EconAir

December 16, 2025. This post is a summary of articles I read, or read about, today. Ford takes a $19.5 billion write-off on its electric vehicle manufacturing assets. It will take over a joint project it has with a South Korea battery company to only produce large-scale industrial batteries. Ford's electric F-150 pickup truck doesn't seem to have caught on with America's macho truck customers (later discontinued). Big surprise. (Personal comment. Assuming the U.S. continues to ban Chinese cars, probably the growth segment of the U.S. EV market will be hybrid SUVs, small pickups, and maybe hybrid sedans.) Ford has a "skunk works" operation in California that is redesigning and reengineering how internal combustion and electronic vehicles are designed and assembled. Volkswagen (VW) closes a German assembly plant. This is the first time this has happened in the company's history. The faculty will become a research and development center, probably working with VW...

BACKGROUND Trump, of all people, does not seem to understand that companies, not countries, import and exports goods and services. Trump does not seem to understand that many American companies and industries have outsourced the production of their inputs, products and services to China, Mexico and Canada to lower costs and increase profits. They have already decided what to produce here and what to produce in other countries. Total American imports are around $3.5 trillion. Total exports are around $2.5 trillion. Both numbers include trade in services in addition to trade in goods. so the total trade deficit is around $1 trillion. Any higher tariffs the U.S. puts in imports will probably be matched by tariffs on U.S. exports. So while tariffs in imports will hurt foreign exporters, reciprocal tariffs will hurt American exporters and their employees. And imports of commodities like oil and copper, steel and aluminum, plus inputs and sub-assemblies that go into domestic American prod...