March 2028 is a long time away from now. Plenty of time for political haymaking before reality sets in.
In 2017, Foxconn said they would move some production to Wisconsin, and that was enough to pick up $3bn in state tax breaks. 13,000 jobs turned into less than 1,000, and absolutely no hardware was produced. Some of the industrial properties ended up being sold to Microsoft.
The link you shared gives me a white page. Very interested to read it, since I live 10min walk from Foxconn in Shenzhen and absolutely interested in the history.
We gave the carrot already thanks to the IRA and CHIPS act, and it's paid off.
Honda wouldn't be considering expanding it's US manufacturing presence without the billions in IRA subsidizes given to Honda to help their EV transition (eg. moving the Honda Accord supply chain to Ohio in 2023-24)
But now is the time for the stick as well, otherwise all the subsidizes spent on IRA would be wasted by parts co-mingling, transshipment, and other loopholes.
By 2028 they probably won't be able to sell them in Mexico anyway thanks to competition from cheap EVs that the Japanese firms seem bizarrely averse to building.
Here's a headline for China last year:
> Honda Slashes Gas Engine Production In China After Sales Collapse To Focus On EVs
> Honda had a tough year in China, with sales dropping 30.9% to 852,269 units in 2024. This marks the first time in nine years that the Japanese brand has sold fewer than 1 million cars in the country
> cheap EVs that the Japanese firms seem bizarrely adverse to building.
Because all Japanese car manufacturers are waiting in Idemetsu Kosan to start solid state battery manufacturing by 2027-28, hence why Nissan, Toyota, and Honda all have rollout plans by 2028.
Japanese companies prefer to buy from other Japanese companies, as the Japanese government's sovereign fund has voting positions in all these companies.
> probably won't be able to sell them in Mexico anyway
Most car sales in Mexico remain ICE/Gas driven - overwhelmingly Nissan and GM (Chevrolet) [0]. Not a single EV breaks into the top 50, and the only "Chinese" car that breaks into that list is the ICE MG 5. And if you've ever been to Mexico, you'll see how the Nissan Versa is basically the national car.
Mexico is equally nationalistic about Oil, as Pemex is a national institution, and Mexico's oil soverign fund has constantly helped stabilize Mexico's economy [1].
> Here's a headline for China last year
Mexico has halted incentives for Mexican automotive manufacturers since 2024 [2].
I'm not going to argue with your general point - the Nissan Versa is, indeed, the national car of Mexico - but EV's are showing up. Rode in a BYD EV Über in Mexico City a few months ago.
Yep! EVs have shown up but the network connectivity is weak outside of CDMX - and Mexico is massive (the size of the entire Eastern seaboard) and not that dense, so range anxiety once outside of CDMX will remain. VEMO is trying to change that [0], but they are concentrating moreso on CDMX at the expense of the rest of Mexico, and a lot of their strategy was based on catering to BYD, which is largely up in the air after the Biden admin pressured AMLO to remove incentives for Chinese automotive manufacturers in Mexico.
My hunch is after a couple years, BYD will try to do what SAIC's MG Motors did in India and sell off the entire Mexican subsidiary to a local manufacturer, where MG Motors India is now majority owned and manufactured by JSW Group - a BJP aligned steel and energy conglomerate. I wouldn't be surprised if BYD does something similar now that Nissan is expanding their battery presence, GM+Honda use the same batteries from LG's factories in the US and Mexico, and Volkswagen AG already manufactures batteries in the US.
BYD has tried expanding gigafactories for their EV batteries, but they've often faced export restrictions from the Chinese government in these attempts, so I'm not sure a CDK only model like the one they are using in MX today will be competitive for more than 2-3 years.
This sounds like a good explanation, but it's equally ridiculous. Why not just source batteries anywhere you have to, then start launching EV models just to get the production improvement curves started on the new tech? Japan cannot afford to begin this process in 2028. Honda is currently selling EVs made by GM, it's embarrassing.
> Why not just source batteries anywhere you have to, then start launching EV models just to get the production improvement curves started on the new tech
Why give money to direct competitors like BYD or CATL? The whole reason Japan has been hesitant on traditional li-ion batteries has been because they do not own the IP, and do not want to become dependent on a competitor - Japan and China have been in a trade war since 2011-2012 when the naval showdown happened, and Japan and South Korea were in a trade war from 2019 to 2022.
