I’m pro-common sense. The anti-Chinese crowd on HN is just as annoying and uninformed as the pro-Chinese crowd. China has access to the rest of the world, and Trump is helping out with pushing the rest of the world toward China. So what if the USA is the largest consumer market in the world? China can replace them with internal consumption and developing world markets that are rapidly growing. Have you visited Australia recently? They don’t give a rats ass about protecting their auto market (they don’t produce any anymore), so Chinese cars are taking over. And in Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, not to mention Africa. and definitely China is more interested in selling an EV to an African country than selling rubber dog poop to America. Moving up the value chain is a long sought goal for them anyways.

That vehicles make up 4% of their exports in 2024 is already telling because it was 0% only a few years ago. None of the clean tech was there a few years ago, they had no leadership in AI a few years ago, they weren’t producing fully mobile robots a few years ago. If you think they are stuck just because I’d a moribund real estate market and a demographic decline, well, I don’t see how that is even possible at this point.

Trump sh*tting on allies and enemies alike is more in china’s favor than the consumption they lose from the states. Even Mexico and Canada could get tired of the USA and just go full in with China if Trump pushes them too hard.