WSJ: Europe, US Need Grand Bargain on Chips and EVs to Counter China (bangkokpost.com) 61
South Korea, Japan and the EU see America's electric-vehicle subsidies as discriminating against non-American manufacturers, and are "rebuffing" restrictions on exporting sensitive semiconductor technology to China, reports the Wall Street Journal. (Alternate URL here.)
The EU's executive arm complains that newly-passed U.S. subsidies constitute "a market-distorting boost, tilting the global level playing field and turning a common global objective — fighting climate change — into a zero-sum game." There's a grand bargain to be had here: the U.S. makes its allies eligible for its EV subsidies and those allies join its semiconductor controls. The politics and details of any such bargain are, of course, difficult, maybe insurmountable. Yet such an accommodation, if it happened, would entail almost no economic cost to the U.S. or its allies — and potentially large long-term gains....
The U.S. Treasury Department could use its administrative discretion to phase in the Inflation Reduction Act's provisions or define content to allow more of these manufacturers' products to qualify. It could also interpret "free-trade agreement" to include not just formal bilateral treaties but broader pacts such as the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or the Minerals Security Partnership, both of which include Japan, South Korea, and the European Union but not mainland China or Russia.
If the U.S. bends to its allies on electric vehicles, its allies should bend to the U.S. on semiconductors.... Meanwhile, business as usual entails its own — potentially significant — costs. China's long-term goal is self sufficiency in all advanced technology, including semiconductors. It does business with Western companies until its own national champions can displace them first in China and then abroad. It has already followed the script in high-speed rail, power generation and telecommunications equipment. If China has its way, the market share that South Korean, Japanese and European semiconductor companies are trying to preserve will be gone a few decades from now.
The EU's executive arm complains that newly-passed U.S. subsidies constitute "a market-distorting boost, tilting the global level playing field and turning a common global objective — fighting climate change — into a zero-sum game." There's a grand bargain to be had here: the U.S. makes its allies eligible for its EV subsidies and those allies join its semiconductor controls. The politics and details of any such bargain are, of course, difficult, maybe insurmountable. Yet such an accommodation, if it happened, would entail almost no economic cost to the U.S. or its allies — and potentially large long-term gains....
The U.S. Treasury Department could use its administrative discretion to phase in the Inflation Reduction Act's provisions or define content to allow more of these manufacturers' products to qualify. It could also interpret "free-trade agreement" to include not just formal bilateral treaties but broader pacts such as the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or the Minerals Security Partnership, both of which include Japan, South Korea, and the European Union but not mainland China or Russia.
If the U.S. bends to its allies on electric vehicles, its allies should bend to the U.S. on semiconductors.... Meanwhile, business as usual entails its own — potentially significant — costs. China's long-term goal is self sufficiency in all advanced technology, including semiconductors. It does business with Western companies until its own national champions can displace them first in China and then abroad. It has already followed the script in high-speed rail, power generation and telecommunications equipment. If China has its way, the market share that South Korean, Japanese and European semiconductor companies are trying to preserve will be gone a few decades from now.
Re:fallacy of asserting the consequent (Score:4, Insightful)
> EV will do nothing for atmospheric composition in next 10 years.
So you're saying reducing CO2 emissions, potentially by double digit percentages, will not have any impact on atmospheric composition? None at all?
> Your confounding adoption of EV with solution to pollution is laughable
This is a position that exists entirely within your own head. Literally nobody things EV adoption will solve pollution, especially not in and of itself. Everyone who advocates for it in terms of environmental impact sees it as either a net emissions reduction or, at the very least, not exacerbating the problem further. (And the smart ones recognize the benefits of improved local air quality as well!)
> Storage systems for wind and solar are the answer, nuclear power is a possible answer.
Yeah, we could really use a place to store all that renewable energy. Batteries are pretty good for that... oh hey what if we put those batteries on wheels too so we can like, use that energy instead of burning non-renewable, carbon-emitting fuels? Hmm!
> EV is not the answer.
There is no "answer" - there is only a patchwork of partial, imperfect solutions that together may adequately address the problem. Electrification of transportation is an important part of that; otherwise all the wind and solar and nuclear plants aren't going to have any chance to impact emissions from the transportation sector.
=Smidge=
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> EV will not reduce carbon emissions "potentially by double digits" in the next 10 years.
EVs will absolutely reduce carbon emissions within the next 10 years. Here's one study [iop.org] that concludes the additional emissions due to the more energy intensive manufacturing of EVs is offset within 30K miles compared to their ICEV counterparts, meaning any miles driven beyond that (which is the majority of a vehicle's lifetime) is a net reduction.
The only reason I say "potentially" with respect to the double digit p
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A study also assuming 95 percent decarbonization of U.S. grid by 2035? That's nonsense, won't happen. They also consider 95 percent reduction by 2050, unlikely but by that date at least 50 percent might be possible if we have good cheap storage (maybe by heating things)
EV are sold with toxic and expensive batteries right now. What batteries are you imagining?