METI has spent tens of billions and decades working on and subsidizing research in domestic li-s battery tech, and Japanese companies have been waiting it out as a result.
> Japan cannot afford to begin this process in 2028
They can. EV sales remain a minor fraction of the overwhelming majority of automotive sales globally.
And because the entire supply chain and IP for li-s batteries is being built out in Japan and the US, it means that Japanese battery firms like Idemetsu Kosan and Japanese automotive firms are in a unique position to become the dominant supplier.
Much of the capex for re-tooling for this already happened in the 2021-2023 period - Honda, Toyota, and Nissan's IRA benefits were directly tied to this expansion, and all these firms spent billions of their own capital expanding capacity on the assumption that they can begin production by 2028.
There’s a big difference between “becoming dependent on a competitor” and “using a competitor’s products for two to three years so you can shake the bugs out of your EV production process and get a product to market ASAP, then switch to domestic batteries that will soon be available.” This 2/3 year delay in the early part of the adoption curve matters a huge amount for the future of Japan’s EV business, particularly given that China is aggressively working to enter some important markets where Japanese companies have no competing EV product. Buying BYD batteries for two years matters only marginally to the long-term success of BYD.
> This 2/3 year delay in the early part of the adoption curve matters a huge amount for the future of Japan’s EV business
> particularly given that China is aggressively working to enter some important markets where Japanese companies have no competing EV product
Japan's largest automotive markets other than China (which is basically a lost cause for any non-Chinese player now) are the US, Japan, India, and the EU.
All of them have market barriers against Chinese players so 2-3 years is not a major difference, as Japanese players have been tooling for the li-s EV shift for 4 years now already. Also, in Japan and India, you can already buy Japanese branded EVs.
And the EU still has the China specific EV tariffs, and is not budging on that.
And even large secondary markets like Mexico, Canada, and Brazil continue to retain tariffs against Chinese automotive exports, because they do not wish to lose their own manufacturing capacity.
> and “using a competitor’s products for two to three years so you can shake the bugs out of your EV production process and get a product to market ASAP, then switch to domestic batteries that will soon be available.”
They are doing this in a limited manner with the bZ3x and bZ4x.
---------
I'm not denying EVs are becoming prominent, but EVs are still a minority of overall vehicle sales. They are becoming more prominent, but 2-3 years is not going to change anything given that trade barriers against Chinese automotive players exist in every major market.
I took these numbers for 2023 and subtracted the US, Canada, Europe, India and Japan. Maybe I did the calculation wrong but I came up with 4,780,248 vehicles sold in the rest of the world, out of a total of 10,307,395. So nearly half of the company’s global sales (by unit) are in markets that are not the major ones you mentioned. Obviously these numbers are going to be smaller by dollar value, but a lot of them are growing markets as well.
> 4,780,248 vehicles sold in the rest of the world, out of a total of 10,307,395.
> Can most global car companies stand to risk up to half their global sales
Overwhelmingly yes, as Japanese players (and their subsidiaries) remain the biggest players in a number of those large secondary markets such as ASEAN [0], Canada, and Mexico.
The other remaining large markets like Turkiye or Brazil buy European badged brands that manufacture domestically like in Turkiye (Renault, Fiat, Ford Europe) [1] or Brazil (Fiat, Renault, Volkswagen) [2]
Even large secondary markets that are closely allied to China like Iran [3] prefer buying domestic (Saipa, Iran Khodro, Zamyad) over Chinese.
Russia is probably the biggest brownfield market that has seen significant uptick in Chinese sales, but those tend to overwhelmingly be ICE vehicles - not EVs [4]
Just about every country has enacted stiff tariffs against Chinese automotive exports in 2024, and most have remained silent about the current tariff regime in the US for the same reason, as it now puts their domestic suppliers in a more competitive position compared to Chinese manufacturers because the rate at which China has tariffs is massive compared to any other competitor [5]. For all intents and purposes, it's an economic blockade against China [6] that gives plenty of breathing room for manufacturers with a significant NAM presence.
