So China is both using slave labor and also paying close to wage parity with the US? How can both of those assertions be true?
I think the lithium/cobalt argument is a bit of a straw man, since the generally accepted view is that the US likely has an abundance of such deposits but simply has not opted to do significant extraction.
Also, from the standpoint of the security risk associated with China controlling the supply, the US coudl also opt for strategic reserves of key items at a much lower cost than the cost of tariffs on the economy.
An easy way to help EV companies would be to stop spending trillions of dollars on petrolium-related wars. If you do the math, gas should cost at least double at the pump what it typically costs. The rest of the cost is the massive military operations needed to keep prices what they are. Those operations are not free by any means and are certainly not budgeted (so they are still yet to be paid for).
So in the supposedly capitalist US we have thousands in subsidy for EVs and Trillions in subsidies for petrolium related military operations, and now 100% tariffs on competitive EVs, etc. Why? Because China is evil? Because Saddam is evil?
> So China is both using slave labor and also paying close to wage parity with the US? How can both of those assertions be true?
Very trivial actually. The ones approaching wage parity are tech workers in big cities (what I deal with). The ones working as slaves are literally digging holes, sometimes in other countries. The battery supply chain contains both. The part that makes it easy for China to make cheaper batteries is the digging holes and fucking the environment part of it.
> the US coudl also opt for strategic reserves of key items at a much lower cost than the cost of tariffs on the economy.
They could, but they would, again, have to ignore environmental and labor concerns, which would require first changing federal laws that ban imported goods that used forced labor (see previous links).
> An easy way to help EV companies would be to stop spending trillions of dollars on petrolium-related wars.
Unfortunately, 93.2% of the 283 million cars on the road are ICE. This "easy" way involves a short term severe disruption, especially of the lower levels of the economy. But, I agree completely that subsidizing EV companies (including Tesla) and strategic foreign investments in REE is probably a better long term bet than building nice bombs.
I think the realistic result of all of this is that the economic pressures force the next gen of batteries to not use lithium or cobalt, or anything that China has 80% control of.
Interesting points. I appreciate the discussion a great deal.
I really want to believe that the US is doing state of the art engineering and manufacturing in the EV space. You've given me some good things to think about.
I think the lithium/cobalt argument is a bit of a straw man, since the generally accepted view is that the US likely has an abundance of such deposits but simply has not opted to do significant extraction.
Also, from the standpoint of the security risk associated with China controlling the supply, the US coudl also opt for strategic reserves of key items at a much lower cost than the cost of tariffs on the economy.
An easy way to help EV companies would be to stop spending trillions of dollars on petrolium-related wars. If you do the math, gas should cost at least double at the pump what it typically costs. The rest of the cost is the massive military operations needed to keep prices what they are. Those operations are not free by any means and are certainly not budgeted (so they are still yet to be paid for).
So in the supposedly capitalist US we have thousands in subsidy for EVs and Trillions in subsidies for petrolium related military operations, and now 100% tariffs on competitive EVs, etc. Why? Because China is evil? Because Saddam is evil?