(i gotta bolt! family movie time.)

visiting a plant in the company of an entourage is quite different from private conversations.

We’ll see. A massive tide just came in for Nvidia. We’ll just have to see how it does when, eventually, the tide goes out. Everyone looks great when they are swimming in water this high. Again, I wish it well, and am not betting against it. My view is cautious.

I’m not saying they play fair. I’m saying they play effectively.

it’s honda that i mostly admire, though i’ve a nostalgic attachment to nissan. i haven’t followed the firms enough to have too deep a view of them, other than i am a fan of honda’s products.

China favors firms on the front side, but structures industries to be ruthlessly competitive, which limits the social cost of the favoritism. I think that’s probably the best we can hope for in a fallen world. Distinguishing between nepotism and valuable soft information is not generally possible.

your tenacity is admirable, but no. defense contractor CEOs do not typically meet independently with foreign leaders, particularly adversaries. yes, it’s products are dual use, but it relies on defense work, and should have precisely zero defense work with its current leadership.

if you want Americans to become scientists, you’ve got to kneecap the money hose thru finance, management consulting, and monopoly tech. Americans capable of doing science get faced with a choice of six years of lab slavery or $200K to start traveling around, meeting people, building spreadsheets.

I guess I’m just not comfortable with a person who independently meets and speaks with foreign leaders, both adversaries and allies, running essential defense contractors. Call me old fashioned, but I think that’s a conflict.

Right now, dead is all US producers absent protection. Autos are defense-strategic, so we’ll protect, but I wonder if we have the wisdom to protect without just fattening favored subpar producers, like Tesla. Lots of firms pursuing autonomy. I’d not bet on Tesla to outperform.

We’re stumbling our way into a 1930s scale politico-economic crisis. Even over my relatively calm lifetime, it’s remarkable how much of what’s normal now would have been politically possible then. Things will get very fluid. They may just kill us. I’d not pretend to know the limits of the possible.

BYD is the biggest, yes. But it’s like 30% share; the rest of the market is quite dispersed. Our champions are like Boeing and Intel, firms that become essentially our industries. China might err its way into that, but so far, across its wide panoply of industries, it’s done a great job avoiding it.

yeah. Canada has a VAT and provincial taxes. there is work to be done sorting this stuff out, not insuperable problems. re the portfolio: you advocate the programs, bring taxes along for the ride, rather than the other way around. VAT as standalone is a terrible idea.

He should never be able to accumulate it. I support taxing loans www.interfluidity.com/v2/9028.html but it isn’t enough. if his holding less of these enterprises forces a more conservative valuation of them, that’s a feature not a bug.