There’s a special kind of leadership skill that gets praised in boardrooms, TED Talks, and LinkedIn posts written by people who own at least two vests.
It’s called “anticipating the future.”
Which sounds noble, cinematic, almost presidential. Like you’re standing on a mountain with your sleeves rolled up, squinting into the horizon, calmly sensing danger… while an eagle circles overhead and your CFO weeps softly with pride.
In reality, anticipating the future mostly means something less heroic:
Not getting blindsided by obvious things.
Like pandemics. Or wars. Or interest rates. Or climate change. Or some weird startup that appears out of nowhere and makes your entire industry look like it’s still using a fax machine to order lunch.
But there’s one thing no executive training prepares you for, because it’s not a market force, or a technology shift, or a consumer trend.
It’s this:
You can’t futureproof your company against stupid.
You can reduce it, manage it, occasionally contain it… but you can’t vaccinate against it. And when stupid gets elected and handed a pen, your five-year plan becomes a napkin in a rainstorm.
Which is basically where the American auto industry is right now: trying to compete in a global EV future while being forced to reverse into the past like a confused Roomba that found a staircase.
The New Corporate Strategy: “What If We Pretend It’s 2008 Again?”
Ford mothballed production of the all-electric version of the F-150—its flagship truck, its crown jewel, the vehicle equivalent of a bald eagle eating a cheeseburger while bench-pressing a washing machine.
General Motors switched production at its Orion, Michigan plant from EVs to full-size SUVs and pickups powered by internal combustion engines, citing two things that sound boring until you realize they’re devastating:
- loss of tax incentives
- laxer pollution regulations
Translation: “We were planning for the future, but the rules changed, so we’re back to building bigger rectangles that drink gasoline like it owes them money.”
And of course, all of this comes with financial bruises so large they need their own line item:
- Ford took a $19.5 billion charge tied to restructuring its EV business
- GM took a $6 billion loss in one quarter, after a similar $1.6 billion hit the quarter before
That’s not “tightening the belt.”
That’s “taking the belt off and using it as a tourniquet.”
Here’s the part that should make you laugh, but won’t
The auto industry has done this before.
Back in 2008, Detroit’s bread-and-butter lineup—pickups and big SUVs—was thriving. Until oil prices soared. Then buyers fled to smaller, fuel-efficient cars like Toyotas and Volkswagens. The Great Recession hit, and GM needed a bailout. Ford took a massive loan to survive.
So you’d think the lesson would stick. Something like:
“Maybe don’t build your entire business around a product category that collapses the minute the world changes.”
But the auto industry has the same relationship to hard lessons that most people have to the gym in January:
they respect it in theory, then ghost it in practice.
The difference is this time, they weren’t caught unprepared by the market.
They were caught unprepared by something weirder:
A U.S. president actively trying to undermine a technology shift that is already happening globally.
Which is like being in the middle of installing indoor plumbing and someone storms in yelling:
“NO. WE’RE GOING BACK TO CARRYING BUCKETS. IT BUILDS CHARACTER.”
Imagine a President Who Mandated Vinyl Only
The source material makes a comparison so perfect it almost feels unfair:
Imagine a president who decreed that all music had to be sold on vinyl, not digital.
Not “vinyl is cool.” Not “vinyl is a niche premium format.”
No—vinyl only.
Streaming? Illegal.
MP3s? Straight to jail.
Bluetooth? Treason.
And suddenly Spotify has to lay off half its engineers and reopen a record-pressing plant in Indiana, while Apple quietly announces the new iPhone:
Now Featuring: A CD Tray.
That’s the kind of “policy environment” American automakers are dealing with: not a normal shift in consumer demand, but an attempted government rollback of a technological trend that is already moving forward worldwide.
The World Isn’t Waiting for America to Feel Ready
Here’s the unfunny reality underneath the jokes:
Globally, EV adoption isn’t a question mark anymore. It’s not “someday.” It’s already happening.
About 25% of new cars sold globally are EVs.
In China, EVs are more than half of new car sales.
In Norway, EVs are over 90% of new sales.
Meanwhile, U.S. policy is flirting with the idea of acting like electric vehicles are a temporary fad, like froyo shops or fidget spinners.
And that’s where the real danger lives: not in choosing the wrong technology, but in choosing the wrong timeline.
Because in business, you don’t just lose by being wrong.
You lose by being late.
The Actual Story Here (and why it matters beyond cars)
This isn’t really a story about EVs.
It’s a story about what happens when leadership confuses the present with the permanent, and treats momentary politics like a long-term reality.
Let’s break it down into a few insights that matter way beyond Detroit.
Insight #1: A company can plan for disruption—until the disruption is self-inflicted
Most executives imagine disruption as something external:
- a startup
- a competitor
- a market crash
- a pandemic
- a supply chain collapse
But what happens when the disruption comes from a place you built your whole business around?
The U.S. government.
The auto industry built a trilateral supply chain with the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Parts, subassemblies, vehicles moving smoothly across borders like a carefully choreographed dance.
Then tariffs show up like a drunk uncle at a wedding, stepping on everyone’s feet and yelling:
“THIS IS HOW WE USED TO DANCE IN MY DAY!”
Tariffs raise manufacturing costs and scramble everything. And suddenly, the industry isn’t adjusting to consumer demand—they’re adjusting to a political mood swing.
This is the modern corporate nightmare:
Not failing to innovate—failing to predict which way the floor will tilt.
Insight #2: “Tax incentives” are not vibes—they’re gravity
Some people talk about EV incentives like they’re a cute little bonus. Like a coupon. Like something you casually use if you remember.