You believe fairy tales and happy thoughts. Not going to work out that way, especially as China and then India grow their carbon output. USA won'
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Nah what he is saying is that if we going to do EV (or presumably anything else climate change related), it better be something which can magically show a marked difference within a year and not something which is a multi year journey.
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my apologies, replied to wrong post
yes nuclear is possible answer. our power generation should be heart of response and main effort, not what type of appliances use power.
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As for nuclear though wind and solar have both caught up and they don't have the downside that a wealthy businessman living hundreds or thousands of miles away can skip maintenance or cut corners on manufacturing and cause a massive localized disaster that evacuates a city for 10 years.
Nuclear's problem isn't technical it's socia
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Realistically personal automobiles are a dead end. There isn't enough metals on the planet to give everyone their own car let alone roads for them in places people can live.
The golden age of personal automobiles might be coming to a close, but private vehicle ownership will always be available to those who can afford it. We're also not too far off from the same thing happening with housing. The average median income isn't enough to buy the average brand new car and the average house - the people who are buying these things are all on the upper side of the income spectrum.
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I think we should bring back diesel in all its glory and screw catalytic converters. There was a time I could smoke a cigar in the lobby of the hospital.
Try smoking a cigarette in your own back yard in Norway in 2022.
You start hearing windows all over the place slam.
It's not about people not liking the smell of smoke, they never did. It's that everyone can smell it now. In the good old days, we couldn't even tell when some
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As a smoker in Norway, let me assure you that EVs pay off for everyone except smokers.
I was a smoker for a bunch of years, and I am sympathetic as I understand what it's like to be addicted to tobacco, but let me just say that the whole idea that you are going to make this complaint is hilarious. EVs are about emissions, and you're upset about how reducing their emissions means people notice your emissions.
Back when we had diesel, this was NOT a problem, now, even I can smell cigarettes.
I don't get at all the mentality that you want everyone to be abused so people don't notice you're abusing people. Just take your smoking habit out to some undeveloped area where nobody ha
China seems unstoppable in the (Score:2)
I might be wrong. If that's the case, I'll readily admit I was wrong and encourage my grandkids to learn Chinese. But China has to actually EARN the top spot. No smoke and mirrors, a
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As Elon Musk noted. There should be NO ev subsidies. Problem solved. The only thing its doing is empowering traditional car makers to stay afloat a few more years. Tesla is the only one who can MAKE MONEY selling electric vehicles. Without the subsidies Ford or GMC wouldn't be able to sell you an EV for less than $80,000.
I suspect Ford and GM would continue to do just fine without subsidies as well. The majority of people who can't afford or don't want Teslas will happily continue to buy gas powered cars. Problem solved.
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As Elon Musk noted. There should be NO ev subsidies.
Why do I have a feeling he only said that after the subsidies for Tesla ran out?
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As Elon Musk noted. There should be NO ev subsidies. Problem solved. The only thing its doing is empowering traditional car makers to stay afloat a few more years.
There should be no oil subsidies, either. The only reason we need EV subsidies is that having them while having oil subsidies is slightly better than not having them while having the other. We should eliminate both kinds of subsidy.
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Can you imagine the field day that Trump, DeSantis, Tucker Carlson and the rest of the GOP will have with the idea of US EV subsidies going to Europe?
If they can't figure some way of getting their minions pissed about it with a short two or three word catchphrase, they'll ignore it in favor of culture war issue du jour. Worrying about subsidies going to Europe is too old school politics for their tastes. Now if the EV subsides somehow involve drag queens, yeah, they'll jump right on that.
Distributed economy more efficient (Score:4, Interesting)
> China's long-term goal is self sufficiency in all advanced technology
That won't work due to David Ricardo's "comparative advantage". No one nation can do everything well.
While we learned from the pandemic it's best not to put all the eggs in one basket, a handful of nations can still specialize to have better parts. We can distribute the specialties among democracies but make sure no single nation monopolizes on key components: always have a spare.
And it's not just specialization, but competition. If China locks out foreign competitors, their own industries will not be challenged enough to make the hard decisions necessary to keep up. China would lose competitiveness if they tried to do everything themselves.
As far as Asian democracies, we need to make sure they are not left out of the trade agreements. Otherwise, they'll buddy up to China to survive.
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No nation can do everything optimally, at the very least foreign nations can provide natural resources cheaper. But optimal production isn't necessarily the policy goal, sometimes the honour of taking back land or population which they feel belongs to their nation is the policy goal.
If China ever wants to have the possibility to at least temporarily survive blockading Taiwan to "allow" them into running a "referendum" which will say they want to join China, they will need a high level of autarky. After that
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> China's long-term goal is self sufficiency in all advanced technology
That won't work due to David Ricardo's "comparative advantage". No one nation can do everything well.
