The European auto industry is a case study on how short-sighted trade policy goals, results in consequences.
Previously, German auto companies like Volkswagen entered into trade agreements with China and began manufacturing their vehicles with immediate financial success in the market. However, it did not take long for Chinese auto companies to reverse the engineering and begin to deliver the same quality vehicles at much lower prices.
The Chinese then stop purchasing the Volkswagen vehicles and purchase the cheaper version, while simultaneously begin exporting those same vehicles into the home market from where the technology originated.
Today, with a double-digit decline in production, Volkswagen announces they will cut almost half of their models due to diminished sales.
BLOOMBERG – BERLIN — Volkswagen reported weak sales numbers on Friday, a day after the giant German automaker announced plans to slash the number of models by nearly half as sales plunged, particularly in China.
The Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said group sales fell 8.6 per cent in the second quarter to just under 2.1 million vehicles, with sales in China alone plummeted by more than one-third.
After a board meeting on Thursday, Volkswagen said its “fundamental realignment” over the last three years had reached its next phase, announcing plans to streamline the model lineup by up to half, without providing specifics.
CEO Oliver Blume laid out plans to make VW faster and more competitive through less complexity, focused technologies, better alignment across regional markets and reduction of overcapacities, among other things, citing an “increasingly demanding environment.”
Among its main brands, the core Volkswagen unit saw deliveries of slightly over 1 million vehicles in the second quarter, a drop of 14 per cent from a year earlier. Deliveries at Audi declined 8 per cent and those at Porsche fell 18 per cent. (read more)
Maybe Canada will take note, likely they will not.
The only way to avoid this issue is to protect the domestic market. As soon as you open your market to this claimed reciprocity (panda face), it will not take long until the mask drops, and you notice the dragon face behind it.
The media out promoting the first Chinese made EV’s arriving in Canada. Lotus is now owned by a Chinese company, starting price of these are $119,000 and go up to $160,000
Just what the average Canadian can afford.There is no doubt CTV got paid to this almost 2 minute native… pic.twitter.com/sdXvjc2eLS
— Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 (@ryangerritsen) July 9, 2026
It’s so sad …. once upon a time China bought cars from Germany.
Now Germany is buying crappy cars from China.
Now China, economically owns Germany. Germany hollowed out it’s industrial base to China over their insane, fake climate change green policies. Germany is collapsing and Canada is doing the same thing with China. Germany and Canada have huge immigration issues. Carney is another evil globalist.
The German people did it to themselves. Just as the Canadians are doing it to their country as well by believing Carney’s lies. We do not hate Canada. But Canadians are paranoid for some reason, and are destroying their country just because of TDS. Crazy.
Using the Lotus name. Colin Chapman rolling in his grave.
Plastic badges do not equate to engineering.
But the chyneeze only care about dislodging competition by pricing; engineering and performance be damned.
War.
We are at war.
Take a look at the book “Unrestricted Warfare”. It lays out the strategy.
Seeing that badge on chinese crap is more than a lifelong Lotus enthusiast can take! 😡
Maybe they ran out of Gucci knockoff tags.
I was beaten, insulted, harassed for a block by a vendor in Bejing because I refused to purchase any of her “Gucci’ items under her canopy. I had to enter a store until the mob dispersed outside. I quickly learned never to look at anything someone shows you there.
I was also herded through several back alley knockoff shops by a to the Great Wall transport company. No choice. You were forced out of the van and thru their counterfeit merchandise “store.”
<“engineering and performance be damned.”
That may have true at one point, but it’s like thinking Japan could only build crappy transistor radios. Times have changed and China has focused on engineering and manufacturing. Germany/VW group could probably learn from them. Why do you think they sent so many engineering students here? We taught them how to out-produce us. Now people are going to China Uni to study engineering.
The Germans of 2026 are weak – only “comfort” is important… Germany is close to collapse
China is ass hoe.
