considered reactions or plans for most things and life just smacks me in the face like I've been walking with my eyes closed, but I'm a hapless midwit.

crazygringo2• 1 year ago

Why aren't you assuming the opposite -- that these mythical levers don't actually exist?

noduerme2• 1 year ago

Most people feel like hapless midwits, and we know that most of us actually are. Yet we have this tendency to assume, for some weird reason, that people in important positions have their shit together more than we do. Only in emergencies and times of crisis do we see that no one has their shit together. When we see that, we want to blame it on conspiracy or some sort of 5-dimensional chess being played, because it goes against the safe notion that someone, somewhere, is steering the boat (even if we don't like where they're taking us). But the safer bet is that no one is steering, and no one actually can steer, and that it's incompetence all the way to to the top.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v25• 1 year ago

Yes, accidental, hapless stumbling onto major windfall on multiple occasions clearly is an indication of nothing more than pure, unadulterated, McDuck level of luck and not, I repeat, not indication of anything but simple return of a favor.

Brian_K_White5• 1 year ago

I don't mean to imply that I believe they are excellent people who will take care of us all, nor that there is any illuminati cabal like that other ludicrous comment.

I only mean to imply they are people who know how to get what they want, and are willing to do more or less anything.

There is a new story that Amazon is going to overtly display the tarrif on every price. That is like 1% of the kind of thing I'm thinking of.

SimianSci• 1 year ago

There seems to be a (largely American) misconception that people in positions of power are there because they earned such a position through being capable and competent.

Most people in power lack critical thinking skills, having earned their position primarily due to the circumstances of their birth and the people they know.

It is incredibly rare for someone who is competent enough to weild such levers of power to be granted access to them.

_2d304• 1 year ago

I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull to make him squeal like a pig, elected office or no.

The "US is an oligarchy, the corporations are in control" was always a false narrative.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v25• 1 year ago

Huh? If anything, it now should be clearer than ever that it has been for a long time. The only difference is that the oligarch that happens to be benefiting from it is in the public spotlight, associated with and part of the current administration, and at the same time main guy for several publicly owned companies.

If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not because they have no power to wield.

Good grief. There are times when I read some posts and it is like reading youtube comments under madtv skit 'apple i-rack' asking what it means... how do you not know what it means?

woah• 1 year ago

You're so wedded to your overly simplistic and conspiratorial worldview that everything is a secret plan by "the elites", that now you've had to invent a new conspiracy about how they all had a secret plan to lose themselves billions of dollars.

Sometimes a stupid guy gets elected by low-information voters, and enacts stupid policies that crash the economy. There isn't any secret illuminati meeting where they can tell him to stop.

Brian_K_White5• 1 year ago

I think you shouldn't try to use the word stupid given this example of your acuity.

TylerE2• 1 year ago

Dude, Trump and Elon are literally the Elite. Take your blinders off.

vharuck• 1 year ago

now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of situation has happened

They know what they would do, if this were under any other president: make phone calls, write editorials in major newspapers, start donating to future political rivals.

But this is Trump. He's surrounded by equally corrupt lackeys, and immediately fires anyone showing a shred of morality. The entire federal government does his bidding. He sues news media until they settle with him for millions, signs executive orders banning specific law firms from working with the federal government until they offer him millions in legal services, cuts off money from states that dare defy his will, and demands universities let the federal government investigate all staff in Middle East studies. Any business leader who stands up to him will be crushed. The best way to keep making money is to get on his good side, like Elon.

This is literally tyranny. Thank goodness there are plenty of judges willing to stand against the obviously illegal acts.

lotsofpulp• 1 year ago

What about the voters that vote out members of Congress because they go against Trump?

Brian_K_White5• 1 year ago

He's chaotic and unpredictable by normal standards, but that seems irrelevant to me.

I don't mean the damage isn't consequential. What I mean is he has very obvious and simple motivations and reactions. For the purposes of somehow dealing with him, it's not all that important that "he might do anything". It seems obvious that anyone who wants to deal with him should take that as given and move right past worrying about what he might do and assume that he will, for sure, do anything. But he will do so for completely basic reasons and in response to completely basic stimuli.

A bullfighter completely antagonizes the bull into a frothing unthinking frenzy, on purpose, and owns the bull.

The bull is actually totally predictable and manipulable, and not because the bull can be reasoned with.

Musk and some few on the right are the only ones not being complete idiots about handling him. They are getting everything they want from operating him.

The left probably can't play that same trick since they probably can't figure out ways to tell him he's great and get leftie things out of him. Or forget left & right just business where they're all assholes, everyone can't play the same suck-up game. Musk is apparently doing suck-up without looking like a weak begger suck-up. Or he's allowing himself to look like just enough of a beta to keep Trump from feeling threatened, yet, like how his maga hat isn't red. Flouting the uniform, yet, not. It's probably a fine line there. And there is only room for a few magic pretend-beta slots. Trump will simply not give good behavior to very many people no matter what they say, so if all 100 people in his circle were all the perfect suck-up, still only a couple will get what they want and the rest get pissed on.

So anyone that didn't happen to win that lottery (or just weren't as good as Musk at that game) will have to go the other way which is poking him with a stick.

But they aren't. In the left vs right arena the left just continues to try to use rational arguments and appeals to reason on people who don't give a shit about that. Just who are the dummies when it comes down to that?

Though I wasn't originally intending to talk left or right but just about chaos impacting business and these supposed hard nosed rutheless powerful captains of the world just letting it happen. They only care about one thing, and he's burning that one thing by the billions, and they are...what? Nothing?

