23h ago

Tesla complains about being target of retaliatory tariffs, and it was right: it's starting

electrek.co Tesla complains about being target of retaliatory tariffs, and it was right: it's starting

Tesla’s policy team sent a letter to the US government to complain about potentially being the target of retaliatory tariffs...

Summary

Tesla warned the U.S. government that it could face retaliatory tariffs due to Trump’s trade policies, and those concerns are becoming reality.

Canada has started targeting Tesla by excluding its products from EV charger rebate programs, with officials considering removing Tesla from a $4,000 EV purchase rebate as well.

Canadian politicians, including NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, have proposed a 100% tariff on Tesla imports.

Tesla, reliant on Canadian and Mexican manufacturing, now faces backlash over CEO Elon Musk’s close ties to Trump and his trade war policies.

53 comments

Maybe their CEO shouldn't have made it his life's mission to become the world's biggest cunt, then.

They've entered the Find Out stage.

I heard that people are trying to return their new Teslas and Cybertrucks because they are apparently infested with bedbugs?! I guess they are in the factories and dealerships and have just been crawling into the cars at night?
It wouldn't surpise me if Elmo and the news are trying to keep a tight lid on it so people won't find out, and Conspiracy nuts are saying that Tesla is torching their own Cybertrucks in the dealership lots to contain the spread.
I didnt belive it at first but a friend of mine took a Lyft in a Tesla the other night and started to feel itchy but the back seat was dark and she was on her phone. While she was getting out, she noticed a bunch of tiny spots on her dress and they were bedbugs!
Naturally she freaked the fuck out and the driver apologized profusely begging her not to give him a bad review before speeding off.
She refused to go into her apartment afterwardband spent a few hours in the laundry room practically naked running her clothes in the dryer! Apparently high heat is the only Way to get rid of them?
She's still traumatized and insists she still feels them crawling on her even though an exterminator with a bedbug sniffing dog assured her the apartment was clear.
Has anyone else heard about this? It's so messed up, considering they're such expensive cars!
- Seems like a lie. Bedbugs live in your walls and they come out at night. An old trick for getting rid of bedbug, fleas, scabies, and other parasites it's to bag the affected material and leave it in your car for a few days. The high/low temps kills stuff pretty well.
  If it was an Uber, the chances are that they picked up a person who had a bedbug or flea infestation, not that the car is permanently infested with the parasite. Also, you can bag and fume a car pretty cheaply. The idea that you would set fire to almost half a mil of inventory to get rid of a problem that can be solved with a single call to an exterminator seems ridiculous.
  
  I suspect the point is not wether it is true but that it could be a message along the lines of a headline like "Does Tesla have a bedbug problem?"
- Even if they don't torch them themselves because of bedbugs or whatever, they must be so happy for every car that burns down, because it's another car they can never fix that is gone, and they still get the money because i assume they are insured?

I don't understand why the board doesn't just remove Elon or force him out or something.
Guess we get to witness The Rise and Fall of Tesla, coming to a Netflix near you.
- I'll post this image just to show how much insanely overvalued is Tesla stock. Is a meme stock and is closely tied to Elon musk
- Tesla stock is still insanely overvalued due to fElon Musk's attachment. It's a symbiotic relationship and the best way for the world to bankrupt Elon "Mediocre" Musk.
  
  It's stupidly overvalued and yesterday I saw an article where one analyst gave it a $500+ target. Bullshit. Probably paid off.
  I just cross my fingers he meets his maker soon.
- The board is his family and close allies. They're not going to go against him. Tesla = Musk. Anyone who's a part of Tesla, including investors, is part of the nosedive into the pavement, just along for the ride at this point.
  
  Just seems like a stupid ship to go down with, but I guess here I am going down with Ship America.

