Wednesday ORT: Ural Chokes, Who Pays Tariffs, EV Auction Drama, Jag Cleans Up, Vaccine Dreams

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Commercial message: There are still a couple of the USA Made Craftsman sets out there at $75 plus shipping. You won’t find a better deal anywhere. Harbor Freight is charging $159.900 for a very similar set made in Taiwan. Email craftsman@avoidablecontact.com to talk to my guy and take delivery of your own set.

Some of what we’ll discuss today is “old news” but it’s worth talking about anyway. Thanks to the ACF readers who brought it to my attention — I’m too busy writing about cats to see everything!

If you loved that Russian BMW, you’ll… probably not buy this generic Chinese bike

If you’ve been around ACF long enough, you know we have some members who are between “notorious” and “legendary”. One of those is our own Nate, the URAL-riding “true Conservative” from SoCal. His Ural is tough but Nate is tougher; when he was hit hard enough to break the forks on his solo-spec, 40-horsepower Ural, he bounced right back to riding. The bike, on the other hand:

It’s easy to see why people love Urals. They’re Eastern Bloc takes on an early BMW flat-twin. Currently manufactured in Kazakhstan, the sidecar-equipped Urals start at $19,999 including on-demand 2WD.

The firm has now announced a Ural NEO, which looks like it’s going to be an awful Chinese 446cc parallel twin. “We’re working hard to keep it under $15,000.” You’re gonna have to work harder than that. What’s the point of doing this? Why go from building and selling your own $20,000 bike to re-selling an AliExpress crapwagon? Is there really anyone out there who is saying, “You know, I cannot afford a $20k sidecar bike, so I’m gonna get a $15k sidecar bike”? The fact is that Ural already makes a $15k sidecar bike — it’s a 4-year-old Ural, and there are plenty out there. The firm should take a page from Porsche’s book here. Instead of degrading your showroom product, you should fluff up the showroom product, tell the wannabes to buy used, and in doing so build resale value that, in turn, makes people feel comfortable about buying a new one for $22k.

I doubt Nate would ride this one. Maybe he’ll chime in and tell us.

The cat bites back

“my career is best described with this picture”

Jaguar Land Rover has reportedly terminated design chief Gerry McGovern. Whether this is a direct response to the Jaguar rebranding fiasco is left as an exercise for the reader’s imagination. If you ask me, they should have fired him eighteen years ago. There’s no evidence he’s ever sold a single car via his “styling philosophy”. All the hard work was done for him before he got there, via the L322 Range Rover. The two generations of Range Rover he did are, frankly, a little fem and probably would sell even better if they looked more like an L322. The current car is especially bad. It has the nose of a Mitsubishi Outlander and the tail of a Cadillac DTS. The Evoque manages to make the Ford Escape look expensive, while the Discovery is so awful it upsets me to see the name on the thing.

And that’s his successful side. The F-Type is okay but again, there was no genius required in designing it. The last XJ was unforgivably bland, and the various “Pace” sport-utility-vehicles are awkward-looking enough to make the original RX300 look pretty good by contrast.

Frankly, it would all be unbearably tragic if JLR hadn’t become an appendage of the Tata Group long ago. The final insult of the genderfluid G-Spot-Type or whatever they were gonna call it was just the icing on the misery cake. Hit the road, Gerry, and don’t come back.

A little child sacrifice never hurt a society, right?

You really can’t hate the media enough: when an internal FDA memo linked ten child deaths to the COVID-19 vaccines, the mainstream outlets broke their fingers appending “CLAIMS” and “BLAMES” to the news. ABC’s headline is even better: “FDA links 10 children’s deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. Doctors want proof.” If you read the article, you’ll find the “doctors” who “want proof” are

0. A lawyer who is not a doctor;

1. “Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a spokesperson for the Infectious Disease Society of America”

Dr. Adalja went to an island medical school in 2002 and has worked “in public policy” more or less since then. 90% of the search results about this guy are him giving pro-vaccine public statements. This is tantamount to calling me “a Honda engineer who spoke out against the 9th generation Civic,” except there’s more basis in fact for that assertion.

Freed from the Biden Administration’s political mandates, the FDA has been doing everything from slapping WHOOP’s hand on their claims to be a blood pressure tester to drastically reducing the recommended cohort for COVID-19 booster shots. This has set up an interesting conflict within the government; the CDC is recommending the shots for everyone, but they are only FDA-approved for individuals over 65 or between the ages of 5 and 64 who have one or more significant underlying conditions.

I beat the drum on this a little hard back in 2020-2022, and it probably cost me a fair amount of money in subscriptions, but: I was right. The vaccine did more harm than good for most of the people who got it. Time and time again I watched my vaccinated friends and co-workers go down hard from COVID-19 during that period, even as they practiced isolation-fetish behavior, while my unvaccinated son and I traveled around the country for years without so much as a cough.

