Stephen Wilmot
speaker
159 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Aug 2025
last heard 4 Sep
Stephen Wilmot’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So exactly how appealing that will be for the likes of BYD remains to be seen.
They're responding everywhere.
In the European market, the rise of Chinese cars is the trend that every local automaker is watching.
They're trying to match what they call China speed to shorten their development cycles, to lower their costs, to essentially try and match the advances that the Chinese have made.
In the U.S., Ford is talking a lot about trying to match the Chinese technology and costs even without Chinese cars in the U.S.
It's partly a sense that it's inevitable eventually that they'll have to compete head to head, even if the time frame isn't entirely clear.
WSJ What’s News · Chips, Juice and Airplanes - Exemptions Confuse as Tariffs Kick In · 7 Aug 2025
podcast
So they have to pay these tariffs in the short run because they have limited room for manoeuvre.
These are companies with high fixed costs.
very inflexible production networks.
But they can do a few things at the margins.
They can increase production a bit, add an extra shift here and there where they can in the US, dial down a bit of production in Mexico and Canada, in Japan.
But they're tweaking a bit at the edges.
They try and localise more parts.
In the very long term,
It doesn't really change the strategy of the auto industry, which has increasingly been about local for local production.
So producing in North America for the North American market, producing in Asia for the Asian market.
Toyota has been kind of the flag bearer of this policy and confirmed today that the tariffs sort of would essentially cement the logic of that strategy.
So we're seeing the once global auto industry fragmenting into regional hubs and tariffs are part of that trend.
Thanks for listening.
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