I think most countries are ignoring the tariffs because they know they’re politically unsustainable and will be gone within a month, at least in their blanket form. But checking a couple of your posts in this article it seems like you’re a fan of them, which makes this a political argument and not one anyone will benefit from having.
You need both the carrot (Biden era IRA/Green New Deal policies) and the stick (Trump Tariffs) to force a reorienting.
If these kinds of auto tariffs didn't occur, then there would have been greater parts co-mingling to maximize the benefit of the IRA tax credits - great for companies, but a slap in the face for IRA policies to bring domestic manufacturing back.
That said, we need to level set and recognize that most manufacturing that hasn't yet returned (or isn't already in the process of returning) to the US will not return to the US.
The tariffs are basically a de facto economic blockade against China and China-adjacent transshipment countries (Vietnam, Thailand), as China now has an overall tariff rate of 65% and Vietnam and Thailand are in the 45-50% range now, while other Asian economies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India remain at the 20-30% range, with significant exceptions to their top exports (Pharma, Semiconductors, Services of any kind, Auto Parts under an entirely separate tariff scheme)
That's why, despite all this, most other countries (except China) have been fairly muted in their response to the tariffs, because even with tariffs they are now cost competitive to Chinese manufacturing.
Yes they will. But then we’ll have them, and there will be jobs making the robots and maintaining the factories here.
Also, when AI replaces knowledge economy jobs, we’ll want the “stuff making robots” in America not China. If AI makes our knowledge industry exports obsolete, then we’ll be really fucked if China has the robots that make stuff.
Honda has been working on moving much of it's supply chain to the US for a long time - they have multiple factories across Ohio and Alabama.
In 2023, they announced that they were moving all Honda Accord manufacturing to the US [0], and their prices haven't changed significantly either ($27,615 in 2022 to $28,295 in 2025 compared to median household incomes rising from $74,755 in 2022 to $77,719 in 2023 - 2024 and 2025 numbers aren't out yet).
Most base model products won't see significant prices changes due to price elasticity of demand and better in built margins, but mid-upper tier products will see prices soar because the customer base targeted with those products tend to have a greater tolerance to price increases.
The biggest pain will be bore by dealerships, as manufacturers finance cars to them at a wholesale rate, and the dealers set the final list price. As such, they will now have to either reduce their margins or see their local demand leave.
I ponder if it's really because sedan sales have been shrinking YoY to this day and the volume has gotten small enough to cram into a existing factory.
> I ponder if it's really because sedan sales have been shrinking
Nope. It's part of Honda's $4-5 billion US expansion as part of their EV and Hybrid car drive [0][1] which also expanded production output.
They're moving their cars to a hybrid and electric first model similar to what Toyota began 4-5 years ago.
The Biden era IRA subsidizes were the carrot to help restart domestic automotive investments, and the tariffs shock is the stick to force them to capitalize on those instead of trying to co-mingle parts from other non-NAM locations for better margins.
People don't realize that manufacturing WILL come back to the USA with tariffs and that this is a very good thing for our self reliance and self defense. I am just afraid Trump will cave to political pressures and take tariffs down and make "deals" before this happens. Short term pain for long term gain.
March 2028 is a long time away from now. Plenty of time for political haymaking before reality sets in.
In 2017, Foxconn said they would move some production to Wisconsin, and that was enough to pick up $3bn in state tax breaks. 13,000 jobs turned into less than 1,000, and absolutely no hardware was produced. Some of the industrial properties ended up being sold to Microsoft.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/11/10/wha...
The link you shared gives me a white page. Very interested to read it, since I live 10min walk from Foxconn in Shenzhen and absolutely interested in the history.
The Foxxconn experience illustrates how we got here and why people are fed up with incremental carrots and are clamoring for the stick.
We gave the carrot already thanks to the IRA and CHIPS act, and it's paid off.
Honda wouldn't be considering expanding it's US manufacturing presence without the billions in IRA subsidizes given to Honda to help their EV transition (eg. moving the Honda Accord supply chain to Ohio in 2023-24)
But now is the time for the stick as well, otherwise all the subsidizes spent on IRA would be wasted by parts co-mingling, transshipment, and other loopholes.