Not that I can blame anyone who took the advice of… let’s face it… the whole world and every voice allowed to speak anywhere on the Internet. Many of you weren’t permitted to travel, work, or attend school without the appropriate official papers. The public discourse went with frightening speed to “here’s where you can get the vaccine tomorrow” to “should the unvaccinated be allowed to keep their homes?” One study showed that unvaxxed people were subject to the same hatred, or more hatred, than immigrants and convicts. There’s something ironic about the fact that many of the people who claimed to be “resisting” fascism were on the front lines of the movement to dehumanize people who didn’t want to receive an experimental-approval treatment for a disease they didn’t have and, in many cases, had already survived.

While I fully support my over-65 friends and family members who got vaccinated and boosted — the data was on your side — I think the people who vaccinated their young children were extremely wrong to do so. All the data suggested it did nothing to help children and might even put their hearts at risk. When my son’s school started getting froggy about requiring the shot, I pulled him out of school. My colleagues told me that he’d suffer mightily from this, both academically and socially — but now he’s graduating high school a year early as the acclaimed and respected commander of a thousand air cadets.

Meanwhile, there are ten children dead — and if they have the data on ten children, you can assume that there are many more, because what are the chances that the deaths of the other children were recorded in a way that made proper analysis possible after the fact? This was little less than an Aztec child sacrifice. We killed helpless, innocent little boys and girls so their Boomer grandparents could breathe a little easier and their mommies wouldn’t get ostracized at the PTA meetings. It is a global disgrace.

As for the children who supposedly died from COVID-19: read the literature. Most of the “child deaths” were obese 17-year-olds or 1-year-olds with other deadly co-morbidities. Thank God the FDA is restricting the boosters from children now; some of the virago boss bitches on the coasts would still be sticking their kids two times a year otherwise.

That’s all I have to say on this. We have one job as a society, really; protect our children so they can be the future. When we fail at this, it hardly matters if GDP LINE GO UP. So, in the future, let’s genuinely “think of the children”.

Appearing at a used-car lot near you: a new EV

“$25k off? Nah, I’ll wait for next Black Friday.”

Dream with me, for a moment: What if you could get a new Lexus ES at $25,000 off sticker? You’d run, not walk, to the dealership — because even if you despise the ES with every fiber of your being, you know you can flip it. The same would be true for nearly every other sub-$100,000 car in the United States. I’m not a big fan of the Chevrolet Traverse but if you can sell me one for $25,000 off I’m there.

We all know that doesn’t apply to EVs, even one that was chosen as “EV Of The Year” by… the Hispanic Motor Press:

The all-new 2026 Hyundai IONIQ 9 has been named 2026 EV of the Year by the Hispanic Motor Press. The 16^th-annual Hispanic Motor Press Awards program recognizes the best vehicles for Hispanic consumers based on driving satisfaction, advancements in technology, cleaner mobility solutions, safety features, infotainment, styling, and value…

“This is the electric vehicle today’s Hispanic families have been waiting for,” said Ricardo Rodriguez-Long, founder and president, Hispanic Motor Press. “The IONIQ 9 offers generous interior space for every passenger, quiet and confident performance, and the latest driver-assistance and connectivity features. Built on a proven EV platform with quick-recharge capability, it delivers real-world practicality with the refinement and value our community expects.”

You can’t make this stuff up, folks. The worst part is that it doesn’t appear to be true! After all, there are a lot of Hispanic families out there, but the IONIQ 9 is a no-sale across the country at more than a twenty-five thousand dollar discount. Keep in mind, this is what the dealers are willing to put online. God only knows what kind of deal you could work out if you showed up with an 800 beacon score and a willingness to finance with the dealer.

More than 4,100 IONIQ 9s, which amounts a full 4 months of production, are on CarGurus at the moment. The vehicle is so overstuffed in the channel that someone recently caught a dealer running brand-new IONIQs through the used-car auctions. That’s right: the Mannheim and other other cattle-calls that typically serve as the dumping ground for unwanted trade-ins and overvalued lease returns are now being used to shuck off brand-new Hyundais.

Take it from someone who worked at a few dealers: this is desperation at work. This is a dealer principal deciding he would rather book a $15,000 straight cash loss than keep an IONIQ 9 on the floorplan. He’s also willing to risk the wrath of Hyundai USA, which like every other automotive OEM on the planet is hyper-sensitive to dumping. When I worked at Ford Credit I would periodically become aware of Ford dealers failing and going bankrupt. Guess what happens in that circumstance? The banks arrange to have the inventory quietly removed and delivered to other dealers. There is never a New Car Bankruptcy Blowout Sale. Because the OEMs, captive finance arms, and floorplan providers don’t permit it. Maintaining the line on retail and wholesale pricing is a major goal of everyone up and down the chain.

