The Chinese automaker BYD (Build Your Dreams) announces a 700-mile range PHEV that will be built in Mexico, this year. 
CarBuzz on the Shark
Please consider BYD Provides First Look At Shark Pickup Truck Ahead Of Imminent Debut
Chinese automaker BYD (Build Your Dreams) has unveiled the first official images of the Shark, an electrified truck that will be sold globally. Without camouflage, we finally get to see the truck in all its glory. Three teaser images show us a lot of the styling, which appears to have taken inspiration from several Western pickup trucks.
For a start, the headlights appear very similar to those found on the Ford F-150 Lightning, while the rear end shares a resemblance with the first-generation Volkswagen Amarok. A lightbar, which stretches across the tailgate, links the rear lights with each other.
The interior remains a mystery, but we shouldn’t have to wait much longer, as a reveal is expected on May 14. BYD hasn’t revealed much information regarding the Shark but describes its off-roading abilities as “robust” and notes that it will boast DMO technology. This Dual Mode Off-road Super Hybrid technology enables superior range and impressive performance. First applied to the Fangchengbao Bao 5 SUV, the architecture uses Cell to Chassis (CTC) technology. This integrates the battery pack into the chassis, reducing weight and improving vehicle safety.
The Shark will adopt a hybrid setup (presumably plug-in) better suited to a workhorse. While electric trucks are good to drive and efficient, their range remains a hindrance, particularly when venturing into remote areas or towing a heavy load.
A combined range of around 745 miles is expected, although this was likely calculated on the optimistic CLTC cycle. BYD has no plans to enter the American market, but we’d expect lower EPA estimates if it did. When it arrives, it will rival the Ford Ranger PHEV and the upcoming Gladiator 4XE, which Jeep CEO Antonio Filosa confirmed is coming in 2025.
The Shark
Why Mexico?
EqualOcean reports BYD’s First New Energy Pickup Truck Officially Announced to Debut in Mexico on May 14th
From the outside, SHARK has a square front end with a large BYD logo and a large silver cross-country style bumper design; it is equipped with exterior devices such as rear wraparound footrests and roof racks, which make it easy for users to get in and out of the cargo box while also expanding cargo loading capacity; and it has a higher utility and functional value, emphasizing its cross-country application position.
In terms of power, the BYD SHARK will most likely be available in both plug-in hybrid and electric versions, and it is built on the DMO Super Hybrid Off-Road platform, which is supposedly compatible with engines of two different displacements: 1.5T and 2.0T.
One of the reasons BYD Auto chose Mexico as the SHARK’s launch destination is because the company regards the Mexican market in its global strategic plan. According to the Mexican Statistics Institute and the Mexican Association of Automobile Distribution Enterprises, Chinese automobiles such as BYD and JAC will account for 19.5% of the Mexican market in 2023, with sales of 129,329,000 units, a 63% increase over the previous year. Mexico’s local new energy automotive sector is weak; the proportion of local brands is low; at the same time, the market is dominated by fuel vehicles; the new energy vehicle market share is limited; and new energy vehicles have the potential to bend the road to overtake.
Furthermore, Mexico has long been the world’s seventh-largest car producer; the domestic auto parts industry’s supporting services are complete; the industry chain is more complete; and there is a big number of automotive industry producers in the country. At the same time, Mexico announced a number of policies to stimulate new energy transformation, including the implementation of applicable tram favourable policies and subsidies. Since 2022, Tesla, Ford, Nissan, and other automakers have announced the construction (or expansion) of Mexican facilities. General Motors and other automakers are also intending to adapt their production lines to accommodate the production of electric vehicles. Overall, the Mexican vehicle consumer market and manufacturing capacity have considerable upside and an optimistic future.
BYD Auto’s move is intended not only to service the Mexican market, but also to shape the North American market and establish a pioneering point of strategic consideration.
Meanwhile, Back In the States
Meanwhile, back in the states we wasted years developing fully electric EVs that no one seems to want.
When it finally arrives, the rival the Ford Ranger PHEV is expected to have an electric driving range of just 28 miles. The European launch is slated for 2025.
