I went back to China to tour more e-bike factories and visit companies. Here’s what I saw - Related to a, signs, went, fuel, us

I bought a container full of Chinese electric excavators. Here’s what showed up

This isn’t exactly my first time dropping a container full of Chinese electric vehicles in the yard and cracking it open with childlike glee. But it is likely one of the most unique experiences I’ve had so far doing this, revealing inside a fleet of battery-powered Chinese electric mini-excavators and assorted accessories.

If you’ve followed my escapades in my articles and videos for any amount of time, you’ll know this is pretty much par for the course for me. I’m the guy who imported that viral $2,000 Chinese electric mini-truck that netted tens of millions of views around the internet. I followed that up with electric boats and electric tractors and all sorts of other fun EVs from the world’s largest and most controversial electric vehicle market.

This time though, things are getting serious as I get to work. Or, at least work-related vehicles, as my latest import is a pile of electric mini-excavators. So buckle up and join me for the journey! And if you want to see the process in full moving pictures, check out my fun container unboxing video here to get this experience first hand.

In case you’re wondering how I got here, it all started with a need for an electric wheel loader – a type of articulating tractor that is useful for a wide range of land managing tasks like digging, loading, hauling, trenching, towing, and more.

My parents live on a bit of land in Florida and needed a few machines to help keep up with chores around the property. They don’t need a massive tractor, but some modest machines would be a big help.

As it turns out, there actually are a few smaller articulated wheel loaders available for these types of homesteaders and landowners – folks who don’t really need a $50,000 diesel Bobcat like you’d see on a contractor’s job site.

However, the family didn’t really want a diesel machine. With the advent of electric alternatives, the advantages of lower operating costs, safer working environment, reduced maintenance, and quieter/more peaceful operation were too hard to pass up. Our family has an electric mini-truck and an electric UTV, both of which are major work vehicles for us, and the experience has driven home just how much nicer it is to own and operate electric alternatives of common work vehicles.

The problem is that when it comes to electric tractor loaders and electric excavators, there just aren’t many options. Nearly everything out there is diesel. Without finding any options for such machines in the US, I went to the world’s largest electric vehicle maker: China. There I found several options that were a good step in the right direction, but weren’t quite ready for prime time in their existing form. With a good starting point, I worked with a factory that I liked to improve the machines for North American operators.

After making a number of safety, quality, and ergonomic improvements to the equipment, the machines became the first NESHER electric loaders in a growing lineup. Developing into a small business run by my father and me, we’ve now been able to hire a couple of staff and have since shipped electric machines all over the US.

The next logical step in growing was to expand into dedicated mini-excavators, which could dig deeper and do more than just the excavator attachment available on the NESHER L880 and NESHER L1400 loaders. So I repeated the process but for excavators this time, working with a suitable factory to improve their machines to my ideal design intended to superior serve North American individuals.

Having now gone through this container importing process many times over the last 18 months or so, this time I thought I’d bring you guys along on the process of cracking one of these open.

First of all, any one of these containers takes months to set up. It starts with working with the factory designers and engineers, then negotiating pricing, fronting the production, dealing with inevitable production delays, quality inspections before shipping, booking sea freight, working through customs and handling tariffs, setting up incoming freight, and finally landing the container at your doorstep.

It’s a long and arduous process with each step full of headaches, but having done this with a dozen or so containers at this point, it’s starting to become easier and smoother.

When the container finally arrives after those many months of work, the real fun starts. I cracked this one open and got to work unloading the crates of mini-excavator attachments, such as grapples, augers, ripper teeth, various buckets sizes, rock hammers, etc.

Next came the machines themselves. I always make sure my factories package my machines extra well. It’s not as much the long ocean journey I’m worried about, which is relatively gentle. Rather, the first and last few hundred miles on the back of a truck chassis can bounce things around more. We use a spiderweb of strapping and a small army of ratchets to ensure every machine and attachment is safe and secure for the journey.

They are each unloaded down the ramps and go through an initial quick inspection looking for any obvious issues, like problems with the hydraulics or tracks, then driven off to staging. Once all of the machines are out and the container is cleared out, the more intensive inspections begin. Each machine is put through a few hours of work to suss out any potential issues that were missed at the factory. Occasionally this turns up something small, but thorough quality inspections at the factory mean that any real issues get caught before they arrive stateside.

I’d be lying if I stated the inspection process isn’t fun, because it basically means we get to play around with all of the functions. And there’s something about digging holes with small-format heavy equipment that just brings out the inner child in you.

