maxglute 4 hours ago

Those are consumer subsidies, they make buying a cheaply produced car cheaper, they don't make producing a car cheaper. Of course you can industrial policy for that as well, if you have the right conditions, cheap industrial inputs, and can eat domestic politics shit, i.e. automate the workforce. But DE probably don't have the domestic politics to automate the workforce nor future access to cheap gas.

So their industrial problem can't be fixed with subsidies, as in subsidies not capable of improving long term DE competitiveness without subsidies. Even if they automate workfroce and remove social benefits, lack of access to cheap industrial feedstock is precluding, i.e can't offset structurally disadvantage of being more expensive producer on input level.