The Chines scholars are writing “smug little treatises on the value of a planned political economy”.
China is so big, they can crash everyone else’s economy before they crash their own.
It’s been well documented that China will be a leader in EV production, solar bio research for years. We are going back to the horse and buggy era wanting to burn only fossil fuels.
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Both the right and the left see what is bad:
“The big-picture outlook for energy is we are going to be less competitive because of this law,” said Nick Nigro of Atlas Public Policy. “Ten years from now we could look back on this moment as the time in which the U.S. pulled back and essentially lost the transition to clean energy.”
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"Loser: Electric vehicles
The Senate bill would end tax credits for the purchase of EVs after September. That is even quicker than the House version, which called for eliminating them for the most part by the end of the year. That would lead to higher EV prices analysts say, when the auto industry already faces a slower EV market.
Elon Musk, whose relationship as a key adviser to the president recently unraveled, called the latest version of the bill “utterly insane and destructive” on X. He didn’t advocate for the EV credit but said that damage to the solar and battery industry would “leave America extremely vulnerable in the future.”
He also railed against the legislation’s potential increase to the deficit and renewed promises to form a new political party.
Late Monday, Trump shot back on Truth Social. “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” Trump wrote."
"Can you hear it — that loud roar coming from the East? It’s the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese laughing at us.
The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to generate electricity through renewables — solar, battery and wind power in particular.
And why? Because they view those as “liberal” energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from A.I. data centers.
It is exactly the opposite of what China is doing. Indeed, Beijing may have to make July 4 its own national holiday going forward: American Electricity Dependence Day.
You cannot make this up: Even Saudi Arabia is doubling down on solar power to meet the needs of the A.I. data centers it wants to recruit from the West, while Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” actually does just the opposite. It quickly phases out tax credits enjoyed by utility-scale solar and wind — as well as electric vehicle tax credits. This virtually guarantees that China will own the future of solar energy, wind power and electric cars and trucks, as well as autonomous vehicles.
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So, in one fell swoop, this bill will make your home hotter, your air-conditioning bill higher, your clean energy job scarcer, America’s auto industry weaker and China happier. How does that make sense?
It doesn’t. And the person in America who knows that best is actually Elon Musk. It is really sad to me that Musk, who is without question one of America’s greatest manufacturing innovators — having started globally leading companies making electric vehicles, renewable rockets, battery storage and telecommunications satellites — has discredited himself with so many voters because of his dalliance with Trump and because of his Department of Government Efficiency’s capricious cuts to the government work force. Because of that, many will not understand the vital truth that Musk has been shouting to his fellow: Trump’s bill is “utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
This is not complicated and this is what China knows: There has never been a more intimate connection than there is now between a nation’s ability to generate huge amounts of electricity at affordable prices (and in the cleanest way possible) and its ability to develop A.I. engines that consume huge amounts of electricity as they learn and generate answers that could give us the tools we need to cure diseases, discover new materials and even produce the holy grail of cheap, clean, climate-saving fusion energy.
To put it differently, there has never been a more intimate connection between the amount of cheap, clean electricity a nation can generate for A.I. models and its future economic and military might.
That is why Musk and many others find it so “insane and destructive” that Trump and his G.O.P. cult have rejected an energy policy of “all of the above as clean as possible as fast as possible” — oil, natural gas, coal, wind, hydro, nuclear, solar, geothermal, hydrogen — that is always working to phase out the dirtiest for the cleanest, the way China often has. Instead, Trump has chosen instead to kneecap America’s renewable energy industry the way China has not. The president has even called clean energy tax credits a “scam,” saying he’d rather spend the money anywhere else. This is industrial-scale foolishness."
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very big shame that our best and brightest are writing articles like the one above, and are not in leadership positions. excellent writing by my favorite NYT oped columnist. he’s 1000% correct.
i don’t even care about the lost business. i think people will still buy phev / evs, especially as the infrastructure continues to be added. 20% of new car sales in 2024 were phev/evs. I’d imagine it’s much higher along the coasts. it won’t go to 0, but it also won’t grow.
it’s important to me that i live in a progressive, technologically-forward, innovative country. as excited as i was about the infrastructure bill in 2001, and even the IRA, this turd of a bill is the exact opposite. it has coal subsidies. it’s 2025 and we’re subsidizing coal. I think this bill is the worst piece of legislation i have ever seen congress pass in my lifetime.
over the past few months, i have met many people who already deeply regretted their choices last year. many were stunned. unfortunately for them, and for all of us, all sales are final.
look at elon, though. he managed to take an extremely innovative, industry pioneer, and absolutely run it into the ground because he paid for this. now, as his little public feud grows, and you see him start funding primary candidates, maybe even a few democrats, don’t shed a tear for him. yes, 45w going away won’t hurt tesla as much, but that doesn’t matter when your product is already toxic.
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Thomas Friedman has been wrong about so many things over the years, if he says water is wet, I have to double check. He’s a great salesman of terrible ideas.
Sorry bro, he’s not wrong on this. Our future vs. China is at stake over the power issue.
Doesn’t take an expert to see that.
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Congrats to the Tech & crypto bros. They got what they voted for.
Elon made several huge, UNFORCED, errors. One such example is:
Imagine a vehicle that has limited service requirements, low interaction with a dealership, the ability to never have to stop at a sketchy gas station again because you can charge it at TARGET, STARBUCKS, THE MALL or the comfort of your home…this sounds like a vehicle we should market to TECH BROS.
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You could lease some 911s for just the interest charge in that case.
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Ding dong, ding dong the wicked $7500 subsidy of the west is dead. About damn time.
The silliness of the EV era is over.
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Do we think that once the EV tax credit ends, that values on used EVs may temporarily plateau or even slightly rise if their lease rates become on par with gas cars?
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Global dominance in coal, here we come!!
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I hope you’re not a smoker. You’ll set that strawman on fire.
Based on my limited experience, some of those used ev already going up in price.
I have been tracking a couple models I am interested in for cheap daily. Pricing seems no different, in fact looks lower than a few months ago.
Carvana is offering more for my eqb n mini se vs 3 months ago. I am also tracking 2021 volvo xc40 recharge, 2023gv60 & 2023 gv70 electrified - their asking price seems to go up $1-2k higher. Ymmv.
Any crystal ball readers have thoughts on if Toyota will release their 2026 BEVs before the end of September? (CHR, BZ, RAV4 Plug In)
Wife gonna love it when I show her the positive equity in my rs etron gt
I’m pretty sure OEMs are still going to highly incentivize EVs.
You may not get $76 GMs but it still could be better than ICE.
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Any guesses on how manufacturers/dealerships are more likely to react to the tax incentives going away? Create some incentives of their own, or just accept that demand on their EVs will drop?
My lease is up in September and I don’t qualify for any of the current state/federal incentives because my income is too high, but I’ve been thinking about returning my lease when it’s up and going a month or two without a car to see if deals are better in October-November after the tax credits are gone.