These are fairly small machines – the NESHER NX2500 model name hints at the 2,500 lb ([website] metric ton) weight of the mini-excavator. With a [website] (167 cm) digging depth, they are great for tasks such as landscaping jobs like tree planting, utility work like trench digging, material handling like loading and unloading gravel, logs, etc., and even light demolition work. They are especially useful for indoor demolition and renovation jobs, since their zero-emission operation means that operators don’t have to run a long exhaust hose to pipe out the poisonous diesel exhaust or risk the health of anyone in the building.

However, the small size of the machines means that they aren’t really meant for major jobs. You could dig a pond, but it’d take a pretty darn long time.

To give you an example, a few days ago I dug a couple of holes for some palm trees we’ll be adding to the property, and the charge on the machine dropped by 2%. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a linear drop and that you can dig 100 holes on a charge, but it’s a rough approximation.

With a 48V 200Ah Li-ion battery, the [website] kWh battery is sufficiently large for up to 5-6 hours of light-duty operation, though digging through dense material like clay or rocky terrain will reduce the run time. Recharging takes around 7 hours via a 120V wall outlet with the included charger.

Again, this isn’t meant for an 8-hour shift on a job site. These are machines largely intended for landowners and homesteaders who often have digging tasks but don’t want to repeatedly rent a machine – not that you could find an electric mini-excavator to rent, anyway. Seriously, give it a try. If you want to buy or rent an electric mini-excavator in the US, there simply aren’t any options. They don’t exist. Or at least, they didn’t.

There are a few major companies that have begun producing them in very limited numbers, such as JCB, Bobcat, etc. But they are largely unobtanium, only available to contractors, and carry pricetags approaching and exceeding six figures.

Common questions about the electric mini-excavators.

The most common questions I get on these are run time and cost. With the 6-hour answer out of the way, that leaves pricing. To frame this answer, it’s critical to understand what prices look like in this industry. There are VERY few data for electric mini-excavators anywhere in the Western World. The JCB 19C-1E is one of the few options out there. Traditional heavy equipment companies don’t publicly share prices. You have to jump through hoops of JCB sales reps before they finally tell you that is a nearly US $100,000 machine.

But that machine also weighs around 1,500 lb more than the NESHER NX2500. A closer comparison would be the Bobcat E10e, which is roughly the same size and spec as the NESHER NX2500. Again, it takes a lot of digging (no pun intended), but ultimately you’ll find that it is priced at around US $60,000.

By comparison, the NESHER NX2500 is priced at US $19,600.

This isn’t to say that these machines are directly comparable, but they do have similar specs and perform similar tasks. Bobcat and JCB are certainly larger companies, but they cater to commercial consumers. The NX2500, on the other hand, finally brings the capability of electric mini-excavators to more average Joes and small businesses that can’t afford a $60k or $100k piece of equipment.

Another common question I get when people hear I import a lot of these types of things is “do you get to keep the container?”.

Sometimes, yes. But it’s not as much that I get to keep and more that I had to buy it in advance. This is what is known as one-tripper. That means it is a new shipping container, and this is its first trip across the ocean.

In this case, I bought the container so I could keep it and use it as storage – basically a super sturdy and locking shed. You might have seen my article about turning a shipping container into a solar-powered charging shed complete with air conditioning. That’s one of the nice things about choosing to buy a one-tripper container, you can get very creative with them.

However, most of my imports are done using the shipping line containers. These are essentially borrowed from the container lines. Maersk or MSC or the other big names lend you a shipping container as part of the price of shipping with them, you fill it in China, empty it in the US, and then it goes back to the port for many more journeys in its future. That’s the most common and economical way to do it, but getting a few shipping containers of your own isn’t a bad thing either, if you have the space.

The last question that I often hear is simply, “Why electric?”.

I get it, many old-school operators are of the “diesel or die” variety. The problem is, sometimes you get both. That diesel exhaust is a carcinogen. And unlike larger excavators with enclosed cabs and more effective exhaust manifold designs, most diesel-powered open-cab mini-excavators result in the operator’s face being located a mere 2-3 feet from a diesel exhaust pipe. That’s not how I want to spend my digging hours and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone else.

Then you have to add on top of that the sound of an unisolated engine running inches beneath your thighs, the vibrations of that engine, the extended upkeep and maintenance of an engine with hundreds of moving parts, and the hassle of winterizing or other extra steps that required to keep such machines in good working order.

There’s a reason a power drill has a battery and an electric motor instead of a small gasoline engine, even though such engines are widely available for model building. Electric tools are simply nicer and more convenient to own and operate. Sure, 30 years ago we didn’t have the kind of motor and battery technology to make electric construction equipment a viable alternative. But now we do, and these machines are proof of it.