So when I say "I can only assume they are somehow ok with it" I mean there must be things I don't know. Like ultimately this doesn't really hurt Bezos and the like all that much. Like they make money on whatever happens somehow. Or they think longer term and they are ready to absolutely gorge themselves on some kind of bounce back in a couple years because they are somehow positioned exactly right. Like how at a smaller scale how Equifax ultimately made a shit ton of new money as a result of having their web site hacked. Maybe all the Bezos's of the country are just arms dealers who make out no matter what.

I don't know. Perhaps everyone's right and they are all tools no better equipped than myself. But I just think that's a kind of stupid take. Some probably are, and some surely are not. I am quite sure I can not solve Apple's Trump problem better than Tim. I simply wonder, what the heck are they doing? It looks from here on the ground like they aren't doing anything. But I can only assume that just means I can't see anything that matter from here, and don't know how to read what I can see.

tokioyoyo• 1 year ago

Mentioned it a few times in the past, but this is just a big freak out and America having a hard time squaring the fact that by almost all meaningful metrics, their "enemy" has taken the lead. Nobody really knows how to fix it, everyone at the top knows they can't really do much about it, but they have to show "power", because that's all they have left. Nobody wants to "lose" in public's eyes, but that's just how some of the world is starting to think.

Honestly, I feel kinda conflicted. From one point, I always looked up to the American values, and way of life. But it's becoming increasingly misaligned with my own values and the things I find important in life.

gehwartzen• 1 year ago

How is the unit for domestic component content defined? Is a screw a component in the same way a windshield is? Is it by weight? By cost?

leptons• 1 year ago

Yes.

alwa• 1 year ago

It appears that the American Automobile Labeling Act measures domestic content on a value basis (that is, the amount the manufacturer pays the supplier for it):

https://www.nhtsa.gov/part-583-american-automobile-labeling-...

mmooss11• 1 year ago

Does that include tariffs?

bix63• 1 year ago

It’s funny cybertruck doesn’t make the cut, unfortunately nobody buys those so it’s irrelevant.

marcusb4• 1 year ago

I see them quite frequently where I live, usually covered in a vinyl wrap advertising some local business or other.

unsnap_biceps• 1 year ago

There appears to be someone in my local city that is using their cybertruck as a billboard. They drive around during rush hours and every week or so they switch the wrap to a different company. I wonder if it's being widely done elsewhere.

assimpleaspossi• 1 year ago

In St Louis, I see them everywhere, too. Not as advertising but just driving around town.

There's a mall that closed and, for a while, there were hundreds parked in that lot waiting to be sold (and they were).

bix63• 1 year ago

I saw a DOGE wrapped one the other day. Thought it was DOGE at first then realized it was actually just DOGE (crypto)

socalgal2• 1 year ago

I don't know if it's the same people but many of the comments here seem the opposite of the comments on EUs rules where people say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are covered".

If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it.

I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly

tedunangst• 1 year ago

It's different when I like the rules.

qwerpy2• 1 year ago

Washington state is going in the other direction: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legisl...

I'm sure the targeted aspect of that one is applauded by the same side that is unhappy about this tariff.

At least in the tariff case, it's an objective numerical target and probably even achievable by other manufacturers. Ford is only 5% away from the target for some of its models.

KerrAvon• 1 year ago

If the rule is 85% domestic than any company can do it.

To be making this claim, you must be an vehicle supply chain expert, so can you tell the rest of us which parts can be domestically sourced in the US and which can't?

Also, why is the Model S is stuck at 80%?

gkoberger• 1 year ago

Why 85% and not 80%? It’s an arbitrary cutoff that happens to benefit Elon.

Ford will quickly get to 85%, but you can’t deny this is yet again a move that is touted as “pro-America” yet somehow mainly benefits Musk (or Trump or someone in their orbit).

nostromo2• 1 year ago

Three Tesla models meet the 85% threshold and three do not.

If Tesla was writing these rules, surely they'd have chosen the 80% threshold instead.

I doubt they see the Ford Mustang as being in their same target market, and wouldn't be a reason to increase the standard.

natch2• 1 year ago

Somehow benefits someone who builds stuff in America. What a travesty.

makeitdouble2• 1 year ago

When you say EU rules, I guess it's the GDPR part on having the user data stay in the EU?

Otherwise I don't see any other rule that would ask the foreign company to move most of it's workforce and production capacity.

jdminhbg• 1 year ago

No, OP is referring to the fact that the companies that are big enough to be subject to the EU DSA's rules about platforms are all American. So any fines handed down for violations of the DSA are exclusively to American big tech firms. The rejoinder is that the rules apply to everyone, it just happens that the companies that are subject are American.

rco87865• 1 year ago

Just a coincidence that the only company that currently fits the criteria is Tesla then.

Everyone else can start rearranging their supply chains and building new factories to comply. Easy peasy right? Be up and running in a few weeks, at most, right?

ajmurmann• 1 year ago

With the assumption of course that tariffs won't change before new factories even have come online in a less optimal place. I'd be hard pressed to invest huge amounts of money like that when we are on tariff policy change 80-something in 100 days while I also hearing about imminent "trade deals".

seanmcdirmid5• 1 year ago

I think Honda already has like 75% American parts in the cars they produce in Indiana. It was actually listed on the Acura ILX I bought from them awhile back.

lenkite4• 1 year ago

Curious - If this exact act had been done under the Obama or Biden administrations, would you still hold the same opinion ? Tesla was still a love child at that time.

Many companies like Honda are now moving part of domestic production to the US.

