Wait I don't understand is this just an excuse? Is this a slightly more subtle example of an "anti" movement being emboldened by what's happening in the US, despite the same legal framework not applying? Like the anti abortionists in Europe are on the rise. Or is there a legitimate reason that it depends a bit on US policy?
Nothing "anti" about this decision. The province's credit rating was recently downgraded (1). Investing in a struggling local company that had a dim outlook even before the US election (2) would be a tough sell.
1. https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/sp-global-lowers-que...
2. https://globalnews.ca/news/10673318/lion-electric-300-more-l...
Reliant on exports to the US?
Yeah, but aren't these bussed mostly subject to state policy and not federal policy?
If there is a federal tariff on Canadian vehicles that applies then everyone including states has to decide if they want to purchase what they intended or keep the budget they planned.
I read it as the opposite. A business that's already in trouble that has cross border entanglements in the current climate and can't get private support is a perfectly reasonable time for a government to cut off money.
The only bit where slowing electrification comes up is the first sentence, which felt like an attempt to spin fallout from Trump chaos as people waking up to the folly of electrification instead.
Yeah that's what I hoped but there wasn't much discussion of the company in question.
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We just completely lost all investments in Northvolt so the government is being very careful with high profile investments into renewables, especially when we've bankrolled them before and they couldn't deliver.
They'll have to buy from BYD, like everybody else.
I'm sitting in a battery-electric bus from New Flyer this very minute. BYD is hardly the only bus OEM around
There are _loads_ of electric bus manufacturers; many of the big incumbent manufacturers, at least in Europe, literally have the same chassis in electric and non-electric versions. My local bus system uses these, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_StreetDeck#StreetDeck_E... - they're available in plain diesel, light hybrid, hydrogen, and electric.
Here's another example, available in diesel, plugin hybrid, electric, and _natural gas_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dennis_Enviro400_Cit... (my local system uses the hybrid version of these).
Even for double deckers, which are a bit of a niche and really mostly only used in Ireland and the UK in Europe, there are at least four big manufacturers, only one of which is BYD.
Quebec (ARTM/STM) already uses electric buses from Novabus (Volvo), so no.
Which Canada currently tariffs at 100% (long predates Trump’s scheme).
“Long predates” is overstating it, the 100% tariff was put in place in october 2024, following the u.s.'s lead.
Was there some policy reason to follow the US lead ? Follow the Leader does not sound like a valid rationale.
Because of the tightly integrated and codependent auto industries across both countries.
> Public Auction Due to closure of US EV Manufacturing facility – Short Notice!
https://workingmancapital.com/auction/lion-electric-chicago-...
Huh. I suppose that bus contract probably does make up a sizeable amount of their business. I last saw them at a trade show where they had their class 5 and 6 cab over truck chasses. There was a huge push for EV package delivery, for which that size was ideal. Their offerings looked pretty polished compared to the competition. I would think the CARB rules (and those in the other states that follow CARB) would stir a bit more demand for Lion's product offerings, but I can see what Quebec would be hesitant about such a company operating internationally in the r current political environment.
Electric buses are not just about the environment.
They are also so much more comfortable.
Less noisy, less rattly.
I would think it makes society healthier to have quieter, less annoying ways to commute.
Also, they produce less soot, nox and carbon monoxide for the kids to breathe.
The best thing about EBs is, they do not hum and vibrate so much making it feel like the bus is about to transform into some Decepticon bot any minute now.
Quebec already has electric city buses built in partnership with Novabus and Hydro-Quebec, they are pretty widespread in Montreal.
This is something else, a startup that I've only ever seen schoolbuses from.
They're also more expensive, so cities buy fewer of them, leading to more cars on the road, worsening the problem
Only more expensive in terms of the initial purchase price. Maintenance and energy costs are much lower than for a gasoline bus.
Until you have to change the battery a few years later and it’s cheaper to buy a new bus.
Actually, this is an interesting point.
Batteries tend to have a max charge/discharge cycle. Unlike a consumer car, buses see a lot more distance. I wonder how much more quickly the batteries go.
The lithium doesn't escape from a battery like it does from a gas tank.
I would expect a large scale operator to recover a lot of money from the sale of those rare earth minerals.
Large or small operator, the recovery amount will be a tiny fraction of the overall battery pack cost. Recycling isn't free, and costs, and assemble + profit margins at both ends.
In short, you're diverting "how often" to "meh, who cares, they're recyclable", without any validation that it negates the cost.
This isn't true:
> Our results indicate that today's electrified bus fleets are roughly cost comparable to their traditional diesel counterparts
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X2...
Even if they cost a bit more, they are more reliable, better for the environment and air quality, and are so much quieter.
