Day: October 30, 2025

• Japanese automakers used to trounce their American counterparts during their heyday in the 1980s.
• Ford CEO Jim Farley said China’s auto industry poses a similar threat, but on a more intense scale.
• “Oh, I think it’s exactly the same thing, but it’s on steroids,” Farley said.

Ford CEO Jim Farley says the competition posed by China to the US auto industry now is a lot like Japan’s in the 1980s, but at a far more intense level.

“Oh, I think it’s exactly the same thing, but it’s on steroids,” Farley told ”CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview that aired on October 26.

“They have enough capacity in China with existing factories to serve the entire North American market, put us all out of business. Japan never had that,” Farley added. “So, this is a completely different level of risk for our industry.”

Representatives for Farley at Ford did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Japan was the world’s largest producer of automobiles in 1980. The country’s automakers produced over 11 million vehicles that year, with companies such as Toyota, Nissan, and Honda trouncing major American car manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors.

This led to a trade war between the US and Japan, with the Reagan administration introducing voluntary export restraints on imported vehicles from Japan in 1981. Japanese vehicle exports to the US fell to 1.68 million in 1981 from 1.82 million in 1980, per data from the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

Farley has long recognized China’s position as a market leader in EVs.

In June, Farley said at the Aspen Ideas Festival that China’s EV progress is the “most humbling thing” he has ever seen.

“They have far superior in-vehicle technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are in every car. You get in, you don’t have to pair your phone. Automatically, your whole digital life is mirrored in the car,” he said.

“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” he added. “If we lose this, we do not have a future Ford.”

More recently, Farley said in a September episode of The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast that there’s “no real competition from Tesla, GM, or Ford with what we’ve seen from China.”

“The competitive reality is that the Chinese are the 700-pound gorilla in the EV industry,” Farley said.

“It is completely dominating the EV landscape globally and more and more outside of China,” he added.

Demand for EVs in the US is expected to slow in the near term after the Trump administration rolled back federal EV incentives last month. On September 30, Farley said at a conference in Detroit that he expects US EV sales to halve because of the pullback.

“In the near term, I believe EV adoption will now only be about 5% of the US market, but this is going to grow, especially for affordable EV vehicles,” Farley told investors in an earnings call on October 23.

Last year, Farley said in an October episode of “The Fully Charged Podcast” that he was driving a Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7 that he flew in from Shanghai to Chicago. The SU7 is Chinese tech giant Xiaomi’s maiden electric vehicle.

Farley said in his interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that American consumers would want to buy Chinese EVs like the SU7 because it offers “high quality” and a “great digital experience.” He added that he was personally driving a Chinese EV “because of the competition.”

“To beat them, you have to know them,” Farley said.

• Donald Trump said on Thursday that he’s ordering the US to restart nuclear weapons tests.
• That would be the first time the US has tested a nuclear weapon in 33 years.
• The announcement came just before he met China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in high-stakes talks.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday morning that he had instructed the Pentagon to begin nuclear weapons tests, which would mark the first such trials in 33 years if carried out.

“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“That process will begin immediately,” he added.

The president, who is in South Korea on an Asia diplomacy tour, issued the statement just before his scheduled high-stakes meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The discussions have been largely anticipated to cover trade.

Trump said little about what these nuclear weapons tests would entail, or when exactly they would begin.

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The US last conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1992, when Congress pushed to halt such experiments in the wake of the Cold War’s conclusion. Former President George H.W. Bush signed a moratorium on tests in October that year.

Trump’s announced decision is set to further shake up the world’s delicate balance of nuclear weapons power, which had for decades been headlined by the US and Russia. Under a post-Cold War nuclear arms treaty, both countries have agreed to keep their deployed warheads to a maximum of 1,550.

But China is now rapidly entering the calculus, with the US accusing Beijing of building up its arsenal from just 200 warheads in 2020 to 600 this year. Washington fears that China will soon reach the same number of nuclear weapons that the US and Russia have deployed, turning two-way negotiations into a three-cornered struggle.

“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post of the shifting nuclear power balance.

Beijing has largely also declined to establish the negotiation framework that the US and Russia have used to avoid misunderstandings over weapons of mass destruction. In August, the Chinese foreign ministry called the idea of trilateral talks “unreasonable and unrealistic.”

Fears of a nuclear arms race

Moscow, meanwhile, said it’s been actively testing nuclear superweapons. Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, announced this week that the Kremlin had on Tuesday successfully tested a nuclear-capable underwater drone named Poseidon.

Russia’s description of the weapon indicates that its range would allow it to reach the US West Coast if launched from eastern Russia, potentially delivering a nuclear attack on urban hubs there.

Putin said there is “no way to intercept” the Poseidon, but it’s still unclear exactly how effective the weapon is.

Earlier this week, he also said that Russia had tested the Burevestnik, a nuclear-capable cruise missile that can fly for extended periods at subsonic speeds.

Concerns have been growing among nuclear analysts in Washington that the world is on the cusp of a new arms race. Some advisors have urged the US to pursue more aggressive nuclear policies and introduce additional modern methods of nuclear attack as a show of strength.

The consequences of nuclear build-ups are far-reaching, from implications for European and Asian allies under the US nuclear umbrella to American taxpayer costs.

The Pentagon is already set to replace its aging intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal with a new class called the Sentinel, which is expected to cost around $140 billion.

With no moon to disrupt the show, the peak of the Orionid meteor shower is set for a starry showcase for stargazers on the night of Oct. 20-21, with up to 20 meteors per hour.

The Nationals’ designated hitter Josh Bell took time out to read his own children’s book to a DC classroom.