By 2028 they probably won't be able to sell them in Mexico anyway thanks to competition from cheap EVs that the Japanese firms seem bizarrely averse to building.
Here's a headline for China last year:
> Honda Slashes Gas Engine Production In China After Sales Collapse To Focus On EVs
> Honda had a tough year in China, with sales dropping 30.9% to 852,269 units in 2024. This marks the first time in nine years that the Japanese brand has sold fewer than 1 million cars in the country
> cheap EVs that the Japanese firms seem bizarrely adverse to building.
Because all Japanese car manufacturers are waiting in Idemetsu Kosan to start solid state battery manufacturing by 2027-28, hence why Nissan, Toyota, and Honda all have rollout plans by 2028.
Japanese companies prefer to buy from other Japanese companies, as the Japanese government's sovereign fund has voting positions in all these companies.
> probably won't be able to sell them in Mexico anyway
Most car sales in Mexico remain ICE/Gas driven - overwhelmingly Nissan and GM (Chevrolet) [0]. Not a single EV breaks into the top 50, and the only "Chinese" car that breaks into that list is the ICE MG 5. And if you've ever been to Mexico, you'll see how the Nissan Versa is basically the national car.
Mexico is equally nationalistic about Oil, as Pemex is a national institution, and Mexico's oil soverign fund has constantly helped stabilize Mexico's economy [1].
> Here's a headline for China last year
Mexico has halted incentives for Mexican automotive manufacturers since 2024 [2].
[0] - https://www.focus2move.com/mexico-best-selling-cars/
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/amlo-says...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/mexico...
I'm not going to argue with your general point - the Nissan Versa is, indeed, the national car of Mexico - but EV's are showing up. Rode in a BYD EV Über in Mexico City a few months ago.
Yep! EVs have shown up but the network connectivity is weak outside of CDMX - and Mexico is massive (the size of the entire Eastern seaboard) and not that dense, so range anxiety once outside of CDMX will remain. VEMO is trying to change that [0], but they are concentrating moreso on CDMX at the expense of the rest of Mexico, and a lot of their strategy was based on catering to BYD, which is largely up in the air after the Biden admin pressured AMLO to remove incentives for Chinese automotive manufacturers in Mexico.
My hunch is after a couple years, BYD will try to do what SAIC's MG Motors did in India and sell off the entire Mexican subsidiary to a local manufacturer, where MG Motors India is now majority owned and manufactured by JSW Group - a BJP aligned steel and energy conglomerate. I wouldn't be surprised if BYD does something similar now that Nissan is expanding their battery presence, GM+Honda use the same batteries from LG's factories in the US and Mexico, and Volkswagen AG already manufactures batteries in the US.
BYD has tried expanding gigafactories for their EV batteries, but they've often faced export restrictions from the Chinese government in these attempts, so I'm not sure a CDK only model like the one they are using in MX today will be competitive for more than 2-3 years.
[0] - https://vemovilidad.com/
This sounds like a good explanation, but it's equally ridiculous. Why not just source batteries anywhere you have to, then start launching EV models just to get the production improvement curves started on the new tech? Japan cannot afford to begin this process in 2028. Honda is currently selling EVs made by GM, it's embarrassing.
> Why not just source batteries anywhere you have to, then start launching EV models just to get the production improvement curves started on the new tech
Why give money to direct competitors like BYD or CATL? The whole reason Japan has been hesitant on traditional li-ion batteries has been because they do not own the IP, and do not want to become dependent on a competitor - Japan and China have been in a trade war since 2011-2012 when the naval showdown happened, and Japan and South Korea were in a trade war from 2019 to 2022.
METI has spent tens of billions and decades working on and subsidizing research in domestic li-s battery tech, and Japanese companies have been waiting it out as a result.
> Japan cannot afford to begin this process in 2028
They can. EV sales remain a minor fraction of the overwhelming majority of automotive sales globally.
And because the entire supply chain and IP for li-s batteries is being built out in Japan and the US, it means that Japanese battery firms like Idemetsu Kosan and Japanese automotive firms are in a unique position to become the dominant supplier.