A Ford spokesperson confirmed to CarBuzz that “The Ranger PHEV is for Europe, Australia and New Zealand. For customers in North America looking for a hybrid or electric truck, we currently offer Maverick Hybrid, F-150 PowerBoost Hybrid and F-150 Lightning.”
Ford Loses $36,000 on Each EV, Cuts Production of Electric Trucks
On January 20, I commented Ford Loses $36,000 on Each EV, Cuts Production of Electric Trucks
Ford will shut down one of two production shifts in April at the Dearborn, Michigan, factory that builds the F-150 Lightning electric pickup. The move is part of “matching F-150 Lightning production to customer demand,” the company said Friday.
General Motors recently made a similar announcement about its Chevrolet Silverado EV, announcing it would postpone adding production facilities for the truck, which went into production last spring for corporate customers.
Losing $36,000 per EV sounds like a lot, but it’s actually quite the bargain, because on April 26, I noted …
Good News: Ford Loses $132,000 on Each EV Produced
The good news was Ford sales were down 20 percent holding the losses to $1.3 billion.
And despite $2 Billion in Subsidies, Only 2 EV Stations Opened, the Holdup is Social Justice
In yet another example of Biden incompetence, the administration is setting up rules making it harder to deliver EV charging stations.
Elon Musk Fires 10 Percent of Tesla Workforce
On April 15, I noted Elon Musk Fires 10 Percent of Tesla Workforce, Prepares for “Next Phase of Growth”
In preparation for more growth, Musk issues a memo announcing an workforce cut of 10 percent and two top Tesla (TSLA) executives resign.
One does not prepare for growth by firing staff, pausing construction of the giga semi factory, and repeating the same hollow lies every year since 2016.
Picking Winners
If Team Biden was not so hell bent on picking winners and insisting on fully electric vehicles, might I suggest we would be much further along with our climate and mileage mandates?
Meanwhile, Back in Mexico
Back in Mexico, Tesla, Ford, Nissan, and other automakers have announced the construction or expansion of facilities.
And here’s the final irony Biden Wants EVs so Badly That He Will Quadruple Tariffs on Them
Despite everyone rushing to Mexico to build the cars and Trucks that we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption, Biden is going to quadruple taxes on them.
As a result, US consumers will overpay so much, that few people will want them despite huge subsidies. This is why you lose $132,000 on each EV.
I can’t stop laughing a Chinese plug-in truck with a 745 mile range…Battery would last 2 years and the truck weighs 6 tons unless it’s all marketing lies.
Equipped with the latest Huawei technology.
Tesla is laying off 10% of its workforce and Tesla cars are being stockpiled. See other article HERE on Mishtalk.com
BTW, Gavin Newsom, CA Governor, gave BYD over $1.5B of California taxpayer monies to BYD. Originally, two contracts to provide masks during Covid. Californians didn’t receive any, because they were defective. BYD issued a small refund, less than 250K. These two sales were not reported (required by law) to California’s governmental oversight, nor to the taxpayers.
What is the cost of battery pack replacement as it is integrated(?) into the chasis?
Its set up for one time use then recycle
bring back the Deux Chevaux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV
(80 miles per gallon)
That and the Renault 4L were great off-road vehicles in really remote areas. They were ridiculously easy to repair with basic tools and when stuck you could unload it and with four or five people carry it over the rough spots.
Vive la Citroën 2CV.
Lots of people say they love their PHEV but a study shows that the owners rarely plug them in at night so they are primarily using them as ICE cars.
How Often Do Owners Actually Charge Their Plug-in Hybrids? (autoweek.com)
This is important because the PHEVs do not get the mileage expected, advertised and do receive subventions.
Why would one buy a PHEV and not use it as it should be used? There could be many reasons but the most logical reason is sloth. Since you don’t have to charge it up to get it out of the garage there is not much motivation to take the time to charge it up it in the first place.
Maybe they don’t want the battery to wear out sooner (?), so they don’t charge it so often. Like with a smartphone’s lithium batteries. Just a thought.