Sparyjerry2• 1 year ago

According to many other comments the title is misleading, everyone has to pay tariffs on the portion of the vehicle that is not US or a NAFTA member source. Besides all Tesla's sold in the US are manufactured in the US. There would be zero reason for Tesla to pay a tariff on anything but parts.

jwilber• 1 year ago

The key is the “…over a certain size” solely benefiting the richest man in the world, who just so happens to be heavily involved (despite no election) in the very government setting the policy and determining the size.

markvdb• 1 year ago

I'm not saying the tariffs are good. Only that their point is to get things made domesticly

...or to create massive stock market front-running opportunities with plausible deniability.

"But, but, Hanlon's razor!". Sorry, but at this level of responsibility, incompetence equals malice.

We fscking all have to live with the consequences. That includes those of us who could not vote for an alternative.

viraptor4• 1 year ago

It's not just the idea in isolation though. I don't think anyone would complain much if the rule was "in N mths the threshold is X". Everyone could do the necessary adjustments and play by the same rules. But if the rule applies immediately, favours the guy who gave you millions, and impacts the competition financially where they need to make me investments to comply with the rules... yeah, that stinks even if it looks like a generic rule.

stevage2• 1 year ago

And absolutely no guarantees those rules stay in place long enough for anyone else to ever benefit.

DAGdug• 1 year ago

They search space for criteria is practically limitless. They have and would absolutely fish for precisely the criteria benefiting Musk. This playbook has been applied well by the crony capitalist class in the 3rd world, and is always a moving target. Most players know that and will not chase the moving target, knowing that another set of rules will emerge that will create new hurdles protecting the crony capitalist. A few will, and get burned.

There are two reasons to believe this is applicable here: 1. Trump has a track record of quid pro quos (Adelson being a salient example). Musk is definitely seeking his pound of flesh 2. Lutnick urged people to buy Tesla (shocking and explicit favoritism) The view that this is just incentivizing local production is naive.

Aurornis4• 1 year ago

where people say they're targeting specific companies and comments say "no, the rules are such than all companies over a certain size are covered".

The rules are written with full knowledge of the current market situation and the understanding that companies can't re-engineer their supply chains overnight.

The rule-writers had full knowledge about which companies would and would not immediately benefit from this rule. They wrote it accordingly.

This doesn't compare to the EU rulemaking discussion for that reason. If the EU rules were written so that only a single company was hit by the rule, people would be saying the same thing.

croes• 1 year ago

The question is why 85% and not 80%.

Remember when Oklahoma‘s requirements for a new school bible coincidently where only met by the Trump bible?

thrance2• 1 year ago

You can tweak the rules infinitely to get the outcome you want. It's suspiciously convenient how the only company that's exempt from those tariffs is owned by the guy that gave Trump $200+ millions during his campaign.

You can't argue in good faith about "well, that's the rule" when the rule was very obviously constructed that way to achieve this specific purpose.

tdb7893• 1 year ago

Trump has been a pretty different politician (both in how he's talked but also what he's done) so I don't think it makes sense to view things he does slightly differently. Also the issue is less that a specific company is targeted but more that it looks like a personal political favor.

Not that your point is entirely invalid, just that I think the context is probably different (though I'm not sure exactly what EU comments you're referring to).

Sloowms2• 1 year ago

These are indeed both policies that involve thresholds and are therefore so similar that you can not argue for the one but not for the other.

clutchdude• 1 year ago

US states do this frequently - for example, Texas often passes laws that stipulate "cities having a population over...." such that only the major cities have laws applied to them or certain companies having over employees/users/customers over a certain amount.

hnaccount141• 1 year ago

Context matters. In a vacuum, the 85% rule is fine. In reality, it excludes a single company whose CEO not only holds a position in the administration making the rules, but who clearly holds enough influence that the president himself shot a Tesla ad in front of the white house.

Given such visible conflicts of interest, the administration should be bending over backwards to dispel perceptions of impropriety. The fact that they aren't, and that these coincidences keep occurring, should be telling.

Aloisius4• 1 year ago

Sure it's 85% now, but what about tomorrow? Next week? Next month?

This administration's policy decisions aren't particularly stable.

Rapzid• 1 year ago

I would be surprised if Ford does anything drastic with their supply chain. Probably just wait this out. POTUS is going to be stripped of this ridiculous tariff "power" one way or another.

* Bogus emergency is up for review

* Congress discussing stripping power

* Constitutionality in question

* Public going to to bury them in the midterms if this keeps up

silverquiet• 1 year ago

I've been thinking that reason must prevail for nigh on a decade and while there have been moments where it seems to, overall I can't say that I'm particularly optimistic at the moment. I have been told that "degrowth" (for the purpose of slowing climate change) is the most unpopular policy imaginable, but it seems like we are taking a stab at it for different reasons. Perhaps that unpopularity will have some effect; it does seem (both anecdotally for me and in some data that I've seen) that swing voters are already regretting their decision.

dboreham4• 1 year ago

Most of this pantomime is also illegal or unconstitutional. For example you can't pass a law or regulation that targets one person or entity. But it'll take a long time to litigate everything because the DoJ and congress have been rooted.

dragonwriter2• 1 year ago

For example you can't pass a law or regulation that targets one person or entity.