Government should not be backstopping poorly run companies from the consequences of their failure to execute. That will only encourage further irresponsibility.
Does that apply to Boeing too? Letting poorly run companies fail runs the risk of causing national security problems when you're suddenly dependent on a hostile power for parts of your supply chain.
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> pursuit of dignity
Could you explain that a bit more? I don't see it.
I can't speak for the poster above, but someone over the years explained the rise of nationalist movements as largely being based on creating a sense of self worth in people who feel marginalized. It's an emotional reaction to troubling times that puts reassurance ahead of rational behavior, as explicitly rejected in many anti-enlightenment writers.
So, being charitable with the OP, I can see how you might say that conservatives in the US believe that the US's declining status in manufacturing created a world in which "a hard working guy can't get ahead any more because everything is made in China", and thus a perception that in order to create equity and dignity we have to return to internal self reliance, ala juche or autarky.
Half a million extra deaths of despair over the last twenty years or so.
https://www.takimag.com/article/deaths-of-despair/
>"But the more I study the White Death of the past two decades, the more I am instead reminded of the tragic trajectory of a now much less publicized American race, Native Americans. Like American Indians, working-class white Americans seem to be living, and dying, like a defeated people, quietly offing themselves with so little to-do that nobody even noticed what was happening to working-class white lifespans for the first fifteen years of this century."
I'm not here to say that working class Americans have it easy but it is outrageous to suggest that depression is in any way comparable to the genocide of America's indigenous population.
The sad thing is, investment into new manufacturing was actually up -- WAY up -- under Biden, as you can see in this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON
Now that Trump is president, looks like it's starting to decline again.
Manufacturing lead times are huge. E.G. Offhand CPUs take something like 5-7 years from initial plans to final tapeouts / production.
That's not even considering the issues of planning, permits, installing machines, training workers, etc, in a more down to earth facility like a generic food plant, or heck forbid something seriously regulated (I hope) like making prescription drugs.
And...what exactly does this have to do with my comment, which was about how much money was being invested into manufacturing construction?
You'd mentioned a _timeline_ of manufacturing. I'm pointing out that usually investment has a lag time and giving some examples of lag times I've seen mentioned in publications before to parallel my supposition...
That real impact from investment may be 5-10+ years from the initial funding allocation.
That's a larger reason for offshoring than wages.
Your billion dollar factory can start returning the investment years earlier when you manufacture elsewhere.
Less red tape, easier to manage 'processes', fewer environmental / labor relations...
It's those last two, impact on the commons and unfair worker treatment, that are examples of where I _would_ support reasonable tariffs. Particularly if funds from those tariffs went to remediating the impact and were agreed to (also observed) by a majority of other leading countries / economic blocks.
It is not about manufacturing as in creating things. If it was, they would like Biden policies and continued them. Real manufacturing today is heavily automatized - you can create a lot of things with a few jobs.
It is about manufacturing jobs as identity and social status. Biden would create manufacturing as a "modern factories that create things". These do not employ all that many people and wont revert the world back to idealized past.
Yes, those jobs are never returning. Manufacturing will increasingly be automated, or the world will crash in some highly unfortunate way that we'd all be (un?)lucky to survive.
Production of critical parts within allied or the same nation is a reasonable goal.
It's probably also more energy efficient to manufacture things closer and ship less.
Whenever I tried to explain that quote is true anywhere in the world, it was never well received.
"a hard working guy can't get ahead any more because xyz"
It is ironic there are many very hard working guys in China, Philipines, Vietnam ...
Yes indeed, it's quite a blinkered world view when considered from a more reality-based perspective, but you can't deny the emotional experience precisely because it's subjective in nature.
Fact is that service jobs don't pay as well, or well at all, and some not even not enough to live on your own, or enough to save for retirement, or to start a family. This resentment is from the young working class males, and the rage is building. You can look at the election in Canada, to see how the younger people voted, and its totally opposite of the boomers they increasingly want to MAID. Populism isn't necessarily bad, It's what gave birth to America. Raging hillbillies rebelling is kind of a thing though out humanity. But particularly successful in America, thanks to the constitution it spawned. And probably many more examples since ...
If service jobs pay way worse than manufacturing jobs, how come manufacturing share v. GDP per head is some kind of inverted parabola? And why are manufacturing jobs deeply unpopular with young people?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-manufacturing-empl...
I googled: younger people voted for conservatives https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6j9z3dqg8o
MAID: Medical assistance in dying?
Yes, it's no longer a taboo and many younger people are cheering it on. As the older generation controls most of the resources, and wealth. I remember reading somewhere it's actually illegal (or maybe it was a proposed law) to try and discourage someone once they consented. It's currently one in 20 deaths, but that number is growing steadily.
Tariffs are bad if you are the United States and tariffs are good if you are any other nation.