Brainstorming: I am hoping that EV / PHEV car batteries will all become as interchangeable and modular as ICE car batteries have been. Sure they are bigger battery banks, but I would buy a boxy EV/PHEV truck, if I knew the battery was easy to replace, swap out for a charged one at a truck stop, or to eject it onto the side of the road if it overheated and caught on fire. Battery tech could also advance independently of vehicle tech.
A car with a 300 h.p. gasoline engine plus the electric motor of a lawn mower, evidently is most polluting than an ICE car with a motor of 150 h.p.
Welcome to eco farce.
Not enough information in any of the articles including this one.
Until we know the battery size and more about the hybrid power train, it is impossible to evaluate this in real detail. Skepticism is in order, given the Chinese track record of pumping out shoddy merchandise and then lying about it. One thing to note is that Warren Buffett is a longtime investor in BYD, which should make the conspiracy theorists here drool.
Warren Buffet made a multi-billion dollar investment in BYD stating that the CEO had one of the most brilliant engineering minds he’d ever seen. I have a couple of friends in Europe who have recently purchased BYD vehicles and say they are by far the best cars they’ve ever owned. We Americans can’t have them of course because our masters hate liberty.
I am always astounded that the Chevy hybrid system in the volt never took off. It’s much more efficient because the gas is used to generate electricity and it’s not a dual drivetrain which makes it cheaper and more efficient. Americans are just stupid
I was a huge fan of the Voltec system and was dumbfounded when GM dropped it. Here are two articles that explain it. Apparently, Voltec was too expensive.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-general-motors-is-ditching-the-chevy-volt
https://www.torquenews.com/8861/gm-was-right-stop-making-chevrolet-volt
Good things usually are too expensive.
Usually they are worth it.
I posted a reply with links to two articles, but it is in moderation. I dunno why, but don’t hold your breath. Chevy killed Voltec because it was too expensive, and those cars lost money.
It is, over all, quite a lot less efficient than HSD (Hybrid Synergy Drive) from Prius and now everyone else. The losses: From generating electricity, then using that electricity to turn the wheels, is quite a bit higher than bypassing the “electricity” part and powering the wheels directly.
Diesel electric trains do it the “Chevy way”, and are quite efficient. But that stems from running generator engines narrowly tuned for peak efficiency at one specific rpm. And even so; they are less efficient than a direct drive would be: The reason for the electric driveline, is the requirement for immense starting torque at zero speed, which would burn out any clutch before the train got up to speed almost regardless of any realistic mechanical gearing.
For very intermittent-load uses like passenger cars, it is unlikely you’ll get anything more efficient than HSD. Pure electric is more efficient, but pound for pound has not nearly the range. And costs a comparable fortune. And requires a much more “always on everywhere” infrastructure. And even so: The full cycle efficiency difference is not that big (for the general case. If you live next to a hydro power station and never leave the neighborhood, an optimized BEV is hard to beat. Ditto if you already have adequate solar installed for emergency/prepping.): ICEs are terribly inefficient at stop-and-go. But once up to a speed where they can run in their efficient range, they’re not that bad. HSD lets electric power; derived freely from brake regen, plus from load on the engine when lightly loaded, bringing it into efficient range; handle the most egregiously inefficient ICE stop-and-go miles. Resulting in a far-from-all-that-inefficient mix for most real-world use.
The losses: From generating electricity, then using that electricity to turn the wheels, is quite a bit higher than bypassing the “electricity” part and powering the wheels directly.
You not looking at both sides of the equation. Yes, the inefficiency of diesel generators + the loss in electric motors makes a diesel electric locomotive maybe 25% thermally efficient.
The U.S. electricity generation infrastructure is about 45% efficient, maybe a bit more as natural gas continues to replace coal. Transmission loss is 6%. Another 12% to 15% gets lost between the wall outlet and the wheels via the wiring, the inverter, the batteries, and the electric motors.
Bottom line: Roughly the same.
My God, it’s as if the whole economy was set up to squeek past a finish line in November. After that, we are “finished”
the incompetence is truly astounding.
I’m not even sure hybrids make much sense when the upfront cost is higher and the battery will eventually become an issue.
