Was Trump doing global worldwide tariffs of 20-300% on almost all imports of every type his first term? Were those the ones kept?

What happened in 2020 and who was President that year?

Also Trump beaten by Obama yet again. Hell yeah.

My insurance keeps going up because private insurance in America has a monopoly on access to healthcare so they can charge whatever they want until the public gets so fed up they demand a single pair of healthcare system.

If things continue the way they're going with voter suppression and right wing extremists buying up the voting machine companies I don't think it'll matter anymore and then that will be the end of that. About 10% of the country will be allowed to have health care and odds are you won't be in it.

Plus, I doubt many people here have had the experience of shopping for something like a Mitsubishi Mirage.

The car was terrible in fit and finish, and barely had enough power to get out of its own way.
The dealership was sketchy and advertised a bunch of discounts that only existed in their imagination, when all is said and done the bottom line price felt like a crime against nature.
Unless you had a pile of cash that you're willing to drop on what is objectively a pretty lousy car, you're going to have to finance, and if you didn't have walk-on-water credit, the interest rates made that "cheap" car suddenly not so cheap.
If you did have walk-on-water credit - why in the hell would you even consider a Mitsubishi Mirage in the first place?

People like to imagine there's some great conspiracy that killed cheap cars in the USA, but the fact just was that the segment of the market that had the means to buy them, didn't want them.

And the answer is 0.13%.

What? We're you expecting a different answer?

The modern Corolla isn't exactly a "small car" anymore. It's almost as big now as the Camry was in the mid-90s.

To be fair, I've seen at least one comment so far where someone said they'd be happy to buy a smaller vehicle if they were offered for sale. Really though, the president doesn't decide these things - the bean counters at the domestic auto manufacturers do. And if they had decided that making cheaper, lower profit margin cars was something they wanted to pursue, they'd already be doing it. There never was any law against it.

Mostly what people are getting confused on was that we can't import new Kei cars/trucks due to DOT regulations and various legal red tape. None of that has changed.

There's only a vehicle affordability crisis if you're unwilling to buy used. You can still get used Chevy Bolts with brand new replaced batteries for around $12k. I'm not gonna shill for the dealership since they're not giving me a commission, but it's frequently mentioned on the Bolt subreddit.

Back when the used EV tax credit was still a thing, people were snagging those cars for about $8k before taxes and fees. Getting rid of the used EV tax credit was a huge blow against affordability, and putting out some dumb White House press release about cars that will never be built (not because they can't, but because they simply wouldn't sell well) is just more GOP gaslighting.

"We actually took away one of the ways you could get an affordable car and are replacing it with thoughts and prayers. Have the Golden Age you voted for."

AI is designed to take shortcuts in order to improve performance. It's already been caught more than once for example appearing to find problems on an X-ray with a very high rate of success when in actuality it had just picked up on a simple pattern where for example something is dumb as a ruler was included on the X-rays that had the problems and wasn't included on an X-ray that didn't...

Not that any of us have any say in this whatsoever. AI bullshit is going to dominate everything whether we like it or not. Just like how the price of ram has increased by 5 to 10 times and we all just have to suck it down.

We have a very small window left to the side of we are going to live in a society where around 2,000 people get to decide how we live. And we need to decide if having the girl that hands us our coffee say Merry Christmas is worth giving up everything else to those 2,000 people.

Literally just a light switch, lol. Not what I expected. I appreciate the idea, thank you.

It'd probably do just fine in I-4 traffic between downtown Orlando and the attractions area. In fact, I think I could probably keep up with traffic on my e-scooter that maxes out at 20 MPH. Of course, I'm joking about the taking the scooter on the highway part, which is obviously illegal. Not joking about that it technically could keep up with traffic, for the most part.

I've actually seen quite a few of the Kei trucks here that people drive around town. They're not illegal to import if you get one that meets the age requirements. The main reason they're not more popular is that when all is said and done, you've spent about what it would cost to buy a decent used car that actually has the oomph required to get onto the highway (at least the parts of the highway that aren't perpetually bumper-to-bumper traffic).

Here in Florida, there's a retirement community called "The Villages". It has on occasion made national news for various old people antics (plus, it's Florida, so...) and you may have already heard of it.

Small golf carts and golf cart-like vehicles are extremely popular there. They work because the community was designed with dedicated cart paths and the people who have retired there tend to be fine with vehicles that cost less to maintain. Florida also allows UTVs and golf carts to be modified and registered as street legal and driven on roads up to 35 MPH.

I think the 35 MPH road limitation is mostly about wanting to prevent people from impeding traffic. Here in FL you're able to ride a bike/e-bike/e-scooter on any road that isn't a toll or limited access highway, regardless of posted speed limit, at your own peril. Back in my teenage years, a few of my friends and I had mopeds and we'd modified them to hit about 40 MPH to better keep up with traffic on 35 MPH roads. The fact that you're not technically supposed to go that fast on a moped was never actually enforced.

Would you like to try again?

Spoiler alert: There never was any law saying you couldn't build small cars here in the USA.

They don't sell well here in the US because people with poor credit and/or limited budgets tend to buy used vehicles rather than stripped-down new models.

Well, when your little girl isn't toting around her 30 dolls anymore, you can obviously get a smaller car. /s