> Do western governments not subsidize their car makers with tariffs, bailouts, tax cuts, etc?

Yes, but the Chinese ones are done better.

UK government essentially* self-lobotomised with civil service cuts in the post-GFC "austerity" measures, so it doesn't have a good grasp on how to solve problems.

Throwing money around without sufficient care to the precise thing being subsidised, that just promotes wasteful spending, it doesn't grow the thing the subsidy was meant to grow. Cobra effect, etc.

* this wasn't their intent, of course; the rhetoric was all the usual stuff about "bloated" and "bureaucratic" and so on.

China developed the whole ecosystem and supply chain for cars and EVs. We see it with batteries and also very recently with electronics. I think BYD supplies batteries for the Tesla plant in Berlin while also being a direct competitor...

It is easy to blame "subsidies", which is calling the kettle black, but I think the main issue is the lack of industrial policy and what are effectively "degrowth" policies in European countries and the EU at large.

While it's technically true that the UK has an Industrial Strategy (1), I do not think that this is really comparable to what China does in this regard. I'm not specifically knocking the current UK government, I think the same could be said of any UK government in the last 30 years, if not more.

Why did Chinese industrial strategy push for cars and EVs specifically is, I think touched on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46077479

1) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strate...