Hmmmm. So what you are saying is that a little niche company called Toyota doesn’t know what they are doing? Toyota has firmly and publically adopted the hybrid strategy!
No, Toyota knows exactly what they are doing…selling the hype. I’m saying consumers don’t know what they are doing. You have drive a lot of miles in a hybrid for the gas savings to make up for the difference in upfront cost and then at that point may have to deal with the battery. That means you may never save money over just buying a non hybrid.
Batteries are MUCH smaller, hence less of a potential issue, in hybrids. By augmenting peak power requirements, the hybrid add-ons allows for a simpler ICE to be used; going quite some way towards keeping overall complexity from increasing.
To get the very most out of it all, does require a slippery car. A boxy pickup will never be as good a candidate as a Prius. Despite their much closer EPA ratings, at 90+mph into a headwind in Utah, the Prius is twice as efficient as the Rav4. A pickup would be left even further behind.
Also: constant high-load, which is the case if a pickup is near permanently attached to a heavy trailer and driven on freeways, does negate the main advantages of a hybrid setup. For that sort of use, a straight diesel makes more sense.
Hybrid batteries are cheap. Toyota has many hybrids out there with 200k+ miles that are still going strong. ICE vehicles are going to complex turbo systems with extensive emissions systems that make them a bigger maintenance headache than hybrids. Hybrid vehicles don’t have as many extra parts as people believe since they don’t need to be turbocharged or all the emissions crap (plus they can eliminate certain things, such as a starter). Toyota’s hybrid transmissions have been impressively reliable, and transmissions are a notoriously weak link for ICE vehicles. I’ll take replacing a hybrid battery over a transmission any day.
Hybrid is the path forward. It always was. Especially for work trucks. Ford had to have known. Horrible leadership over there.
On a sidebar, I just figured out something with my small Nissan truck. The plastic bed liner, it has slots in it for horizontal boards which enables me to haul 4X8 sheets of drywall / wood above the wheel wells.
The tailgate can also be adjusted even with the horizontal boards. I can’t haul much, maybe 6 sheets but that’s all I needed. I’ve owned the truck for years. No idea.
If Ford made an F150 like the upcoming RamCharger I would buy it yesterday. Instead, I will have to go with the RamCharger. In the isolated desert west I need all the range I can get and 690 miles will work out great.
BYD has been the exploder cars in China, some really good videos. A guy who lived near me when I was there has posted a lot on BYD, serpentza on his yt channel.
200,000 ICE Vehicle Fires EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
Update your Fossil Fuels FUD.
That is a lie told by a no-name insurance company, and it was debunked. Stop lying.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a40163966/cars-catching-fire-new-york-times-real-statistics/
US has no strategy. Next year Trump will change the Biden’s plan.
Democratic will change after 2028 election again.
… and Santa will finally bring you that pony.
Presidents don’t do much. Congress is where the action is. Trump wanted to get rid of Obamacare and build a wall. Congress, even a Republican Congress, said no. But folks only care about the president, while voting back into power their Senators and House reps every time. And then bitching and moaning when nothing changes.
A President like Biden might not do much; “his” Exec Branch sure does. Detailed regulations are not passed by Congress; they are issued by the Article II branch.
Isn’t Competition Wonderful ?
Why do I get the suspicion that the claims of auto manufacturers are suspect? 700 mile range? In what universe? Elon et al have been found to spread misinformation far and wide. How much snake oil do consumers want or need?
I forgot to mention that BYD has an abysmal safety record in China. The CCP is doing a great job of hiding the horrors that occur daily due to BYD battery cars.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HpkDUWAKFM
How about the 200,000 ICE Vehicles that catch Fire in the US EVERY SINGLE YEAR??
Go back to FUD school and get more updated baloney to spew.
Several issues you ‘forgot’: your youtube link is about a Huawei car. Not BYD. I guess you don’t realize that BYD typically uses lithium phosphate iron batteries which don’t tend to ‘burst into flames’. They do that for safety and cost reasons, but pay the price in lower energy storage capacity.
Consider using a search engine, or local library.
The 700 mile range is taking into account the gasonline motor. The Shark PHEV probably can’t travel more than 30 to 40 miles on battery power alone.
