If I were a betting man I would indeed bet on China gaining lots of ground. I do favor equilibrium over extrapolation, though, and as such am averse to framings like “owning.” Especially given how crucial automotive is to the economies of so many nations: hard to see Germany or the USA or Korea just giving up (the way some countries have: see the exodus of OEMs from Australia!). Leaving aside current tariff turmoil, I’d see the USA still dominating in large pickups and SUVs: we have the space for these vehicles that other countries do not, and the Chicken Tariff has been a defense for over half a century. That is a great diminishment from where they once were, of course. Japan and Korea will throttle Chinese imports to a manageable level (they have done so for all non-J and non-K brands for decades now, it is hard to imagine they will now stop). India will defend its market tooth and nail, as they always have. So, if I can (quite rudely) leave out ROW, that leaves Europe, and here the equilibrium is much less clear to me. Germany will defend MB and VW and BMW for sure. France and Italy have been easing state defense of their firms for a long time, so who knows? But I do recall that it was Renault who revived Dacia and built it into a very successful low-cost Japan- and Korea-fighting powerhouse. So a defense CAN be mounted. And on the supply side, well, how much does China really want to win this battle? To be known as the country which killed a given country’s domestic producers probably won’t do much to boost sales there. But then again, in the USA we quite willingly sacrificed local textile and footwear producers on the altar of lower-cost imports from South Asia, so who knows? BUT COMPLICATING EVERYTHING is geopolitics. I used to downplay the risk of Chinese car software having “back doors” that would allow the CCP to remotely take over or blow up cars that Chinese OEMs sold abroad.

Then the Israelis remotely exploded a few thousand pagers and I had to rethink.

Does literally handing the keys to your car fleet to a foreign government make sense? In this case perhaps politics will, um, trump economics. The Chinese may make a better and cheaper product, but will our government want to let it in?