I'm not sure what TFA but taking the quote here at face value I think there's a little more to it than that. Not all of these Chinese automakers have these so-called deeper structural advantages. As I mentioned before and the WSJ reported, one of them (and I'm sure there are others) built a factory where (even if there was no human labor) they expected to push out 100,000 cars/annually yet have orders for less than 1,000. So no amount of structural advantage matters for them, nor do those advantages matter when the chief export markets say "no thanks we'll just keep our industry even if it's less efficient".

There are a few other things to note here. First is time - so even if the subsidies which still exist and are rather significant (Imagine at like Google's scale if they're making $100bn/year and the government was paying them or subsidizing $10bn of that - that's a lot of $$$) matter less so now, they still were used to spring up the industry and many of these automakers which has downstream effects on viability of the company and in what has been widely reported as over-building of industrial capacity. Coupled with a declining Chinese market, no access to the American market, and soon to be little to no access to the European market China could build cars for $5 but if there are no buyers and they're not making a profit it doesn't matter. Plus China of course artificially devalues its currency to boost exports.

My point here isn't that China is bad or that Chinese automakers aren't or can't be great, but that there's a good reason we have protected our domestic markets and even if Chinese companies were eventually just the best, fastest, cheapest, most advanced in the world we would just protect our markets until we catch up because having a domestic industry and those jobs and the capability to produce wheeled vehicles is more important than having the cheapest possible EVs. Ergo that's why we have tariffs. Disagreeing with that direction is a failure of understanding. The policy is a must-have.

Other countries may not care or their people may not understand why we do what we do, but those countries aren't relevant players on the global stage and their industrial capacity if it ever existed doesn't matter. American industrial capacity, Chinese industrial capacity, and probably German, Japanese, Korea, and maybe a few other select countries are the only ones that matter in this regard.

The Atlantic ran a story a week or so ago which over-indexes a bit but I think is directionally accurate and is relevant here[1].

  "According to the London-based research firm Capital Economics, the share of Chinese industrial firms that are losing money has doubled since 2018 to 30 percent this year."

  “But as the economy has slumped in recent years, the strain on Chinese companies has increased and their finances have deteriorated. Total net profit at 5,400 Chinese companies listed on local stock exchanges fell for the third consecutive year in 2025, according to data from Nikkei Asia, a Japanese business news outlet. Excess factory capacity and weak domestic demand have created a brutal competition for shoppers, and the resulting price wars have narrowed profit margins.”

  "Facing an unstable job market and slumping property prices, Chinese consumers are reluctant to shop—car sales, for instance, in China have plunged by more than 20 percent so far this year."

There are other interesting tidbits from the article, but you get the picture....

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/10/chinese-co...

We do. Oil for your old fashioned car and farmers for votes.