Yes, but now "able to do everything" has become critical to a nation's survival even if some aren't done "well", because thanks to the US, anything a nation cannot do *will* be weaponised and used against them. Any gap in China's tech capability *are already* being used against them, so they are already left with no choice but to become self-sufficient on all tech.
It used to be that China only focused on self-sufficiency in the areas of food production and military (including space capability), essentially
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China needs to make more friends. Russia, N. Korea, and Iran won't be able to bail them out of problems.
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China doesn't have much choice but to try to be self-sufficient, because somebody keeps enacting trade embargoes and trying to bully the rest of the world into doing the same.
Self-sufficiency isn't the same thing as "good at everything." It means you can get by if you have to.
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If this gets into a debate over which nation is the bigger jerk, I'm out. It would never end.
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The article casts China's attempts to develop its own chip industry as protectionism, or IP theft. It's not, it's a response to sanctions. It also happens to be something a lot of countries are doing because they've all suddenly decided that being able to manufacture their own semiconductors is a matter of national security.
Assignment of jerkiness is subjective and left to the reader.
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> Assignment of jerkiness is subjective and left to the reader.
Aren't these your words?
> because somebody keeps enacting trade embargoes and trying to bully the rest of the world...
You didn't "leave it to the reader" there.
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I guess you're objecting to "bully?"
Replace that word with "enforce third party sanctions on" if you must. Or maybe read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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No one nation can do everything well.
Disagree. Any nation with a broad spectrum of resources physically could do everything well, by promoting universal education and rational resource allocation. They don't, but it's not because they can't. It's because there's too much money to be made for a privileged few by doing it another way.
China and the US are both excellent examples of this. Each of them could produce everything they need to not only exist, but continue to be extremely successful. But both are being choked out from within by unsustai
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> China's long-term goal is self sufficiency in all advanced technology
That won't work due to David Ricardo's "comparative advantage". No one nation can do everything well.
While we learned from the pandemic it's best not to put all the eggs in one basket, a handful of nations can still specialize to have better parts. We can distribute the specialties among democracies but make sure no single nation monopolizes on key components: .
So, what happens if one of those democracies changes to be autocratic or something later on?
All stop?
I don't mean just the US lurching towards such a scenario, there are some countries in the EU which shows similar symptoms, not to mention NATO members like Turkey, etc.
Cold war feelings... (Score:2)
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Look at it this way, at least now that "scariness" is being put into building cheap EVs.
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The EU is just the globalist status quo preserving machine it was build to be, by the US.
A grand bargain has great strategic military value (Score:2)
Allies should reward each other instead of (by a vast margin!) paying for the entirety of the PRC armed forces then paying trillions over time to contain them.
The PRCs army and government are completely subsidized by foreign exchange down to the last nail in Uigher concentration camps and all the equipment used to control its humans.
Greed allowed trade to fund secular democracy's most effective enemies, Russia and China and its less effective enemies, the Saudi royal family/government and the Iranian mulloc
Re:A grand bargain has great strategic military va (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem wasn't just greed, it was also good intentions and economists. The good intention was the concept that global integration and prosperity would prevent war. Meanwhile economists fear the barbarian protectionists above all else, they will lie and trade with mass murderers before agreeing on anything which smells of protectionism no matter the reason. Protecting democracy? There is no democracy in economic theory.
Never attribute to virtue what is.. (Score:3)
...more easily explained by vice. The record of destructive US outsourcing should dispose of any respect for the motives of our ruling class.
A famous example is the clothing industry which moved from the Northeast to the Southeast chasing lower labor costs then when containerized freight made sewing overseas less expensive the clothing and related businesses followed. My father was a management consultant during the American phase. He saw the writing on the wall but there was no way to keep US businesses c
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The good intention was the concept that global integration and prosperity would prevent war
That's for nonessentials. When you've got nations depending on other nations for the very survival of their people then it's more likely to lead to wars over resources.
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The problem wasn't just greed, it was also good intentions and economists. The good intention was the concept that global integration and prosperity would prevent war.
Before both world wars Germany's largest trading partner was France.
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I defy you to point out any such. We have more than sufficient PRC shills but you do you.
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Allies should reward each other instead of (by a vast margin!) paying for the entirety of the PRC armed forces then paying trillions over time to contain them.
Sure, and as soon as you figure out how to get the MIC out of politics, that can happen. But under capitalism, this is the inevitable end.
Pay (Score:4, Insightful)
How about paying people what they're worth? You're always going to run into the problem of people creating chips elsewhere unless you offer them a market, or above market, wage.
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whoever gets AGI first, wins (Score:2)
to see who will be the hegemon
and treat other countries like a pawn
https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
European auto industry is toast anyway (Score:3)
Free Trade is DEAD (Score:2)
Cry me an EV river (Score:2)
Look, we're doing this.
It's for the species, boys and girls.
Now, let's expire all fossil fuel infrastructure tax subsidies, tax depreciation allowances, set-asides (such as power shaping requirements), exclusions (such as whale oil, kerosene, etc), and exemptions.
Today.