I’m starting to notice another trend on Copart and elsewhere: EVs are being sold on salvage or used titles with zero miles and some “damage” like having the front air dam kicked off or having a single dent put on the car that will pull out in five minutes with the right tool. Two EQEs are on Copart right now with the “damage” appearing to mainly consist of someone removing the Mercedes star on the grille.

Dealerships are not fussy about fixing damaged cars and selling them as brand-new to customers, despite a raft of lawsuits on that very subject over the years. So when I see a single dent or missing part sending an EV to Copart, I am going to assume that the dealer is dumping via an accepted channel. “Of course I had to send five EVs to the auction this month!” the dealer will say to his rep. “They were vandalized in the parking lot!”

None of this will keep me from buying a Lucid Air when I have the money to do it, mind you — but if you’re a non-zillionaire, non-Lucid-grade customer for an EV, you might want to think twice about taking advantage of these deals, no matter how good they look. Brother Bark just made me aware of a very special female friend of his who took delivery of an Escalade IQ last year. It’s spent the last six months at the dealership waiting for parts. When one of my Phaetons racked up a total 30 days of dealership time in the first two years of ownership, I resolved to never again let Volkswagen control my life. Compared to this girl’s Cadillac experience, however? That was easy.

Mexico didn’t pay for the wall, but China paid for the solar panels

you know what would be a delightful response to this swiss cheekiness? the b-2 bomber with fuel-air explosives

It’s a common trope among both progressive and conservative commentators that voters are often oddly blind about looking after their own interests. God knows that isn’t the case around my house. Both DG and I are fond of English tailoring and unjustifiable watch shopping, so we have paid some breathtaking tariffs in the past year. In one case, we got hit with a tariff on a Japanese watch that amounted to 80% of the retail value — but if you don’t pay your DHL tariffs immediately, you won’t ever get a DHL package again, so we are working through a reassessment/refund process that is unlikely to ever go anywhere.

We aren’t the only people worried about refunds. Costco is suing the United States Government for early access to the refunds that they are certain will be assessed any day now by a Supreme Court that is totally gonna declare that the President’s emergency powers are limited to candy-ass shit like sending 59,000 men to die in Vietnam, rather than serious business like eliminating the de minimis exemption on Fleshlights from Temu.

(Incidentally, that de minimis ruling appears to have increased American domestic fulfilment of retail demand by a full 15%. This doesn’t mean that the products were made here, but it does mean that they were properly shipped in bulk then fulfilled by American warehouses, rather than being drop-shipped from China. So that has been a serious job creator.)

The best part of the tariff discussion, of course, has been the constant lecturing in the media by people who have never held so much as a hotdog vendor’s license. “THESE COSTS WILL ALL BE PASSED ON TO AMERICAN TAXPAYERS!!!” Gosh, it’s like they weren’t paying attention in the early chicken-tax days. History shows us that major manufacturers respond to tariff pressures in stable countries by

0. Eating the tariff while they;

1. Set up domestic manufacturing;

2. And eat the majority of whatever tariffs they can’t avoid.

This is why the Toyota half-ton Truck was priced beneath the S-10 and Ranger when it was made in Japan before the tariffs, then priced beneath the S-10 and Ranger during the implementation of the tariffs, then the beds started getting made in the United States, then the truck started getting made in the United States, and now thirty years later you can buy a Toyota Tundra with a Texas flag on it while GM is tearing out its hair trying to bring Silverado production back from Mexico.

Let me explain something to those of you who, like me, were basically basket-weaving majors in college: Retail profit margins on many items are 50% or more. Wholesale profit margins on many items are 25-50% or more. A $10,000 Rolex goes to the authorized dealer for $6,000, having cost $3,000 or less to make. (The dealer then flips it to a not-quite-arm’s-length sub dealer for $13,000, who in turn sells it for $15,000.) Some things are priced at very close to the cost of production, like the Honda Accord and an Alden shoe, but in general we live in world of generous margins. It kind of has to be that way, because otherwise the USA, which makes statistically nothing, would have collapsed in 2005.

Economists Are Shocked, Shocked by Who Is Paying the Tariffs

Here’s the relevant excerpt:

[T]he numbers speak for themselves. The U.S. now imposes an average tariff of 18.6%, the highest since 1933 according to Yale’s The Budget Lab. If the conventional wisdom were correct, we should be witnessing an inflationary spiral. American families should be groaning under the weight of soaring prices across multiple categories of consumer goods. For example, the New York Fed chief John Willians warned soon after Liberation Day that inflation could climb to 4%, while fellow Fed Governor Christopher Waller said it could reach 5%.