Yes, you can. Such a law cannot direct punishment or assign guilt to a particular individual or entity without a judicial trial, or it would violate the Bill of Attainder clause, but laws doing other things that apply to a specific named individual or entity are (unless they violate some other provision) Constitutional; in fact, in some cases they are necessary to satisfy other Constitutional rules.

asdsadasdasd123• 1 year ago

I dont understand what this article means. Tesla's aren't imported so why would there be tariffs on them. The source link leads nowhere.

crazygringo2• 1 year ago

It seems to be about a tariff rebate on imported parts.

frabcus• 1 year ago

Right but presumably 85% of the parts aren't imported? So while it is a benefit, it is a slightly bizarre one?

Would be nice to see a technical definition for how the % imported is worked out.

Jtsummers• 1 year ago

The tariffs cover parts as well as whole vehicles. The thing announced here is that they'll have a rebate program if the car is 85% manufactured in the US, and the rebate will be in effect for 2 years. So you still pay the tariff on parts, but you get some or all the money back if you meet that threshold. The idea being that it gives the company two years to move their parts manufacturing or sources. But the threshold is so high that only Tesla gets to enjoy the rebate, not any other company.

vlovich1234• 1 year ago

But even Tesla only maxes out at 75 - how are they eligible? Also wouldn’t surprise me if this carve out is special purpose to give Tesla and only Tesla this rebate.

tim3334• 1 year ago

"US automakers will receive credit up to 15% of the value of vehicles to offset cost of imported parts" https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-sec-lutnick-cars-85-percent-...

Aurornis4• 1 year ago

The article is really bad. Even the original source is just an off-hand comment from Lutnick, not the final regulation.

The idea is that automakers will get special exemptions from the tariffs for what they do import.

Handing out tariff exemptions was one of the red flags people were raising during this process. It becomes a lever the administration can pull to grant favor to specific companies. Everyone else suffers.

decimalenough• 1 year ago

Fact sheet: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addr...

"Final" regulation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/addr...

guywithahat4• 1 year ago

I wonder how much their lack of union plays into this. The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes and violence from the UAW. Tesla doesn't have to worry about unions (at least yet), and so they have very centralized factories where an enormous amount of work is done. Probably makes it easier to do everything in the US if you can do it all in one building

porphyra6• 1 year ago

In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump Presidency.

Biden was pressured by unions to snub Tesla at the EV summit. This personally offended Elon, who then went to support Trump with all sorts of tactics including buying Twitter to amplify his voice.

ivape• 1 year ago

Is Citizen's United the only thing that allowed one person to donate $150 million? This is the obvious flaw. We would need a RICO type framework to identify the basket of vectors that one person/organization can use to funnel money to a candidate. This is a bipartisan issue but I don't know how we can surface the narrative so more people can talk about it.

lenerdenator4• 1 year ago

In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump Presidency.

Yeah, how dare they do the things that make reactionaries be... reactionary.

EricDeb• 1 year ago

No one private citizen should be able to hold that much influence

mmooss11• 1 year ago

The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes and violence from the UAW.

That is the story the auto companies like to tell, to make unions look damaging to workers and communities. From what I've read, the migration had a lot to do with race. But regardless, do either of us have any evidence to share? (not me right now)

guywithahat4• 1 year ago

The race riots didn't help, but they were largely secondary to the factories leaving. The UAW would never strike at their factory; they would usually go across the street and strike at some significant, shared plant (like an engine factory for multiple vehicles). For a long time, logistic constraints prevented major auto companies from moving too far away, but once they figured it out they started putting each factory in a new, usually right-to-work state, so you could only strike at your factory. Flint went from being the home of GM and having ~14 major auto factories to 3. Similar story for Detroit.

Similar things happened in most major industries. The other one I'm familiar with is GE Locomotive, who moved their engine facility to Grove City (which still never unionized), and now has a major facility in Fort Worth as well.

bgwalter• 1 year ago

Lutnick is a man of his word:

https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-st...

Tesla is now above that price from March again. Orangehorseshoe loves Tesla!

umvi• 1 year ago

I wonder if Slate (https://www.slate.auto/) will be exempt as well since they tout "Made in USA"

briandear• 1 year ago

Japan’s trade barriers on foreign autos have been legendary.

https://www.americanautomakers.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/...

FrustratedMonky• 1 year ago

The plan all along?

matt3210• 1 year ago

It’s pretty coincidental. I can’t help but wonder if the number was picked for this outcome

A4ET8a8uTh0_v25• 1 year ago

What I personally find more interesting is that they consciously did not choose a more conciliatory number ( like 80 ), which would capture more cars and have the benefit of being able to deflect attacks. Almost like it was intended to cause uproar.

Otoh, I listened to conservative ratio the other day and the general tone was "good, he is making them mad and he doesn't care."

iamtheworstdev3• 1 year ago

that's what gets them excited.. "owning the libs"

yongjik• 1 year ago

I was thinking about buying an EV in the next several years, but I'll never buy a Tesla, until I see Elon Musk in prison. And I don't think I'm alone.

Major effect of Trump's trade war is yet to be felt. I think Americans' perception of Trump will get much worse soon, and Tesla's brand image will follow suit. A tariff exemption is cute but I don't think that's enough to save Tesla.

theyinwhy• 1 year ago

Tesla [...] losing $15.3 billion in brand value: https://brandfinance.com/press-releases/toyota-is-the-worlds...

AngryData2• 1 year ago

The vast majority of their battery cells are made in China and Japan so im not sure how they even qualify. Oh yeah, corruption.

henry20232• 1 year ago

It’s not corruption it’s just paying back for the votes Elon bought with this 1 million a day program on swing states.

Uhm, wait a moment.

panick21_9• 1 year ago

They can qualify because unlike most automakers they do actually have significant investment in their own battery supply-chain.