Part of any deal to move manufacturing to China is the turning over of all intellectual property of what is to be manufactured to the Chinese government. The Chinese uses it to make the same product under their name for pennies on the dollar bankrupting the American company. How do I know this? Way back in the early 2000’s my neighbor was in upper management of a major manufacturer, they went to China for a month to set up company operations there to help produce their product. Within 3 years my neighbor lost their job because China had stolen all their business by producing their product for much less.
Years ago, China wanted to buy Boeing aircraft. But before signing the deal, they wanted one Boeing in their aircraft facility in China. Refused, the deal didn’t go through.
China has been buying Boeing aircraft for many years.
The bigger mistake was all the western companies that jumped into the Chinese COMAC C919 aircraft to help the Chinese build it. It is a narrow body aircraft to compete with Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737Max. Most of it’s systems such as fuel, hydraulic, avionics and more are deigned and built by US and EU companies.
I know that R’s And D’s are “in agreement” against importing the Chinese vehicles. Wait until the next Obama/Biden administration.
I hope Germany can understand the problem. If it were not for Donald Trump, the USA would be in the same position. And, we have not yet won our war with the elite totalitarians. The outcome of this Fourth Turning will define the victor.
Leftard politicians posture and regurgitate leftardist ideologies to their fawning leftardist voters; but when it comes to WINNING they are utterly incapable of accomplishing that.
Leftards are the anti-Midas, everything they touch turns to lead.
Not lead but sh!t.
We Are in a Global market currently. America has very few operating mines and those who own them are not American.
Mining is where everything starts ponder this and you will realize where we are in things to come.
This is what the Germans want, so just stand back and let nature take its course. Let their unraveling economy remind you why it’s so important to vote in the midterms this year.
The same can be said for most products the US Companies get China to produce in order to save on production costs. Same thing, only dumber. Has anyone else noticed the incredible shrinking size of all paper products found in our stores, plastic bags with thinner and weaker plastic, shoes that are two sizes too small so most people will have to pay the extra price stuck on the largest sizes, or ridiculous ticket prices to sporting events that are played buy ridiculous excuses for human beings, or that none of your large appliances will now last even 8 years and none of your small appliances will last even 3 years, or that all of the parts for your aluminum BBQ don’t quite arrive in the box but the instructions for putting the product together can only be read with a magnifying glass to save on weight for the overseas shipment, but do contain instructions in at least six languages on paper so thin it tears as you try to find your own language, or 42 inch riding mowers that can cut only 40 inches wide, or packages of sausages containing water for added useless weight so that 16 oz of sausage is only 15.0001 oz and which have zero seasonings i enough volume to actually taste the sausage as a sausage, or ball caps made with a plastic netting that serves as 3 quarters of the head covering. This is only a small sample of the ways Chinese manufacturing always gives you less product or quality for your few remaining spendable dollars.
I have been watching this crap every since the Chinese contracted my company to collect and process seismic data and then reverse engineered the product to the point where they could try to use their slave laborers to gather their own data. I am sure everyone on this site could rattle on about similar experiences, but this is the way Communists have to do everything.
So, my question is, how will Communism work when there are no more free market economies to steal from? No Communists have ever been able to think that far ahead, because to say something about it will cause them to literally cause them to lose their heads and most of our people seem to be at least stupid enough to want free s**t from their stupid Goobermint. Anyone been to the doctor/slash triage system our majority voted for in 2008 and received in 2013, courtesy of Barack Hussein Obama? Did anyone think it would be better for any of us? Our Government can’t even run choo-choo train or post office monopoly, and we already knew they couldn’t handle our kid’s educations worth a damn either.
Thanks, I am old and old guys have to rant about things because we remember a far better world.
Agreed with everything you said. I’m particularity sensitive to accounts that claim to be surprised that the CCP is only interested in short term gain. They don’t have the institutional memory to remember each compromise made in order to make it EASIER for the Communists to take over. The fact that CCP aligned companies do not have to have truthful financial papers. The fact of CCP demanding ALL technology in order to steal on a widespread program.
