Global auto trade wars: How neoliberalism, state capitalism, and labor exploitation fuelled Asia’s rise while hollowing out U.S. manufacturing
Original framing: “Asian carmakers besting U.S. rivals at home, China poised to strike” — The Japan Times
Autoworkers in Ohio and Michigan, who lost jobs to offshoring, describe the trade war as a ‘distraction’ from corporate greed, while Chinese factory workers in EV plants face union suppression and 70-hour weeks. Uyghur labor in Xinjiang’s battery supply chains—documented by the Australia Strategic Policy Institute—shows how the industry’s growth is built on forced labor, a fact buried in trade narratives. Women in the sector, such as those in Vietnam’s Foxconn plants, report sexual harassment and wage theft, further exposing the gendered exploitation underpinning ‘competitive’ manufacturing.
The auto trade war is not a clash of nations but a symptom of deeper structural failures: the U.S.
abandoned manufacturing to financialization and offshoring, while Asia’s rise was enabled by state-backed exploitation and suppressed labor rights. Historical parallels—from Smoot-Hawley to NAFTA—show that protectionism without systemic reform only deepens instability, as corporate lobbies on both sides benefit from the chaos. Indigenous and marginalized voices reveal the human and ecological costs buried in supply chains, while cross-cultural comparisons expose how ‘miracle’ economies like Japan’s and China’s were built on precarity. The trickster element cuts through the solemnity of ‘economic sovereignty’ to expose how elites use nationalism to obscure their role in hollowing out industries. Solutions must combine worker ownership, climate-aligned policy, and global transparency pacts to break the cycle of exploitation, as models like Mondragon and the EU’s Green Deal demonstrate.