We know someone with a very expensive Range Rover hybrid – they say it does maybe 50km on the battery
When you think about it, that’s more than enough battery-only range for running typical errands around town and the gasoline engine is still there for backup or longer road trips. Plus, you can charge PHEVs overnight from a regular 110-volt household outlet.
From that standpoint, PHEVs make alot of sense. However, I do question their enormous complexity, expense (for now) and how all of that technology is going to age.
They are more complex, but so are internal combustion engines. If auto manufacturers have any skill at all, it is building and managing highly complex products.
The batteries are not that expensive to replace on PHEVs because they are much, much smaller than those on full EVs. Especially from established players dedicated to the space like Toyota (and BYD). And you save more than enough on gas over the years to pay for it.
Short version: It won’t age well as tech vs EVs, although as more hybrids are created with better overall gas mileage, the Legacy Automakers don’t need to make their Trucks and SUVs absurdly large to avoid CAFE Fuel Standards, which means Trucks and SUVs can shrink back down to “Normal Size”, which makes it easier to get better mileage, etc.
30 miles. WOW.
The claim is 60 miles electric-only. I have not been able to find a battery size anywhere, so there is no way to verify that.
The EV Fan Boys believe anything no matter how ridiculous
ICE Fan Girls believe that ICE vehicles will still be sold because America is behind on building out their EVs. (Except Tesla and a couple others.)
The largest Auto Market in the world is already converted and so are plenty of advanced countries. Simply put, as EVs continue to increase in popularity globally, the Economies of Scale go away for ICE vehicles.
EVs are decreasing in cost and price. GM is losing its ICE business in China, which used to be half its sales. This is already happening globally and the US will also adapt as parts for ICE vehicles that are no longer made go out of supply and increase in price. Been happening for a decade.
Is there anything more tiresome than an EVangelist?
ICE vehicles will not only still be sold but will be the overwhelming majority of vehicles sold for the for the rest of our lifetimes due to the simple fact that the electrical grid can not support everyone owning an EV. Common sense needn’t be your enemy, try thinking.
Easy to get a high range in hybrids. If I put an extra 10 gal saddle tank in my Prius it would have close to a 900 mile range
Yes, and if I put another 40 gallon tank in my truck, it would have a 900 mile range. So what?
U just gotta drive it real slow, mang!
700 miles counts the ICE.
I do not know the pure electric range
The claim is 60 miles, but it’s a Chinese company and we all know how shoddy much of their merchandise is and how much they lie. The key is the size of the battery and how much capacity is held in reserve. Hybrids typically hold a lot in reserve because they go through a lot more charge cycles than BEVs on account of the batteries being smaller. So both numbers are needed to check the claim. The stories, including your post based on that hype, are sorely lacking in details.
Claimed electric range is 60 miles, which would make gas range 640 miles. They claim 30 mpg, if that’s gas only it would entail a 21.3 gallon fuel tank. If 30 mpg is a blend that includes electric fuel economy, the gas tank would need to be a couple gallons bigger to hit a 700-mile range.
That’s not outlandish, but with the caveat that the Chinese pretty much lie about everything. As of yet there are no detailed drive drain specs in the articles, so all we can do for now is make some educated guesses. By the way, Warren Buffett is a longtime investor in BYD. Conspiracy theorists, start your engines!
As the article says, it’s WTLP (Chinese) Range, which is higher than EPA.
Also, China, which has a lot more stop and go traffic benefits from Regenerative Braking more.
You know nothing. I doubt you own an EV (I do, along with a diesel truck and a gas SUV), because if you did, you would not hype regen. An EV uses much more power starting its motion than it gets from regen when it slows down. EVs don’t do especially well in city traffic, and once your speed goes past about 45 mph on a highway, their fuel economy drops quite a bit because there is no overdrive gearing.
As for regen, it is a function of traction batteries. Its main value by far is slowing the EV down and permitting one-pedal driving. Regen adds hardly anything back to the battery. Anyone who owns an EV knows it. To cite regen as a fuel economy factor is just stupid.