I think this is actually the precise correct thing.
If the EU instituted tariffs on let's say, software and certain kinds of services, then we would reduce our unemployment, develop those sectors etc.
Whereas the large-scale oil trade and how its conducted in practice mean that non-Americans will be holding dollars and that the US will be able to have lower interest rates than its competitors, this money, which the US thus can sort of print cheaply can then be used to buy goods from abroad, to get high-quality products in a way that is effectively cheap.
So tariffs for the US were always something that would shake things up. I don't think they're necessarily terrible in the very long run, but this system is something like 50 years old and the US won't be able to switch to a sensible system where it itself actually builds real things and gets what it needs that way quickly. So switching to a sounder approach to production should probably have been allowed to take more time if disruption was to be avoided, but it wouldn't have been possible for political reasons, and now the US politicians are sort of flip-flopping because they see that this transition will not be smooth at all.
If it were almost any country other than the US it would have been a different matter. If the EU wanted to reduce import of finished goods from low-wage countries, that would probably be fine and would probably benefit ordinary people without a long transition, but the US is a different matter. Wages in the US are as high as they are in large part because of these weird trade and investment flows.
Correct, if you are living in the USA. As someone living in Germany I would think tariffs levied by the EU and/or Germany are bad for me, because it is going to raise prices in the EU and Germany.
I'd wish that the EU would just shrug at the tariffs and not counter them, at least not on consumer goods, because in the end US tariffs cost the US consumer not the EU consumer. Obviously it is not that easy, because of jobs, refusal to be insulted and bullied, etc.
> tariffs levied by the EU and/or Germany are bad for me, because it is going to raise prices in the EU and Germany
That’s short term thinking. Signed: a Spaniard who has seen all of the country’s industry dismantled since we joined the EU to be moved to Germany and Eastern Europe and now we’re screwed.
Thinking otherwise is no-term thinking, tariffs hurt consumers in the short term, long term, or any other term.
Anyway, why would some industry move from a comparatively low-cost country like Spain to a comparatively high-cost country like Germany?
Manufacturing goes where total cost of manufacturing is lowest. Transportation has become so cheap since the mid-20th century that it has lost all impact on deciding on manufacturing locations. Thus the consumer prices can also be low, independent of the location of the manufacturer and the consumer. Tariffs raise sales prices again in the flawed idea that this would raise manufacturing costs abroad. But of course they don't, and seriously, how would they? Tariffs just make imports more expensive and thus actually make prices go up for consumers in the levying country.
In the best case it creates a situation where an out-competed local manufacturer can start to manufacture again at cost and compete on prices. But obviously this will be higher than the price of pre-tariff goods, otherwise the local manufacturer wouldn't have been out-competed in the first place. I mean, come on, that's basic economics.
In the second best case the manufacturer just stops exporting to tariff country because its market vanished. Why would it vanish? Right, because consumers cannot afford the goods anymore. This creates an opportunity for a competitor that could manufacture at higher cost to sell goods at prices that still cover its cost, because otherwise -- you already guessed it -- the competitor could have competed before tariffs. Again, basic economics. Whatever, consumers pay more -- and have less choice. Yay for tariffs!
So what about "yeah, think long term", what does that mean? Let's say long term means 5-10 years or more, because that's about the time you need to launch manufacturing again. OK, there comes a new manufacturer along, or an ailing one recovers because higher prices cover higher manufacturing costs. In beautiful tariff world nations effectively closed their borders for trade, so markets have become much smaller. Even ignoring the initial higher costs, smaller markets mean smaller scale. The new small market will be unable to match the scaling effects of the old large market, there are just not enough consumers. Thus manufacturing will stay more expensive. This in turn will make goods more expensive for consumers. That's not quite as basic but still.
Of course we could veer off into some kind of post-capitalistic market system, and depending on what exactly that means I would probably be fine with it. However, I don't think that's what is going to happen.
Can you connect that statement to the pursuit of dignity?
I’ve not seen any truly convincing case for this but I have heard the idea that a lot of all of this is about not wanting to feel shame for being… well… more Morlock than Eloi.
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Not GP, but I think I see what they mean.
Trump and his base are very focused on “respect”; remember all the lies about Obama’s “apology tour” (or was that Biden? Or both?)
All the bluster, all the talk of “America being respected again”, which anyone who travels internationally knows is 100% the opposite of reality, all the classic strongman politics. The creepy looming over Hilary in the debate.
All of it is a wildly misplaced sense of machismo, like being a dangerous asshole someone commands respect.
Which is ultimately what that crowd wants; they want to behave badly and still be respected.
My take, anyway.
I think a lot of it is: feels good to think that you're smarter than most than to acknowledge the reality that you're probably not.