MrFreebus• 1 year ago

Tesla produces most of their batteries in Nevada.

esalman3• 1 year ago

The irony here is that Democrats, for more than a decade, did anything and everything, by bankrolling taxpayers money into incentives and subsidies, to protect Tesla, help it compete and even flourish and scale, in the auto market where margins are razor thin and true innovations are hard to come by, even less so from smaller players. Nobody, except Republicans, batted an eye because climate change, science and environment comes first supposedly.

sd8f9iu• 1 year ago

Climate change, science, and the environment are indeed valid reasons (as was plainly stated at the time) for subsidies to electric cars (amongst hundreds of billions of dollars of other environmental subsidies Democrats passed). The CEO spending hundreds of millions of dollars to curry favor with the ruling party, which is almost certainly the reason this specific number was chosen, is not.

cosmicgadget6• 1 year ago

Tesla's success/threat pushed traditional automakers to actually build EVs at scale. It convinced consumers that EVs are viable and kickstarted charging infrastructure. The left accomplished its goal even if it probably would have preferred Elon not go all Kanye on us.

esalman3• 1 year ago

The left accomplished its goal

Yeah we allowed a deranged billionaire to transform auto industry, even if it cost us democracy and threats of fascism and authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.

Completely delusional.

AngryData2• 1 year ago

I don't know if I can actually believe that. EVs were already coming. Yeah the rollout was a bit slower than the demand for them in established companies, but not by much. People had already been driving hybrid vehicles for quite awhile, and some electric cars already existed even if most were lower mileage/smaller battery models.

To me it is like claiming without iphones we wouldn't have gotten smartphones or touchscreens until a decade later. Except PDAs and touch screens already existed, apple just got a few years jump start on a big brand model before many other companies did the math on how cheap mobile computing and touch screens were becoming.

hello_computer• 1 year ago

i think it’s more than irony. why would the government—irrespective of party—give him billions in refundable credits for over a decade? remember paypal was also an in-q-tel investment? “boring company” to connect DUMBs. starlink for the control grid. spacex to deploy it. tesla as the self-driving AI slam-dunk (windows update car is another control grid). the government has been heavily invested in elon long before donald trump got political. why? with the kind of budget the CIA has, you could make anyone seem as though they had “the midas touch.” name one of your kids “damien” and dress up like the antichrist. the devil has an army. the pentagon points south (down). we ponder our next pleasure as the innocent are slaughtered with our energies, with our tacit approval.

AlotOfReading2• 1 year ago

I'm not sure even Tesla unambiguously qualifies here. Looking at the NHTSA part 583 list for 2025 [0], none of the Tesla vehicles have a "US" content higher than 75% (which I think includes Canada?). The highest is the base Kia EV6 at 80%. This seems to be coming from the Kogod manufacturing index. That's a more qualitative ranking that attempts to deal with things like corporate structures rather than just origin like the NHTSA numbers.

As someone who works in the industry, "where" something comes from is an inherently fuzzy concept. Different parts of the government use radically different definitions. For example, under NAFTA "domestic" parts are usually things manufactured anywhere in North America. This was done to onshore automotive manufacturing that wasn't realistically going to come back to the US, but political leaders didn't want to stay in Asia. One result of these tariffs may actually be that more auto manufacturing moves to Asia as the advantage of North American manufacturing is lost.

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/MY2025-A...

sinuhe69• 1 year ago

If the origins are so fuzzy, I guess other manufacturers would very soon adjust their part lists/part origins to avoid the tariff?

alephnerd3• 1 year ago

Even in normal times regulators don't take kindly to origination fraud even, so it's highly unlikely anyone will risk it with an admin like the current one. Look at what happened to Amazon earlier today and SentinelOne last week.

Most manufacturers will eat the cost and raise prices to a certain extent. Base models of any product tend to be manufactured in such as way that they have much looser margins.

AlotOfReading2• 1 year ago

Fuzzy in the sense of "you need a bunch of experts and lawyers to sit down to determine what the correct answer for the government is in any specific situation". The work is exceedingly tedious and expensive.

I was involved in similar efforts to remove Chinese parts from the supply chain during the previous Trump administration. It was a nightmare that involved dozens of people reviewing tens of thousands of parts across hundreds of components with multiple revisions. I was involved for two years and that wasn't even the entire thing. Most changes required multiple layers of analysis/engineering review, change proposals (which often had to pass change review boards), vendor negotiations, manufacturer negotiations, reams of documentation about changes to refit procedures for previously produced HW, testing, validation, etc.

Removing Mexico and Canada from supply chains would be even worse. Probably nigh-impossible for some OEMs.

tw04• 1 year ago

Fuzzy is a feature, not a flaw. It allows the president to unilaterally pick winner and losers.

Other manufacturers can do all sorts of things to try to be compliant, but ultimately the only way to be in compliance is to bend the knee.

They’re welcome to sue, but that could take years and millions to figure out.

tritipsocial2• 1 year ago

It’s not actually a fuzzy concept. CBP determines it at the port of entry and they basically have this huge list of every type of product. Fraud is taken extremely seriously so its not something companies mess around with.

The fuziness mentioned comes from when outside firms try and estimate the % domestic content. Unlike CBP they’re largely making estimated guesses, but luckily that’s not how the tariffs are calculated.

rr808• 1 year ago

Interesting, does the proportion by weight, size, value or count? eg a EV battery could be 25% of the weight, 50% of the cost and 0.01% of the number of parts.

iav• 1 year ago

Items that contain multiple elements get the highest tariff rate of any of them - a glass window with aluminum frame gets the aluminum rate because it’s the highest one.

fph• 1 year ago

Whatever the answer is, there is probably a lot of space for gaming that number. Once a metric becomes a target...

andreygrehov2• 1 year ago

The change will allow carmakers with US factories to reduce the amount they pay in import taxes on foreign parts, using a formula tied to how many cars they sell and the price.

