Everybody wants what they can’t have. Every sales professional knows this and it is the most powerful tool they have in their quest to earn a living. It even has a name — it’s called “the takeaway” — and it is embedded into the culture of salesmanship at every level. This is a limited time offer, this price is only good until the end of the month, our inventory is limited. Buyers like to fiddle and diddle. Sales professionals don’t make a living by having extended conversations with people; they make a living from the commissions they earn by closing a deal. The takeaway is a technique that builds the urgency to make a buying decision. Everybody knows about it, and yet even the most hardened traders are influenced by it. Auctioneers know the way to get the highest price is to suggest an item up for sale might soon be unavailable. “Going once. Going twice….” That’s when the person who is afraid to put a hand up finds the courage to act. That urge to possess what we think we cannot have is precisely the reason Chinese made cars will come to the US — sooner rather than later. A friend visiting San Diego this summer told me that BYD cars with Mexican registration plates were everywhere. Waymo & Zeekr Credit: Waymo Waymo is importing Zeekr Ojai minivans for use in its robotaxi fleet. The vehicles are manufactured in China, then upfitted with the company’s latest self-driving technology in Mesa, Arizona. Although Waymo has to pay a 127.5 percent tariff on each vehicle imported, the vans are still cheaper than the Jaguar I-Pace SUVs it has been using. According to Yahoo! Finance, the sixth generation ADAS system is optimized to cut hardware costs, using a reduced sensor configuration consisting of 13 cameras, four LiDARs, and six radars. The minivans feature dual sliding doors, a low step-in height, a flat floor layout, and three rear passenger touchscreens that are used to control navigation, music, and climate settings. Further north, Canada has started to receive the first of 50,000 Chinese made EVs a year allowed by a new agreement between the two countries. If those cars are registered for use on Canadian roads, they will be able to drive on US roads legally as well. Soon, US citizens will be seeing Chinese made cars along both its southern and northern borders. That’s when the “everyone wants what they think they can’t have” dynamic will be activated. If the US government took out ads exhorting Americans to buy a Chinese car, people would tune them out, but by telling people they can’t have them — there is a move afoot to ban them outright for “national security” reasons — the government is goading people to demand them. Supply & Demand The South China Morning Post reported recently that industry analysts believe consumer demand for affordable electric vehicles will force open the US market for Chinese cars within the next few years, even though they currently face trade barriers. Yes, we know SCMP is a mouthpiece for the CCP and every word in it is cleared personally by Xi Jinping before it is published, but that doesn’t mean those analysts are wrong. Two weeks ago, Ford CEO Jim Farley told company insiders that Chinese cars were likely to arrive in the US in “five to 10 years” and that the company must be prepared for that to happen. The US can’t block Chinese cars forever, said Yale Zhang, managing director at the consultancy Automotive Foresight in Shanghai. “[US carmakers] would face complaints from consumers who are supposed to enjoy affordable smart EVs [made by Chinese companies],” he said. The pressure would likely mount after consumers in Mexico and Canada adopted EVs that offered good performance and value for money, Zhang added. In an April report, UBS analysts also said Chinese EVs would enter the US market in the mid-to-long term, even though China’s carmakers faced steep tariffs. As a result of China’s prowess in the automotive supply chain and related technologies, the cost of making a BYD electric car was 35 percent lower than its Western rivals, a 2023 report by UBS showed. The average price of a new EV in China in the first half of 2026 was $36,605, according to Cui Shudong, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association. An EV in the US cost $55,300 on average as of February, while the cost of new conventional car was $48,800, according to Kelley Blue Book. Geely Eyes US Market In May, Chinese brand Geely (which owns Zeekr, Volvo, and Polestar) said it would not rule out the possibility of entering the US market, adding that a decision would be made within three years. But in the short term, Chinese cars are likely to steer clear of the American market. Even joint ventures between US and Chinese companies are steering clear of the US. According to Car News China, GM announced today that after 21 years, it is suspending sales of Chevrolet products in the Chinese market and will concentrate instead on exporting its China-made vehicles — but not to the US. General Motors has just signed a 20 year extension of its joint venture agreement with SAIC. The JV has developed a new state-of-the-art platform for the Cadillac OPTIQ, but it is not likely to be used as the basis for US-made electric cars. Stella Li, the human dynamo who is in charge of international operations for BYD, said in July that the EV giant could still achieve its goal of being #1 in the global market without selling cars in the US. If the US won’t buy cars from Chinese manufacturers, guess what? China doesn’t care. It is happy to sell to any nation that actually wants its cars — which is just about every country other than the US. The Yugo Phenomenon 1987 Yugo. CC BY-SA 3.0 What the US government does not understand, and is apparently unable to comprehend, is that people want low-cost vehicles. Some readers may recall the Yugo. It started out at a Fiat 127, and when the tooling wore out, Fiat sold it to the Russians. Then the Russians offloaded it onto Yugoslavia. It was a crappy car — Motor Trend called it one of the worst cars ever built — but when it came to the US, it was the cheapest car people could buy and demand soared. Hyundai entered the US market with the deplorable Pony and followed it up with the execrable Excel. People bought them in droves. I knew one man who bought one for each of his eight children! The difference with Chinese cars is they are not cheap, throwaway cars. They are well built and packed with the latest electronic doodads and geegaws that people want. They are inexpensive but not cheap. The Volkswagen Golf looked a lot like the Yugo, but it was a much better car. Imagine if you could buy a Golf for the price of a Yugo! Dealers wouldn’t be able to keep them in stock, and that’s what worries Jim Farley and everyone else in the car business. Ultimately, consumers don’t care that much where a car is made, they care how much it costs and whether it offers good value for the money. Chinese cars tick both of those boxes, which is why — ready or not — they are coming to the United States sooner rather than later. Telling people they can’t have something is guaranteed to backfire on policymakers.
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