Vote for people who will drop tariffs and allow the import of cheap EVs manufactured at scale.
US automakers have chosen to abandon anything not a $40k-$100k SUV or pickup truck, and purposely minimize production to optimize for profits over volume. You can either leave the country, pay the captive market tax, or import a cheap car when allowed to.
Chinese automakers cannot find enough marine capacity for exports at the moment (currently at a ~12M unit/year export run rate). Imports are allowed eventually imho, it’s just a matter of when (elections and representation turnover rate). Until then, the poor are held hostage for profits (as is tradition in the US).
The solution to car problems is not more cars. It's serious alternatives to driving. We don't need Chinese cars. We need trains, busses, and bikes.
The things you’re describing aren’t “alternatives to driving.” They perform a different function. Most Americans don’t aspire to live like Chinese people packed into high rises with 0.8 kids taking the train to work. They want to live where they want to live, then take their 2-3 kids to school and themselves to work 10-15 miles away without having to plan their lives around a public transit schedule.
I'm American, and I don't normally drive, because I use busses, bikes, and trains to get to my destinations. I sold my last (hopefully ever) car over a year ago.
I'm sorry to shatter the dreams of most Americans, but the world has finite resources. Buying a car when you're poor is hard, because cars are expensive, because they are extremely resource demanding. Even with all the subsidies drivers receive, they still usually struggle with the cost.
By the way, you don't have to look at public transit schedules when your public transit works. I recommend visiting countries outside the US that have functional infrastructure.
A majority of American households (58.4%) are childless and ~80% of Americans live in urban areas per the US Census Bureau. I think you might be misreading the desires of most Americans, based on the data.
I agree Americans love their cars, but will they love them with oil prices above $100-$120/barrel persistently? To be determined.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-american-households-hav...
> Personal preference plays a significant role in changing attitudes toward parenthood. Among Americans under 50 without children, 57% said they simply didn’t want kids, while 44% preferred to focus on other priorities. Financial concerns also weighed heavily, with 36% citing the cost of raising children—three times the rate among childless people over 50.
https://www.socialexplorer.com/home/post/the-us-urban-popula...
> According to the 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, approximately 286 million Americans (roughly 94 percent of the population) live in metropolitan statistical areas. Just 17.7 million people, about 6 percent, live entirely outside any metro or micropolitan area.
> The popular image of America as a land of small towns and open plains is, statistically speaking, a minority experience. The story of 21st-century America is, above all, a story of cities.
In the long term, yes, but infrastructure projects are famously drawn out in the US due to meddling from NIMBYs, companies puppeting sham environmental groups, and third parties forcing their way in and holding projects hostage unless they get a slice of the pie among other things.
It’s a battle worth fighting but public transport infrastructure isn’t going to happen overnight and people will need cars that won’t bankrupt them until then.
https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-st...
Never happens on the timescale of the next decade, maybe two. How far along is California high speed rail? When did they start?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail (construction began in 2015 and it won’t be operational until at least 2031, 16 years later) If you break ground today, you won’t see new public infrastructure operational for at least a decade. Brightline light rail was built in Florida and is approaching insolvency, even with 3M riders per year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
We could provide subsidies to move the disadvantaged to major urban cores with public transportation systems, I’d support that. Have to find the funds to do it though. Cheaper than trying to build anything new in the US for sure.
https://dailyyonder.com/half-of-all-rural-counties-are-losin...
https://ecpmlangues.unistra.fr/civilization/geography/map-us...
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/poverty-area-measures...
(Where will those bikes, busses, and trains you mention be built? China, as they are 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity)
I hear this a lot, but it’s not an excuse for never starting. Amsterdam started taking their non-car infrastructure seriously in the 1970s and now it’s seen as an example for the rest of the world.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”
Asking to see a realistic roadmap and timeline is being a realist, not a defeatist. If Amsterdam started in the 1970s, that’s fifty years ago. Maybe we can make progress by the 2060s-2070s? Or we can just wait for China to manufacture all the EVs the world needs. Which is more likely to occur first?
Consider the US has $40T in debt and no will to raise taxes at this time, and therefore no will to spend on public infrastructure projects. Where will the capital come from?
How and when will we start? How many elections need to occur to appropriate funding? How much of the US electorate has to turn over for the right people to be elected to appropriate funding? Until shovels are in the ground, it’s vaporware and dreams.
It doesn’t have to be a massive nationwide project on par with the national highway project. It can start with local communities.
The mayor of Carmel, IN thought traffic circles were better than intersections and wanted more mixed use development. They have that now, nearly every intersection in the city has been replaced over time as they were due for routine work.
In Detroit they are in the process of building out a 29 mile greenway around the city.
These city level projects are a lot more important than the national ones, when it comes to reducing car traffic in cities and having an impact on people’s most frequent trips.
Seeing this at a local level could inspire more rail connections between cities, which could also come from the private sector. We have already seen a couple examples of this.
For anything funded by the federal government, you’re right. They have a huge mess on their hands, and need to get serious about cleaning it up. They have no business kicking of any major public works projects until that happens (though that has never stopped them in the past). But at a local level, things can still move forward and we are seeing it happen to some extent, though it often still feels more like a hobby than a firm conviction.
> Vote for people who will drop tariffs and allow the import of cheap EVs manufactured at scale
No. Globalism is bad. Better to have cars made domestically that are a bit more expensive to buy, but support local jobs. Better yet, ban electronics in cars so you can actually hold onto them and repair them yourself.
The US lost that global argument when it decided financialization mattered more than manufacturing. A majority of Americans cannot afford their basic needs to be met on their income, it’s not “a bit more expensive,” and it’s for legacy auto profits, not to maintain domestic production capacity.
No one is banning electronics in cars, and US legacy auto will never catch up. They made their choice to prioritize profits over investment.
Assessing the Evolving Global Competitiveness of the US Auto Industry - https://itif.org/publications/2026/03/23/assessing-evolving-... - March 23rd, 2026
> While the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—accounted for 92 percent of domestic auto share in 1965, this share would fall by half, to 46 percent, by 2015, and to 38 percent by 2024.
> From 1995 to 2022, China’s share of global automotive vehicle output skyrocketed eightfold, from 3 to 25 percent, while the U.S. share slid from 23 to 14 percent.
> In 2007, cars sold in the United States contained 38 percent U.S.- or Canadian-made content on average; that portion declined to 18 percent by 2023.
(BYD sells more EVs internationally than Ford does in total, and they intend to be the largest global automaker in the next five years)
BYD Says It Will Be The World's Largest Automaker In 5 Years. - https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/byd-sa... - June 11th, 2026
China's BYD Overtakes Ford in Global Sales for the First Time - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-byd-overtakes-ford-glo... - February 12th, 2026