Has Tesla stopped growing? Or is it an opportunity? There is a flood of news around the world that electric vehicle sales are sluggish. There are various reasons, but the biggest reason is the “high price.” As electric vehicles represented by Tesla are generally more expensive than internal combustion locomotives, sales are bound to decline as soon as government subsidies decrease. In other words, it also means that electric vehicles are failing to expand the market.

But, is it really? Electric cars could be a lot cheaper than they are now. China’s BYD, the world’s biggest seller of electric cars, currently costs a quarter of Tesla’s entry model in the country and half of its expected price in the U.S. BYD’s electric car is considered to have good performance for its price. If people who can’t afford a Tesla start buying one, will the electric car market be eaten by BYD? That may not be the case. The important thing is that even those who don’t have the money to buy a Tesla should be able to buy one, and as the market expands, players other than China will have opportunities as well.

However, as we enter the new Cold War era with China, governments are slapping enormous tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The U.S. announced 100% tariffs last month, and the EU also imposed an additional 17%-38% tariffs on each manufacturer last week.

If the nature of the automobile industry, which is shaking up manufacturing and jobs in each country, conflicts with China, securing battery industry and rare minerals that inevitably follow electric vehicles, and issues of self-driving and personal information that are peculiar to electric vehicles are added to this, the electric vehicle issue is certainly not a single trade item. If the climate crisis and decarbonization issues are added to this, then… it will be ruined.

However, protectionist trade has never been the answer in any case since the creation of the capitalist market economy. It was even the case in an adversary or a war criminal country. Protectionist trade was only 100 years ago. And the result is… we all know. Humans are stupid, and they always repeat the same mistakes.