US President Donald Trump might not follow Elon Musk on Twitter, but the Tesla Inc chief executive’s posts decrying China’s automotive trade practices managed to catch his attention.
In announcing his order to charge tariffs on steel and aluminum on Thursday, Trump read off tweets Musk sent hours earlier noting that China charges a 25 percent import duty on cars, 10 times the 2.5 percent levy the US puts on China-built vehicles.
“That’s from Elon, but everybody knows it,” Trump said. “They’ve known it for years, they never did anything about it. It’s got to change.”
Musk’s lobbying-by-tweet hinted at his frustration over struggling to get a deal done with Shanghai’s government to assemble cars in the city.
An agreement has not been finalized because the two sides disagree on the ownership structure of a proposed factory, people with direct knowledge of the situation have told Bloomberg News.
The Chinese government is pushing for the plant to be a joint venture with local partners, while Tesla wants to own the factory outright, the people said.
“Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars?” Musk wrote to Trump in response to a post by the US president a day earlier.
“I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult,” Musk said in another post. “It’s like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes.”
Import duties and the difficulties Tesla has had avoiding them by trying to produce in China has held the company back in the world’s biggest market for cleaner cars.
Sales of battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell-powered autos could surpass 1 million units this year, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
China requires overseas automakers to form joint ventures with local manufacturers in which the foreign companies are capped at 50 percent ownership.
The government’s aim was for its then-fledgling auto industry to benefit from technology transfers by operating along with global giants such as Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co.
“We raised this with the prior administration and nothing happened,” Musk wrote after tweeting Trump about both the import duties and joint-venture ownership rules. “Just want a fair outcome, ideally where tariffs/rules are equally moderate. Nothing more. Hope this does not seem unreasonable.”
Trump and Musk have a rocky history.
The Tesla chief executive officer served on two White House advisory councils before stepping down in June last year after the president announced he would pull the US out of the Paris climate accord, but last month, Trump tweeted his congratulations to Musk following a successful launch by Space Exploration Technologies Corp, another one of Musk’s companies.
The president praised SpaceX again on Thursday morning.
He gushed about the company launching the Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket in 45 years, and landing two of its spent boosters back on the Florida coast.
During the steel and aluminum tariff news conference, Trump used Musk’s example of China’s car-import levies to reiterate plans for what he has called a “reciprocal tax.”
“If China’s going to charge us 25 percent or if India’s going to charge us 75 percent,” the US would levy “those same numbers,” Trump said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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