Apparently Chinese competition in electric cars is worrying the Germans:

German car makers must do more to make electric vehicles cheaper and more appealing because manufacturers are losing out to China, the head of Berlin’s top group of economic advisers has warned.

Monika Schnitzer, chair of the Germany’s Council of Economic Experts, said car makers needed to “get their act together” and “do their homework” as people increasingly turn to cheaper Chinese-made cars.

Our word. People on the other side of the planet have worked out how to do something - it matters not what it is - better than those closer to us. That those far foreigners look a little different, don’t share our political system, speak wildly different languages, matters not. For trade, just trade alone - the freedom of the individual to buy whatever it is from whoever the individual cares to alight upon - means that the local capitalists are forced to rip us off a little less.

For that is what is happening here. And it doesn’t matter a fermented mung bean why those Chinese are making cheaper cars than Germans. Chinese government subsidies, simple skill, application, lower wages - all make no difference to the important point here. That there is competition in electric vehicles forces those German - and every other in the world - factories to up their game and make better and cheaper. The beneficiaries are, entirely obviously, us. Us consumers, us going about our daily lives.

As we’ve recently noted people will try near any argument to show that trade’s a bad idea. And yet think about this. Every producer of everything is, all the time, forced to compete with those who are the best in the world at doing that thing. Which is why things just get cheaper and cheaper for us out here the people the economy ought to be run for. You know, us, the people.

True, a problem with Chinese cars could be that we’d just want another one an hour later but if they’re cheap enough why not?