My uncle, who worked in Ford Aerospace in the 1980’s, constantly complained that Chinese working there always used the copy machine so much. The copy machine would be running for large parts of each day, and it always was for the Chinese contingent. Small surprise that only a few years later, Chinese were able to launch their own rockets without them blowing up. This was due to Pres. Clinton, who received VAST sums of money to be re-elected 1996 from China. In return for huge amounts of money, Clinton loosened up the security apparatus so that China took our w-88 bomb designs for it’s own, and in fact, the W-88 design is now used in all of N. Korea’s nuclear weapons, and will (if not already) also be developed by Iran. The W-88 bomb design took 20 years do design during the Cold War, and took 2 billion to develop.
We have FAR TOO MANY “Americans” who are more than willing to help the Chinese if it involves money for them, regardless of laws
Yeppers. The Chinese have also sent more than 100,000 illegals across Obambi’s leaky borders and they show up as spies because most of our Companies have seen the results of handing over proprietary information to them. So, now they just steal our Companies blind, directly.
Have you noticed that when you complain about the shoddy Chinese facsimiles we have to buy in our stores, most people just look at you like you have just told a lie and then you find out they are getting their opinions from Tik Tok and all that other Chinese online brainwashing crap, and just don’t believe you.
When are Americans going to wise up about Chinese Communist crapola. Maybe when they discover how little they will have once their Dear Chinese Leader is putting them to work on the sh*t paying jobs he has for them.
I am ranting about China while President Trump is once again trying to make deals with dictatorial Muslim Ayatollahs who want him assassinated. I don’t think you can ever try to be rational with suicidal maniacs. They are impossible to even have a rational discussion with and any decent shrink will agree with that. And don’t get me started about New York’s Mayor and his many mindless followers.
Got yerass handed to you on a plate didja? The unoriginal thieving Chinese just needed to steal your knowledge and undersell you and you’ve let your country be overrun by scum. Lights out for you Shultz.
This is a “Triple Whammy”, the German consumers are about to find out what Chinese consumers already know. Any car made in China is a POS! They “reverse engineer’ and then turn the specifications into confetti! The Chinese buy these cars with the full expectation that they will begin to fall apart in very short order and they are essentially “throw away” vehicles. The words “Quality” and “China” have never met each other!
I could care less what happens to VW and Audi. Audi did EVERYTHING they could to screw me on my SQ5. And I was a repeat customer. BMW tried the same thing, and I was on my 8th BMW! How do they do it? Simple. Something breaks on your car under warranty, and they refuse to honor the warranty. On the SQ5, the rear brake caliper failed on the highway at 9,000 miles. They would not cover the warranty, after they said they would. “I drove on bad brakes” is what they said. Yeah, at 9,000 miles. The fronts brakes were shot, as were all four tires. They wanted $5,000 to fix everything. On essentially a new car.
On the BMW, the turbo blew after only a year. They replaced it under warranty. 3 days later there was a bang, I got up, saw a trail of oil, and part of the engine smashed through the engine block.. Towed car in, covered under warranty they said. Then someone else called me back. Would not cover it under warranty, as I didn’t have the oil changed on schedule. When I provided the paperwork, they took three more days, then told me it was the “wrong filter kit” used. When I provided the data that this was not true, they said the onboard computer said I was wrong about the filter and they would not cover it. Really sick. I had the car towed home. They sent me an email with a special offer. They would replace the engine. $23,000. Yes, you heard that right.
Fortunately, in both cases I managed to turn the tables on them. Lost nothing but some time and had some inconvenience. Never buy from either make again. Just really disgusting.
Like my 2000 A4, but when Audi said no more stick, I said no more Audi.
merz is a pathetic wimp, a clueless globalist prat.
Old school FAFO.