Instead, inflation is running at roughly 3%. Let that sink in for a moment. The government imposes a massive round of import levies and inflation barely budges. The Harvard Business School tariff tracker, which has been monitoring price changes across affected sectors, estimates a “pass-through” rate of approximately 20%, meaning that only one-fifth of the tariff costs are actually showing up in consumer prices. Even that figure may be generous as it includes some one-off adjustments that are unlikely to persist…

So what’s actually happening? Where is the money going?

…profit margins in export markets had become grotesquely inflated… Profits on microchips may have been higher still, while even the everyday items that fill Walmart and Target shelves may have been surprisingly profitable for foreign firms. Why? Because they could. Over several decades, American domestic competition was systematically hollowed out. Manufacturing capacity migrated overseas. Local rivals withered. The playing field had tilted so dramatically that foreign exporters found themselves operating in what was effectively a low-competition environment, and they were able to charge premium prices with impunity…

it is perfectly possible that foreign government support to exporters affected by American tariffs now runs into the tens of billions of dollars annually. That money previously came from American wallets, and is now being paid instead by taxpayers in Beijing, Berlin, and Tokyo. It’s a remarkable wealth transfer that’s absent from the mainstream debate over tariffs. In standard economics textbooks, tariffs may well be paid by consumers in the country that imposes them. In the real world, trade policy is dictated as much by politics as by anything else, and that means the tariffs are often absorbed elsewhere.

So. Some of the tariff non-impact comes from governments directly subsidizing their presence in the American market. Sucks to be them, but who cares? The United States often directly subsidizes foreign competition in the United States, as it does with the FICA exemption for OPT workers and the EPA exemptions for vile circuit boards and forever-plastic junk made overseas.

Another part of the tariff non-impact should be obvious. Forty years ago, there were a ton of American shoe manufacturers. One after another one, they went overseas — but the prices never dipped a penny. Look at Vans sneakers. They were $19.95 when Van Doren was making them in California. They’re $69.95 now for precisely the same materials and construction, done in overseas sweatshops by children and literal slaves. Any moron can see that Van Doren used to make five bucks per pair of shoes and now they make sixty-one bucks per pair.

So if Van Doren gets hit with $25 of tariffs, are they gonna

a) raise the price of the shoes to $94.95, at which point the stores grow cobwebs, or;

b) be satisfied with making thirty-six bucks per pair instead of sixty-one?

Gosh, how could you live with making only $36 per pair of sweatshop sneaks? Here’s the funny part: this should amuse both sides of the political horseshoe. It proves the Bernie Sanders allegations of excessive/substantial corporate profit, especially among companies that outsource everything, and it also shows that Trump was correct about the tariffs not really harming American consumers. Only in MidwitLand are people wailing, gnashing their teeth, and sobbing “Won’t someone think of the Fortune 500 and all the net profit Target needs in order to make their bathrooms trans-friendly?”

Here’s the net out: The United States collected an additional $117 billion in fiscal 2025 thanks to the new tariffs. There are only about 75 million households in the United States that pay anything beyond a nominal income tax, so this is equal to raising their taxes about $1,500 each. Except they didn’t pay it. It was largely paid by corporations, foreign governments, and the kind of drooling morons who try to save $900 on a $2,700 Japanese watch by buying it from a Japanese retailer, only to get hit with a massive tariff that eats the entire savings and then some!

(From now on, we will use my man in Vietnam, and his Singapore shipper.)

In the long, long run, the prices of overseas-made items will likely increase, of course. But in that long run, assuming we have consistent governance, it becomes reasonable to make shoes in the United States. If your knee-jerk reaction is that “it can’t be done,” ask yourself: Are you a shoe company, or are you just repeating what they said on Chapo Trap House?

The right processes make American manufacturing not just possible, but profitable. Look at Toyota and Honda. Hell, look at Morakniv, which studied their processes until they were able to make a wood-handled, carbon-steel knife IN SWEDEN for thirty-three bucks. If you want a plastic handle, it’s seventeen bucks. China can barely do it cheaper, and nobody wants a Chinese knife.

In 1969, John and Yoko told us “WAR IS OVER! (If you want it.)” A lot of people said they were naive. Then Richard Nixon was elected to end the war, and it ended. I’m telling you that “OUTSOURCING AND FOREIGN MANUFACTURING ARE OVER! (If you want it.)” I’m no more naive than the fellow who sat in bed all day with his dirty Japanese girlfriend, trust me. And I’m no more wrong.