But incentives in an emerging market are more like gravity:
They don’t force motion, but they shape it.
When incentives get pulled, adoption slows. When regulations loosen, companies pivot back to what’s immediately profitable. Not because it’s better—because it’s easier.
That’s why GM can say it’s retaining its EV lineup, while also building more ICE and hybrid models.
It’s corporate bilingualism:
- In public: “We’re committed to the electric future.”
- In practice: “We’re building whatever the current political climate rewards.”
Which might sound reasonable until you remember that foreign competitors aren’t treating this like a temporary trend.
They’re committing.
And commitment compounds. Experience compounds. Manufacturing scale compounds.
Hesitation compounds too—just in the opposite direction.
Insight #3: America is sleepwalking while China is speedrunning
China’s BYD is now the world’s largest EV maker, overtaking Tesla.
That’s not a random headline. That’s a warning label.
BYD started as a battery maker. Which is like starting your restaurant by owning the farm. It’s upstream control. It’s a head start in the thing that matters most.
And now BYD exports low-priced EVs to more than 70 countries.
Eventually, the United States will be one of them.
And that’s when things get awkward, because America will face the kind of competition it pretends it wants:
- low price
- high scale
- increasingly good technology
- global distribution
- years of momentum
It’s like skipping leg day for five years and then entering a sprinting contest against someone who trains for a living.
You can do it.
But you will look educational.
Insight #4: The supply chain doesn’t “adjust.” It bleeds.
When GM takes a $4.2 billion hit to cancel orders, it’s not just GM “tightening up.”
It’s thousands of suppliers downstream getting punched in the mouth.
Auto supply chains are tiered—parts makers, component makers, subassemblies. And the pain lands hardest on the smaller companies that can’t absorb whiplash.
Many of them are in states like Ohio and Indiana. Some might close.
And it’s worth remembering:
Every manufacturing job typically supports three others.
So when people treat this as “car company drama,” they’re missing the broader story:
This is economic shock moving through the bloodstream of entire regions.
And it’s happening not because customers rejected EVs, but because policy is yanking the steering wheel mid-turn.
Insight #5: Paying suppliers not to supply you is not strategy—it’s the cost of indecision
This is one of the bleakest lines hiding in the source material:
GM has to spend billions scaling back EV operations.
That money can’t go toward cheaper EV models or new plants.
And GM’s current margins in North America mean it has to generate more than $16 billion in revenue to produce $1 billion in profit.
That’s a thin margin reality, the kind that should make any executive sweat through their blazer.
So imagine taking billions and using it to… cancel orders.
Paying suppliers not to supply you is like paying your personal trainer to stop texting you.
It doesn’t improve your fitness.
It just reduces your guilt.
The Bigger Pattern: Humans Love “Reversing” Because It Feels Like Control
Here’s the psychological trick behind all of this:
When the future feels chaotic, people don’t always move forward.
They move backward—because backward is familiar.
Backward feels like control.
It’s why someone will break a good habit, not because the habit stopped working, but because the world got stressful and the habit required belief.
The auto industry isn’t just dealing with economics. It’s dealing with something more primal:
A political moment that treats technological progress as cultural betrayal.
EVs became a symbol, not a product.
And once something becomes a symbol, logic doesn’t drive anymore. Emotion does.
That’s why the idea of supporting EVs gets framed as “woke,” as if batteries have pronouns and charging stations are secretly teaching critical race theory.
You can laugh, but symbols reshape markets faster than spreadsheets do.
A quick history lesson that matters more than it looks like
Electric vehicles aren’t new.
They existed in the 19th century. Henry Ford even bought one for his wife because it was easy to use—no starter crank.
But he built his company on internal combustion engines because at the time, it was more practical. The electric grid wasn’t widespread. Infrastructure matters.
That’s the part everyone forgets:
Technology doesn’t win by being better.
It wins by being supported.
Ford made the right bet for his era.
A century later, Ford’s leadership moved the company toward EVs again—because now the grid exists, the world is decarbonizing, and the market direction is clear.
This time, the practicality argument favors EVs.
And yet, policy is trying to force a return to internal combustion, like we’re going back to horses because someone got mad at highways.
The Quiet Horror: This isn’t industrial policy. It’s industrial suicide.
If you want to understand the difference, imagine two types of decision-making:
Industrial policy is steering the economy toward something strategic.
It’s messy. It’s debated. It’s imperfect. But it’s purposeful.
Industrial suicide is burning down your own advantage because you don’t like who benefits from it.
And that’s the core point: American automakers were finally doing the right thing—accelerating EV programs to keep up with the global shift.
Then the rules changed.
Not because the market changed.
Not because the technology failed.
Not because customers disappeared.
Because politics wanted a rewind button.
And rewinds don’t work in global competition. Not for long.
Superior technology tends to win. But it doesn’t wait politely while you argue about it.
It just… wins elsewhere.
Ending: The future doesn’t get canceled. It gets outsourced.
Somewhere in the U.S., a factory is switching back from EV production to building giant internal combustion vehicles like it’s 2006 and gas is $2.19 and nobody has ever heard the words “battery supply chain.”
Somewhere else, in China, BYD is shipping affordable EVs to countries that would love to buy American cars—if American cars were still competing in the category that matters.
This is what makes the whole thing so darkly funny:
America isn’t losing the future because it can’t build it.
It’s losing the future because it’s busy arguing with it.
And the future is not a person. It doesn’t get offended. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about nostalgia.
It just keeps moving.
And if you insist on selling vinyl in a streaming world, you won’t stop the music.
You’ll just make sure someone else owns the playlist.