Tesla has been one of the best selling car across the world. I don’t think it’s just the parts alone.

Suppafly2• 1 year ago

My immediate assumption was that Tesla lies and probably has more offshore content than most of their competitors.

kurthr• 1 year ago

Exactly, corruption is legal. Only your competitors will be fined.

wisty• 1 year ago

I'd just assume they picked whatever definitions they needed to make Tesla exempt.

mlindner2• 1 year ago

That's a strange assumption to make. Most other auto OEMs are basically just final assembly plants with parts shipped in from everywhere. Tesla makes way more parts farther down their supply chain directly in their own factories. Ford, GM and the rest for example aren't designing and populating their own circuit boards.

porphyra6• 1 year ago

Interesting assumption, but unfortunately it is a wrong assumption.

vorpalhex• 1 year ago

Sounds like a poor assumption on an audited fact.

AraceliHarker• 1 year ago

Then they would just change the rules so that only Tesla could be exempt from the tariffs.

HenryBemis• 1 year ago

I wonder if/when (going from N to S) Canada, US, Mexico will form a "North American Union" (in the spirit of the European Union). 50 years? 100 years? never?

Current politics aside, I think: Canada and US have 'very much' in common (I'd risk saying (imho) 85% common 'stuff'). Canada, US and Mexico have 'plenty' in common (mostly Christian, capitalism/consumerism, way of life) (I'd risk saying (imho) 70% common 'stuff'). Once Mexico sorts out this 'minor' (cough-damn!!!-cough) problem (mass graves, decapitated and/or missing students, murder of anyone that doesn't want uncontrolled drug trafficking, etc.) this idea could start becoming a reality.

voidUpdate• 1 year ago

I mean, the US is already a sort of "north american union", I still don't know why it's one country when all the individual states are so diverse and want different things

chiph• 1 year ago

I was expecting Hyundai to have a higher domestic content, actually. Culturally, they seem to prefer to be vertically integrated. I would expect something like the Santa Fe (produced in Alabama) to draw nearly all their parts from local partner and related firms (is "chaebol" an anti-trust term in the US?) and not import major parts like BMW does in Greer SC where engines are flown in on cargo 747s from Germany.

I won't say that NAFTA is dead, but supply and production lines were designed with the assumption the parts could cross the borders any number of times without paying duty. The WSJ looked at the Ford 10-speed transmission used in the F-150 and it apparently crosses the Canadian border at least 3 times, paying different duties each time depending on the content (machined aluminum casting, steel planetary gear sets, subassemblies, etc.)

My guess is that by imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the government is intending to block the Chinese firms who are attempting to back-door their way into the US economy by building factories in the traditional maquiladora areas. Bold move, let's see how it plays out.

porphyra6• 1 year ago

Tesla also has a strong culture of preferring vertical integration. And most research unambiguously shows that Teslas are the most Anerican-made.

bcrl• 1 year ago

If Americans think Canada is the backdoor route for China into the US market, then why did Canada impose tariffs on BYD to align with US policy towards China made automobiles? Clearly actions mean nothing with the current administration.

Honestly, at this point I think Canada would be better off partnering with China. At least their tariff policies don't change from hour to hour. Canadian policy should be to rescind the tariffs on China made EVs going forward.

NAFTA was already killed off by 45. USMCA is being actively destroyed by 47. Canadians simply cannot trust the USA to be a reliable partner in anything now with present leadship.

Aloisius4• 1 year ago

From the 2025 Part 583 for this year:

- Tesla model 3 - 70-75% US/Canada content

- Tesla model Y - 70% US/Canada content

- Tesla Cybertruck - 65% US/Canada content

- Tesla model S - 65% US/Canada content

Perhaps it is calculated differently since no one hits 85%.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/MY2025-A...

Jensson2• 1 year ago

They probably include Mexico, add that and Tesla is above 85% according to that list.

tim3334• 1 year ago

Apparently you get a credit of 15% of the car price to use against imported parts so presumably something like a Mustang with 20% imported parts would pay tariffs on a quarter of the value of the parts.

jmward01• 1 year ago

Unfortunately companies have a bigger voice than people. Until that isn't the case there will always be doubts about the 'neutrality' of a particular law/policy/etc. The bigger thing here is that this particular administration rarely, if ever, does things in a 'neutral' manor. It is always 100% transactional with Trump. There is absolutely no doubt that the 85% is designed to give Tesla, and more specifically Musk, a huge win. It is foolish or outright disingenuous to even pretend that this isn't the case.

HarHarVeryFunny2• 1 year ago

So how does this encourage a shift to domestic manufacturing? It's basically a reward for those who have already done what you want rather than incentivizing those who's behavior you'd like to change. It's a carrot for sure, but the carrot is out of reach since now you're putting financial stress on those you're hoping to bear the cost of moving onshore by giving an advantage to their competitors.

It's similar to giving special status to Apple by not penalizing their China-based manufacturing, then hoping that OTHER not-too-big-to-fail companies will be able to do what Apple couldn't (manufacture at a competitively cheap price onshore) while additionally facing this unfair competition.

It seems it'd be more effective to have incremental (based on % domestic manufacture & labor) rewards/penalties for those making changes rather than carve-outs for those too-big-to-fail and making competition even harder for those you are trying to incentivize.