Much of the capex for re-tooling for this already happened in the 2021-2023 period - Honda, Toyota, and Nissan's IRA benefits were directly tied to this expansion, and all these firms spent billions of their own capital expanding capacity on the assumption that they can begin production by 2028.
There’s a big difference between “becoming dependent on a competitor” and “using a competitor’s products for two to three years so you can shake the bugs out of your EV production process and get a product to market ASAP, then switch to domestic batteries that will soon be available.” This 2/3 year delay in the early part of the adoption curve matters a huge amount for the future of Japan’s EV business, particularly given that China is aggressively working to enter some important markets where Japanese companies have no competing EV product. Buying BYD batteries for two years matters only marginally to the long-term success of BYD.
> This 2/3 year delay in the early part of the adoption curve matters a huge amount for the future of Japan’s EV business
> particularly given that China is aggressively working to enter some important markets where Japanese companies have no competing EV product
Japan's largest automotive markets other than China (which is basically a lost cause for any non-Chinese player now) are the US, Japan, India, and the EU.
All of them have market barriers against Chinese players so 2-3 years is not a major difference, as Japanese players have been tooling for the li-s EV shift for 4 years now already. Also, in Japan and India, you can already buy Japanese branded EVs.
And the EU still has the China specific EV tariffs, and is not budging on that.
And even large secondary markets like Mexico, Canada, and Brazil continue to retain tariffs against Chinese automotive exports, because they do not wish to lose their own manufacturing capacity.
> and “using a competitor’s products for two to three years so you can shake the bugs out of your EV production process and get a product to market ASAP, then switch to domestic batteries that will soon be available.”
They are doing this in a limited manner with the bZ3x and bZ4x.
---------
I'm not denying EVs are becoming prominent, but EVs are still a minority of overall vehicle sales. They are becoming more prominent, but 2-3 years is not going to change anything given that trade barriers against Chinese automotive players exist in every major market.
I took these numbers for 2023 and subtracted the US, Canada, Europe, India and Japan. Maybe I did the calculation wrong but I came up with 4,780,248 vehicles sold in the rest of the world, out of a total of 10,307,395. So nearly half of the company’s global sales (by unit) are in markets that are not the major ones you mentioned. Obviously these numbers are going to be smaller by dollar value, but a lot of them are growing markets as well.
Can most global car companies stand to risk up to half their global sales? I genuinely don’t know. https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2023-full-year-glob...
> 4,780,248 vehicles sold in the rest of the world, out of a total of 10,307,395.
> Can most global car companies stand to risk up to half their global sales
Overwhelmingly yes, as Japanese players (and their subsidiaries) remain the biggest players in a number of those large secondary markets such as ASEAN [0], Canada, and Mexico.
The other remaining large markets like Turkiye or Brazil buy European badged brands that manufacture domestically like in Turkiye (Renault, Fiat, Ford Europe) [1] or Brazil (Fiat, Renault, Volkswagen) [2]
Even large secondary markets that are closely allied to China like Iran [3] prefer buying domestic (Saipa, Iran Khodro, Zamyad) over Chinese.
Russia is probably the biggest brownfield market that has seen significant uptick in Chinese sales, but those tend to overwhelmingly be ICE vehicles - not EVs [4]
Just about every country has enacted stiff tariffs against Chinese automotive exports in 2024, and most have remained silent about the current tariff regime in the US for the same reason, as it now puts their domestic suppliers in a more competitive position compared to Chinese manufacturers because the rate at which China has tariffs is massive compared to any other competitor [5]. For all intents and purposes, it's an economic blockade against China [6] that gives plenty of breathing room for manufacturers with a significant NAM presence.
[0] - https://www.focus2move.com/asean-best-selling-cars/
[1] - https://www.focus2move.com/turkish-autos-market-2023/
[2] - https://www.focus2move.com/brazil-best-selling-cars/
[3] - https://www.focus2move.com/iranian-vehicles-market/
[4] - https://www.focus2move.com/russian-autos-market/
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/us-tariff...
[6] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/trumps-global-tariffs-hu...
