Ford, GM, and Stellantis were dumping money into EV development. Now they’re not.
The rebates directly favored domestically produced batteries (although the leasing loophole was unfortunate).
I’m really not sure why the US government didn’t continue that same policy, and beyond that I’m really not sure why they didn’t follow the Japanese car playbook with China and go harder on domestic employment/value capture carrots and sticks.
The result of Japanese cars coming to America is that Japanese cars are designed and built in America. The thing that foreign competitors can never change is that Americans often buy vastly different cars than other regions of the globe.
Let China into Europe, let China into the USA…but make them play on your playing field. Make them hire engineers and build factories in your region. Make them deploy the automotive connected services software servers in domestic data centers.
The US already has dealer franchise laws that keep a huge chunk of the profits from car sales and service away from the manufacturers. Let China sell their cars in the US, AutoNation is going to take all the money from the sale anyway.