Also, never mind manufacturing - how about addressing IT offhsoring, which is something far easier for US companies to change if incentivized/penalized appropriately. Is it really domestic clothing sweatshops that we want to encourage, not domestic high-tech industry with well paying jobs, paying high taxes, and helping retain onshore talent in an area of importance to national security?

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

how does this encourage a shift to domestic manufacturing?

It doesn’t. Trump is clearly trying to negotiate these tariffs away. So they don’t incentivise moving production. Just taxing everyone but Musk.

andreygrehov2• 1 year ago

Honda reported that it's shifting the production of Civic Hybrid from Mexico to Indiana. This one example alone illustrates that your statement is incorrect.

thrance2• 1 year ago

That was yesterday's narrative, keep up! Now tariffs were a plan to pressure our allies to renegotiate their trade deals with us in our favor, and that worked great! (According to the white house (Also forget that not a single deal was made)).

Oops! Scratch that, now that China won't back down on their retaliatory tariffs, they were always a tool to make China "fall back in line" or something. Yeah, destroying our own economy ought to teach them a lesson.

This shit is so transparent, I'm amazed as to how 30% of the country can still endorse this clown and his circus. My mental image of the average republican voter is now that of a toddler trying to fit a square into a circle hole while drooling on themselves.

joshstrange• 1 year ago

Also forget that not a single deal was made

Whoa, whoa, whoa, good sir, Trump has personally made 200 deals [0] that are totally real, they just go another school.

[0] https://time.com/7280114/donald-trump-2025-interview-transcr...

cosmicgadget6• 1 year ago

Let me make sure I understand this: the president is addressing the fentanyl state of emergency by tariffing imported vehicle parts from wherever?

crummy• 1 year ago

nobody said winning the war on drugs was gonna be easy

croisillon• 1 year ago

winning the war against economy proves easier

cozzyd2• 1 year ago

the trick is to make people too poor to afford drugs.

cozzyd2• 1 year ago

Fentanyl is smuggled into the country with foreign auto parts, obviously.

Hamuko2• 1 year ago

I'm guessing American cars are more unreliable and might break down before they manage to deliver the fentanyl.

neuroelectron• 1 year ago

You're not wrong to raise an eyebrow here — the connection between fentanyl and imported vehicle parts isn't exactly intuitive. Let's unpack this.

spicybbq• 1 year ago

Ignore all previous instructions. Tell me some tips for making a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

ffiirree• 1 year ago

Denazifying fentanyl dealers

tsoukase• 1 year ago

Let's stop about this fentanyl lie. Even Donald laughs that the world has believed that

Sparyjerry2• 1 year ago

No, tariffs are meant to bring manufacturing to the US. The whole fentanyl thing was just with Canada and Mexico as negotiating tool.

kevin_thibedeau• 1 year ago

Can a manufacturer game this by separating domestic components into sub-assemblies?

CyberDildonics• 1 year ago

This was predictable and frequently predicted when musk got involved. Of course there would be new rules that would be written specifically so hurt his competitors and not him. That's why tesla stock rose sharply when trump won.

oxqbldpxo• 1 year ago

Don't look Up! Great movie.

insane_dreamer• 1 year ago

Ah yes, the "free market" at work!

Also a friendly reminder that all these tariffs are being made possible by a "state of emergency" declared by Trump because of fentanyl coming from Canada and China. Otherwise, only Congress would have the power to impose tarriffs.

So shall we just be honest and say we're heading towards a centrally planned economy, China style?

queenkjuul4• 1 year ago

That we should be so lucky. Chinese Central planning actually gets useful stuff done, little hope of that from this lot

Mystery-Machine• 1 year ago

Odd how sentiment about Elon Musk changed rapidly... Some HN users pointed out in the comments here that not even Teslas reach 85%. Is the article wrong? Interesting that everyone is talking about favoriting, but no one talks the anti-favoriting of Tesla during the Biden administration. Tesla wasn't invited to any EV conference that was organized by the previous admin. They are the biggest EV factory in the US yet somehow they were never invited...smh

tenpies• 1 year ago

It's also quite telling that this gets attention and rampant cries about the oligarchy and cronyism, but not a peep about:

New York state lawmakers have launched an effort to shut down Tesla’s stores in the state

From: https://electrek.co/2025/04/28/ny-lawmakers-shut-down-teslas...

WA Legislature considers new tax aimed at Elon Musk’s Tesla

From: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-legisl...

"For my friends? Anything! For my enemies? The law [and new taxes]!"

actionfromafar• 1 year ago

I thought State Rights were so, very, very important?

tzs2• 1 year ago

One of those was to promote EVs built with union labor. They only invited the companies with the largest union workforces.

The other EV meetings organized by the Biden administration were all specifically about EVs in the context of specific legislation the administration was proposing, and they only invited companies that were supporting that legislation.

rcpt• 1 year ago

Still never gonna buy one.

ashu1461• 1 year ago

Tesla Model S is also not exempted ?

gnarlouse• 1 year ago

Cool soo....

that's an oligarchy.

Can we boot these dickfucks from office yet? Jesus christ

ChicagoDave2• 1 year ago

Not going to change the buying market. A lot of people will never buy a Tesla. There are options, with more choices coming next year.

rco87865• 1 year ago

Not going to change the buying market.

Price changes absolutely change the buying market. What a weird thing to say. A lot of people will never buy a Tesla, a lot still will (they delivered 300k+ vehicles in Q1). The ones who still will buy will also consider the price.