Between your ludicrous claim about regen and your repetition of discredited numbers of ICEV fires, you have established yourself here as an EVangelist fanguuurl bullshitter. Now, fanguuurl, go do something useful and make us some sammiches. Thanks, and do try not to be such an idiot.
“Despite everyone rushing to Mexico to build the cars and Trucks that we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption..”.
Even the sane become insane over gloBull warming. Why do we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption? Even if one did believe the nonsense about reducing necessary CO2, one certainly wouldn’t replace gas cars with electric, which would produce more CO2 and pollution.
We are at historic lows in CO2 and this last warming period coming out of the little ice age produced a lower high in temps. Civilizations expand with higher CO2, warming, and cooperation, and contract with the opposites. The Nutjob Neocons and mother WEFers have been wanting to reduce the population for many decades – any way possible (i.e. war, jabs, abortion). Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a eugenicist, admitting that Roe V Wade was not about woman’s rights, but about controlling the population.
Pushing EV’s are like everything else that is pushed by the Great Reset / Build Back Better crowd of Nutjobs and Useful Idiots – they get us closer to the cliff of destruction and desperation, where it is believed the Sheeple will be desperate enough to settle for their plan for global Communism. What they fail to understand is this also provides the necessary condition where the masses have nothing left to lose, and will lose it in Revolution, provided they can avoid the Nutjob plan for Civil War.
How do EVs reduce fossil fuel consumption when the vast majority of electricity is generated using… coal and gas. hahahahaha Clown World
In related news, the local utility is having a meeting about rates. One of the other topics is that the hydroelectric system in the Pacific Northwest is at capacity, and what’s left is getting sucked into server farms both for data and soon for AI.
By the way, the Democrats in Seattle want to tear out four hydro dams on the Snake River to improve their fishing vacations.
AI is gonna be an energy disaster. We got bored with crypto, but AI is only going to grow, and it’s HUNGRY.
Thank you. NO ONE in favor of EV’s, with the idea that they REDUCED the consumption of DIESEL FUEL (mining ops) will admit this to themselves.
Thus, the LUNACY CONTINUES.
Depends where you are. In China and Germany it’s coal. In France it’s nuclear. In the US it’s gas. If you are a follower of Greta however, no machines whatsoever is the only true way to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
1. They’re WAY more efficient per mile.
2. Many EV Owners already have Solar panels and Battery Storage at their homes…so NO Coal or Gas.
3. The Grid gets Greener and more renewable energy every month. Coal is going away in a hurry in the advanced western economies.
4. Battery Storage Systems are rapidly expanding and replacing the need for Old Fossil Fuels Power Plants as Baseload and Off-Peak power can be stored instead of wasted.
These have ALL been ramping up for years and simply less Fossil Fuels needed in the advanced developed world as these hit critical mass.
Cheers!
Keep huffing on those poisonous exhaust fumes from your tailpipe. It clearly does wonders for your logic.
Put your tinfoil hat on and everything will be okay.
Way Oversized Trucks and SUVs built BIG to avoid CAFE Fuel Standards are unnecessary and they will shrink back to “normal and large” trucks as they don’t have to hit those standards as they are EVs and Zero Emissions.
Colossal waste of resources and unnecessary size increases to avoid regulations was silly but will ultimately lead to more reasonable prices and sizes for vehicles in the near future.
So now the EVangelist fanguuurl is scared of big pickup trucks. Will the stupidity never end?
129 million units is 20% of the 2023 Mexican car market? Man, I thought ‘Muricans loved their cars… that’s 5 cars per person including the kids and old abuelas!
I was a bit confused by that number as well. I assume it’s largely export … because they will seriously need to expand their driveways if Mexico is going to have that many cars added each year.
“According to the Mexican Statistics Institute and the Mexican Association of Automobile Distribution Enterprises, Chinese automobiles such as BYD and JAC will account for 19.5% of the Mexican market in 2023, with sales of 129,329,000 units, a 63% increase over the previous year.”
I must need moar coffee, this makes it sound like 129MM vehicles were sold in Mexico in 2023, which “seems high” considering in 2022 its population was 127.5MM. What is my simpleton brain missing here?