Takes a special kind of dipshit asshole to fail to recognize the entire reason they are as wealthy and powerful and beyond consequence is that they operate out of a runaway, uncontrolled, corrupt capitalist society and if they Fuck Around outside that box, they may rapidly and dramatically Find Out.
- runaway, uncontrolled, corrupt capitalist
  I would actually argue that the only word I disagree with here is "uncontrolled" because it was very tightly controlled for a long time, which allowed the relative stability that let America be a big bully on the world stage, force the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and lead trading partners to believe we were bullies but mostly trustworthy and would follow through on international deals we made.
  Now we are truly entering the "uncontrolled" territory, and that's why faith from other countries in the US being a reliable partner is faltering.
  
  Yeah, the previous state of flawed democracy was perfect for business and maintaining the status quo. Now they went even further into autocracy and now they're basically at the mercy of Trump's whims. It's throwing long term planning out the window and the new game is just sucking up to Trump and finding novel ways to bribe him.
  Musk basically spent a quarter billion dollars to lose a 100 billion dollars more on top of that.
- I hope he’s a slow learner. Watching this is too much fun.

TF is it with these clueless bullies? They whine so hard when someone punches back.
- Snowflakes
  
  The term snowflake was invented for the regressives decades ago now. They like throwing the term back at us. They do this because it hurt the whiny little weaklings.

Get fucked Elmo.

Canadian here, idk what to say?
"k"
That should about sum this up.
- Too close to an X for my taste.

Good. This should have happened in the few second between his first Nazi salute and his second, but better late than never.

Oh did they complain before they stole the $43 million in subsidies from us. No way they were selling a vehicle every two minutes last week..

Years of "we're no. 1" and "leader of the free world" propaganda has made Americans delulu to the point where they think their leaders are god-kings that can throw out edicts that will go unopposed. A lot of thus influence was soft power and reliance on allies for re-supplying and repairs, which is currently being dismantled.
This has been a long process, starting with browbeating military allies into the ironically named "coalition of the willing" during the second Iraq war. Now an openly fascist leader has been elected as a US president and is threatening wars of expansion. Interesting times ahead, I guess.

All the Canadian companies that sell to them should raise the price too. Make it impossible for them to make their shit cars

How does that parable go? Reap what you sew?
- You rip what you sew
  
  I ripped my jeans, but then I sewed them up again
- It’s “sow” but yeah.
  
  Fucking autocorrect can kiss my add
- “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
  
  “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.”

I want to see more teslas burning on the lots. We’ve done a few, but I feel we can go further and burn better.

"How dare you, sir! How dare you apply the inhumane standards which I promote and encourage, to myself and people important to me! I'm exempt! Don't you hear? I'm exempt!"
(Loosely based on The Daily Show from February 1st, 2007)

"Illegal Collusive" Deport Canada

Lots of spelling/grammar errors in that article

Good hopefully i can snag a BYD across the border I'll register in Canada.
- So i was thinking about this some time now. EV's are pretty specific and where i live, i have never seen a garage that specialised on EV's in general. So when you import a car like that from a brand no one over here has heard off, what do you do with it when you have a problem, or need to get it serviced?
  
  You're done, there's no reliable way to service EVs without a local network.

The real winner? China. Watch how they'll dominate the Canadian EV market while US and Canada engage in this childish tariff tantrum
🐱🐱
- There's plenty of other non-China EVs available in North America, and Tesla vehicles are terrible for plenty of other Elon-related reasons that aren't his political influence.
  
  Non-Chinese alternatives? Research shows limited viable options. Most are luxury models with restricted availability or production constraints. Belgian-built Volvos and Japanese EVs struggle with volume and range limitations. North American EV sales hit only 140,000 units in February 2025 - pitiful compared to China's manufacturing capacity.
  Tesla's flaws are well-documented - 27th out of 28 brands for reliability, Autopilot safety incidents, detaching roofs, and makeshift "band-aid" cooling systems. But you're missing the bigger picture.
  While we argue over Musk's Twitter antics, China's BYD overtook Tesla globally. VW Group already outran Tesla in January, selling 82k units versus Tesla's declining 57k. Canadian retaliatory policies excluding Tesla from rebates creates perfect market opening for Chinese manufacturers.
  The data confirms China's manufacturing strategy succeeds while North America cycles between contradictory incentives and tariffs. Typical consumer-level analysis ignoring global industrial competition.
  😺

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