My intuition is that this type of thinking is becoming more and more entrenched in American culture. I think by the time the culture as a whole wakes up, things will be significantly worse and many of the people who tried to prevent it will have been pushed out or willfully left.
It looks like Lion Electric has factories in Canada and the USA. Maybe they see continued investment as a sunk cost fallacy sort of situation, with the current tariff volatility and the debts of the company but it's a short article.
I think that attitude only covers a portion of Trump voters and might not be applicable to the Quebec decision but don't have any concrete data, Asimov's 1980 opinion piece on the USA may be more relevant to Trump voters and reflects most of the executive orders and appointments in 2025 so far: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Jia Toletino’s “The History of a Generation in Seven Scams” makes this point about the US. We have a long history, almost a pride, in con artists. It’s not repulsive. It’s almost culturally alluring the be scammed.
I am much older but feel that essay in my bones, covering some of the ground of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs. Not only that but it is uncanny how the scammers from the contemporary fiction going way back would fit right in today's America, varying from The Jungle, Elmer Gantry, to Huckleberry Finn off the top of my head.
That phrase is a lot like one of those phrases that isn't technically racist but a lot of racists say it.
That phrase is often used by the upper class to justify their habit of telling the lower classes what's good for them and, frankly, is exactly what's led to them being willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Right now, cult of ignorance perfectly describes Trump and his supporters. It is just true.
I think his appeal has a lot to do with how much those elites despise him. I think the desire for someone Trump-like predates Trump by quite a lot. I see Obama as the embodiment of that smugness and Trump as a reaction.
As an example, "You didn't build that", while I get his point, it was poorly made and disregarded a lot of very hard work by the people he was talking down to.
That's why his supporters don't seem to care about his policies,flaws or ideology. They like him because those people hate him. That may look like cultish behavior because they change opinions based on his whims but I bet if he started acting like and was accepted by those "elites", his support would dwindle.
I think a lot of people look at the situation and don't understand it then just decide that his supporters must be stupid.
I think it can be multiple things, there are some Trump supporters who are very religious, some are just racists, some that are disenchanted with the way things are and want anyone to burn it down, some are as you described, and some that are so deep in the cult of personality that when confronted with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, they double down - there are multiple videos of this last one, like blaming Biden or Obama for some policy when Trump did it.
Fiscal responsibility isn’t inherently an extreme right wing concept, but I understand that the overton window has shifted on many people who didn’t realize they were now on the right
Not anymore, the Republican party flip flopped on that issue declaring “deficits don’t matter” and been wildly reckless with spending for decades.
Fiscal responsibility isn't a right-wing concept at all, but invoking deficit concerns as a dodge for substance on particular issues that they lack popular support on otherwise is a common practice of the American Right (who have an equally common practice of exploding the deficit when in power.)
It has been way more common for Republican administrations and Congress to explode the deficit than when the Dems controlled things.
Consistently, for longer than I've been alive.
This is, basically, what pushed me away from the Republican party (aside from the relatively recent culture war). The Republicans always claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility (as long as I've been alive, which is longer than most people on HN) but by objective measurable fact have consistently been the party of government bloat and high spending.
I don't like hypocrites.
Seems like it's always easier to sell a tax cut than a spending increase.
Somehow most people seem to assume that they'll be significant beneficiaries of a tax cut, but don't assume the same about a tax increase.
The downside of a tax is immediate and measurable. The alleged benefit is neither and understanding the cost-benefit relation requires more faith than transparency.
That's because the republicans have long been the party of entitlement receivers. This is changing as under 25s are strongly shifting republican while boomers are moving democrat.
If there's any upside to Trump's tariff shenanigans, it's that they have turned a lot of Democrats into passionate free traders.
Are we pretending Clinton democrats were not passionate free traders before?
Support for free trade has more than doubled according to this poll: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GpgFd1qWIAAKFlc?format=jpg&name=...
Not really proof of much. It's more likely that there is a huge increase in people who don't like having their taxes increased by a cadre of billionaires. I doubt support has increased for expanding free trade policies (e.g. the TPP and TTIP treaties Obama tried to complete).
Trump is closer to Bill Clinton than any current Democrat leader.
45 was, 47 is closer to President McKinley than any modern politician.
To use actual numbers instead of indicies.
The parent was claiming that say 10 is closed to 2 than any of the 100s are. It is also true that 10 is closer to 9 than 2.
That said, given how much Trump has increased not only government spending but also the deficit he's pretty far _politically_ from Clinton. However, IIRC, the two of them were _physically_ closer on Epstein's island than any current democratic leader.
Why is free trade good? Isn't competition easily attacked via subsidation, for example, if trade is unregulated (why Chinese cars are not bought in EU)?
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