Gotta be a typo. I’m sure it was meant to be 129,329 units (129K).
“Despite everyone rushing to Mexico to build the cars and Trucks that we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption, Biden is going to quadruple taxes on them.”
Are you suggesting trade deficits don’t matter, and we can borrow and spend our way to prosperity? Or are you just looking at something in isolation and drawing wrong conclusions?
My position is clear. If it’s good for the consumer, it’s good for the US. I would not have tariffs, stated many times.
Consider the BYD Seagull https://www.yahoo.com/tech/small-well-built-chinese-ev-055434766.html Only $12,000 in China. Nearly as good a deal as the Chevy Bolt I bought for one of the kids @ $8,000 for Christmas with the Utility and Govt. rebates.
Why should I worry? My core investment owns 6% of BYD and most of the ‘investors’ here support a guy who’s fornicating his way into the White House while promising to reduce taxes further?
In free trade, the trade imbalance would lead a reduction in the value of the currency and thus price inflation. Thus we get it either way. But we don’t have free trade, we have managed trade. We also live in extend and pretend. Thus the damage of trade imbalances accumulate and gut the nation. The short term cheaper goods leads to deindustrialization, loss of jobs, and a loss of know how. The loss in know how is very serious which is evident in attempts to bring back chips factories. We no longer have skilled workers. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get serious. We can no long afford to be lazy, unmotivated Americans that buy stuff that other people make. It is a recipe for disaster.
This all started with Nixon killing the gold standard.
People want more government controls, fiscal controls, trade controls, tariffs, subsidies, whatever.
A gold standard coupled with forcing banks to hold deposits in short-term treasuries would provide the control we need.
No one is looking in that direction.
Officially Nixon killed the gold standard, but he didn’t really have much choice. The US government was already bankrupt, which forced the US to default.
Between spending infinity on the cold war, spending infinity on putting a man on the moon, and spending infinity on the “great bankrupt society”, the US government had already outgrown its tax base by the time Nixon entered office.
Blame Nixon for using (or allowing his staff to use?) intelligence agencies against political rivals. Blame Obama for the same.
But lets all admit that the 1972 US government default was caused by way way way too much spending
Mish, not disagreeing with the “no tarriffs” part…. but wonder how consumers can consume without income (aka a job)?
Need to balance the “free trade” (which I agree with in principle) with having good paying jobs that allow consumers to consume.
Underemployment – alleged college educated persons working at Starbucks or in call centers or in perpetual sales jobs – is not going to pay the bills. Sales people help sell stuff obviously, but they don’t add anywhere near the economic value of people who create stuff. America has focused 110% on sales, diverting compensation from R&D and from manufacturing, to pay endless sales commissions. In isolation (one person’s view), this might be OK or even a good thing. But a country full of useless salespeople (and little else) is a country that cannot afford to consume.
If (and this is the $64K question) consumers have decent jobs (even if they change careers), then free trade works great. The over-emphasis of sales makes sense at an individual level, but it is economically fatal at a macro level.
Tarriffs are politically popular to some, but they don’t even address much less solve the underlying mismatch
“Are you suggesting trade deficits don’t matter,..”
“We” are running trade deficits because “we” can not competitively produce anything. Which “we” can not do, because “our” costs are too high. Which they are because “we” have a government which insists on keeping them artificially high. For no other reason than to enrich connecteds who can not compete; both “investors”/”owners”, “trade unions”, ambulance chasers and others.
The way to maximize competitiveness of Americans, is to afford them unfettered access to the cheapest. Of everything. From anywhere. Only then, can they compete freely, without their hands being tied behind their backs by some artificially imposed “requirement” to enrich connected dregs and leeches.
Sad thing is: America doesn’t even need to get it all THAT right: Everyone else plain sucks by now. Even Singapore is grotesquely uncompetitive compared to anything resembling a free country: Just try renting/buying/building meaningfully sized space there. It’s certainly much better than here, but not exactly hard to improve upon, if the goal was to do so, instead of it being solely to rob other Americans for the temporary benefit of a few connected leeches who neither comprehend nor contribute anything at all.