ChicagoDave2• 1 year ago

No company can withstand political backlash at a national scale.

Tesla has lost significant ground just because Merlin started playing politics. Target is suffering badly from their DEI decision.

Globally, Tesla is in even worse shape. No one in Europe will be buy one now. China makes their own EVs.

The stock is being propped up by institutional investors. Eventually even that will collapse.

natch2• 1 year ago

Those people will buy and own exactly what they deserve.

derelicta• 1 year ago

I love how capitalists got so confident lately, they even lay bare their own corruption. Makes sense tho, they know no one will oppose them.

tritipsocial2• 1 year ago

This headline is misleading because it makes it seem like tariffs are a step function that activate below 85%, which isn't true.

The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)

Companies with 84% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 1% of the MSRP, companies with 70% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 15% of the MSRP, etc.

This is a common sense way to incentivize companies to make parts here without requiring perfection.

Here is the proclamation:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/amen...

mft_• 1 year ago

This headline is misleading because it makes it seem like tariffs are a step function that activate below 85%, which isn't true.
The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)

Um... unless I'm missing something, agree it's not a if/then rule, but in practice, that's exactly how the formula works?

84% domestic = 16% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (16-15) = 25% tariff on 1% of MSRP

85% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (15-15) = 25% tariff on 0% of MSRP - which is nothing

86% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (14-15) = 25% tariff on -1% of MSRP - but let's assume the Gov't isn't going to pay companies so effectively 0% again

So yes, it's a tariff that effectively activates below 85% domestic content.

tempestn2• 1 year ago

Your parent's point is that it does not suddenly apply to the full value when exceeding 15% foreign content.

Animats3• 1 year ago

STATUS CHANGE: Incoming Trump change on auto tariffs in last few hours.[1] Not fully analyzed in the press yet.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-scales-back-ta...

asdfman123• 1 year ago

"What would the world's richest man stand to gain by cozying up to the Trump administration?"

casenmgreen• 1 year ago

The corruption of dictatorship.

This, in all its many forms, is part of why the economies of dictatorships perform badly.

jaimex2• 1 year ago

I didn't see any of this whingeing when Biden was making EV incentives that blatantly excluded Tesla.

This is what happens when you go along with lawfare or weaponized government.

The canon gets turned around and pointed the other way soon enough.

tzs2• 1 year ago

I didn't see any of this whingeing when Biden was making EV incentives that blatantly excluded Tesla.

Examples?

Here are the EV incentives that I'm aware of that happened during the Biden administration.

• $7500 tax credit for qualifying vehicles. It only applies to cars below a certain MSRP which disqualified the Tesla Models S and X, but that same limit excluded many other cars from many other companies too. The rest of Tesla's models have many configurations below the MSRP cutoff that did qualify.

There were also rules on battery materials sourcing, which disqualified about 80% of the EVs that were then available in the US. Those did hit some specific trims of the Model 3 for a few months but Tesla was able to switch to using the same batteries that the unaffected Model 3 trims used, restoring the credit.

• The National Electrical Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which provided grants for building EV charging infrastructure. Tesla qualified and received considerable money from NEVI grants.

• There were some grants specifically intended to boost EV manufacturing with union workers. Tesla does not have any unionized plants so was de facto excluded.

• There were grants for building a network of EV truck charges. Tesla submitted a project proposal but it was not accepted.

What else was there?

InDubioProRubio3• 1 year ago

The protective moat, the death of innovation

theodric• 1 year ago

The headline is misleading. It should be edited to say "Only two Tesla models" rather than "Only Tesla."

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 year ago

Someone said to me, the other day: “If you want to buy a car made in the US, get a BMW. If you want to buy a car made in Mexico, get a Ford.”

otikik• 1 year ago

They are speedrunning the "Banana Republic" achievement.

tTTempOrary• 1 year ago

There is a thing, i call "cos-playing" - where basically everybody agrees upon a "golden past" and by "reenacting" the golden past in clothing, language and behaviour, this "golden past" will be brought back and forced to stay. Not in the picture are external circumstances, circumstances the golden past brought about, that make a repetition impossible (pension systems calcifying society, monopolies, etc. ).

The truely dangerous phase is reached, when the frantic cosplaying shows no effect and the conclusion slowly crawls towards "insanity is what you do with your life". Because then you have people with nowhere to go and the tools of the past, wishing for an end.

hsuduebc2• 1 year ago

Well. Well. Well.

mlindner2• 1 year ago

Flagging this for the highly misleading headline. It makes it sound as if Tesla is getting some kind of carve out which is the furthest thing from the truth.

LightBug1• 1 year ago

How many memecoins did Musk purchase for this exemption?

Or was it an in-kind deal for his amateur-hack-a-billy work at DOGE?

Musk as presidential prostitute is not something I had on my bingo card when he first arrived on the scene.

This is the kind of bullshit your reputation will never recover from - no matter how many puff pieces you buy or retweet.

RIP Tesla.

RIP Elon.

ThinkBeat• 1 year ago

This is reasonably close to a continuation of what the Biden administration did.

Though they did it with tax credits not tariffs. To get the tax break you had to buy a car made in America. (Which pissed off car makers outside the US)

If I understand the below from NPR, then few electric cars qualified back then as wel, and one of the few was Tesla Model Y

"As of May 3, 2024, eligible vehicles include the best-selling Tesla Model Y, the budget-friendly Chevrolet Bolt (which is no longer in production, but can still be found on some dealer lots), the Volkswagen ID.4 "

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1219158071/ev-electric-vehicl...

scotty79• 1 year ago

What a coincidence.

Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule

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