I think most countries are ignoring the tariffs because they know they’re politically unsustainable and will be gone within a month, at least in their blanket form. But checking a couple of your posts in this article it seems like you’re a fan of them, which makes this a political argument and not one anyone will benefit from having.
> Japanese companies prefer to buy from other Japanese companies.
> Mexico is equally nationalistic about Oil
Kind of interesting given the broader context isn’t it?
I think here in Ohio Honda and LG are working on a joint battery facility too.
Yep.
You need both the carrot (Biden era IRA/Green New Deal policies) and the stick (Trump Tariffs) to force a reorienting.
If these kinds of auto tariffs didn't occur, then there would have been greater parts co-mingling to maximize the benefit of the IRA tax credits - great for companies, but a slap in the face for IRA policies to bring domestic manufacturing back.
That said, we need to level set and recognize that most manufacturing that hasn't yet returned (or isn't already in the process of returning) to the US will not return to the US.
The tariffs are basically a de facto economic blockade against China and China-adjacent transshipment countries (Vietnam, Thailand), as China now has an overall tariff rate of 65% and Vietnam and Thailand are in the 45-50% range now, while other Asian economies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India remain at the 20-30% range, with significant exceptions to their top exports (Pharma, Semiconductors, Services of any kind, Auto Parts under an entirely separate tariff scheme)
That's why, despite all this, most other countries (except China) have been fairly muted in their response to the tariffs, because even with tariffs they are now cost competitive to Chinese manufacturing.
funny then that the Honda Passport is the second most 'American-made' car... https://www.cars.com/american-made-index/
And it'll cost more. Trump will say it's a win. But other countries will get cheaper Hondas. American consumers lose out in the end.
> it'll cost more... American consumers lose out in the end
So does minimum wages, worker protections, paid family leave, taxes on corporate income, etc. America isn't just an economy populated by "consumers."
Yes well said. Although at some point these factories will become almost fully automated. But regardless, better to have them in the US than China.
Yes they will. But then we’ll have them, and there will be jobs making the robots and maintaining the factories here.
Also, when AI replaces knowledge economy jobs, we’ll want the “stuff making robots” in America not China. If AI makes our knowledge industry exports obsolete, then we’ll be really fucked if China has the robots that make stuff.
Honda has been working on moving much of it's supply chain to the US for a long time - they have multiple factories across Ohio and Alabama.
In 2023, they announced that they were moving all Honda Accord manufacturing to the US [0], and their prices haven't changed significantly either ($27,615 in 2022 to $28,295 in 2025 compared to median household incomes rising from $74,755 in 2022 to $77,719 in 2023 - 2024 and 2025 numbers aren't out yet).
Most base model products won't see significant prices changes due to price elasticity of demand and better in built margins, but mid-upper tier products will see prices soar because the customer base targeted with those products tend to have a greater tolerance to price increases.
The biggest pain will be bore by dealerships, as manufacturers finance cars to them at a wholesale rate, and the dealers set the final list price. As such, they will now have to either reduce their margins or see their local demand leave.
[0] - https://www.wdrb.com/news/honda-decides-to-move-all-accord-p...
I ponder if it's really because sedan sales have been shrinking YoY to this day and the volume has gotten small enough to cram into a existing factory.
Based on some data here https://carfigures.com/us-market-brand/honda/accord
(which does come from other sources, this was just the basic tablation I could find)
the accord sale numbers are half of their peak only a 6 years ago
> I ponder if it's really because sedan sales have been shrinking
Nope. It's part of Honda's $4-5 billion US expansion as part of their EV and Hybrid car drive [0][1] which also expanded production output.
They're moving their cars to a hybrid and electric first model similar to what Toyota began 4-5 years ago.
The Biden era IRA subsidizes were the carrot to help restart domestic automotive investments, and the tariffs shock is the stick to force them to capitalize on those instead of trying to co-mingle parts from other non-NAM locations for better margins.
[0] - https://alabamanewscenter.com/2022/10/13/what-does-hondas-4-...
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/02/02/hondas-new-ev-production...
People don't realize that manufacturing WILL come back to the USA with tariffs and that this is a very good thing for our self reliance and self defense. I am just afraid Trump will cave to political pressures and take tariffs down and make "deals" before this happens. Short term pain for long term gain.