Are they more expensive than a no-name diesel-powered Chinese mini-excavator bought at auction for $5,200? Sure. But they are also cheaper to operate, longer lasting, safer, and more comfortable, and come backed by a US distributor with service and support, including a local inventory of spare parts. Electric might not be for everyone, but it is for me, and now I’ve seen how it is for many others as well.

This is unlikely to be the last time I import something fun and interesting from China, though it certainly is the last one without new tariffs that were in recent times imposed. Like all businesses, we’ll be analyzing the impact of the new tariffs on our own operating costs, and unfortunately, we may have to raise prices on these machines as our costs rise.

But since a lot of what I bring in is for personal use (and I’ve got more fun EVs already in the works!), that’s largely a problem for me to deal with.

I’m looking forward to sharing the next fun EVs I get my hands on. Until then, I’ll have those hands busy digging!

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I went back to China to tour more e-bike factories and visit companies. Here’s what I saw

Last month I was fortunate enough to take a trip to China and visit seven different micromobility companies, each of which invited me to tour their factory, test out their new products, or attend their major events. The trip is something of a sequel to the first Chinese factory tour trip I took last year (with the documentary of that trip racking up millions of views on YouTube).

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing detailed articles and videos about each of the following visits. But in the meantime, consider this as a preview of what’s to come.

Bafang is perhaps the best known Chinese electric bicycle component manufacturer. The enterprise is widely regarded for its motors, which have been its flagship products for over a decade. Everyone in the e-bike industry knows that if you want a solid motor (and don’t want to pay for a German motor), you go to Bafang.

But as it turns out, Bafang makes pretty much everything else on an e-bike too, now even including the batteries.

Long-time followers of my articles and videos might remember that I actually took a tour of Bafang’s factory all the way back in 2019. The enterprise has since expanded to a much larger factory and the production processes have also improved. That was a particularly fascinating element of my visit, having the chance to see just how much has changed in the last five years.

For example, automation has helped replace many of the jobs previously done by hand in the manufacturing and assembly lines for components like motors and controllers. However, the working environment has improved considerably for certain tasks like fine soldering that are still done by highly trained hands. The older fume hoods that once hung over workstations in order to filter out soldering exhaust have now been moved into the work surfaces, meaning that instead of soldering fumes rising up past the nose of the worker on the way to vents, the gases are now sucked downwards and out to the filters. What was once a solution to protect everyone except for the immediate worker is now a solution to protect everyone.

The battery factory was another interesting part of the visit, as batteries are one of the newest components added to Bafang’s quickly expanding lineup.

The process is highly automized. First, individual battery cells are sorted by machines into the most similar resistances, then grouped into modules that are ultrasonically welded together. Human hands return to the equation with the assembly of the battery modules into the cases, and then the batteries are sent for inspection at the end of the assembly line.

Before the batteries can be packaged for shipment though, every single pack is put through a charge and discharge cycle to test for anomalies. Massive racks run down the hallways with hundreds of batteries at a time undergoing testing.

Other new innovations that Bafang has begun integrating into its product lines are its own internally geared hubs with automatic transmissions as well as hub motors with built-in transmissions. One problem that has plagued the e-bike industry is the use of existing transmission components that were not intended for high-power motors but rather human leg power. With Bafang developing its own bicycle transmissions that are designed to work with higher continuous power found in electric bikes, reliability should see a significant improvement.

There’s a lot more where that came from though, so make sure you stay tuned for my full findings from the factory, coming soon!

I’ve ridden a NIU electric moped since 2020 and have long been a fan of the brand, which is known as a leading electric smart scooter brand. The organization’s designs have often been imitated, but there’s no substitute for the real thing, especially as NIU has rapidly expanded its wide range of offerings.

My tour started in the factory showroom, which underscores just how wide that product line truly is. We’re used to seeing the enterprise’s export products, but there’s an even more diverse lineup of domestic electric two-wheelers designed for the Chinese market.

From there, we moved to the factory floor where scooters are assembled. Flying conveyor systems with hanging component shelves are pre-loaded with all the parts necessary for building these scooters, allowing line workers to pluck off the necessary components as they float by at each stage of the assembly process.

The scooters go together surprisingly quickly as they move down the line, with test riders waiting for them to roll off the final ramp. After the scooters are inspected and test-ridden, they’re eventually moved into a massive storage warehouse and loaded onto trucks for shipping all over the country and export to international dealers.

In another part of the factory I saw the standing electric scooters undergoing similar processes, with an assembly line conveying the scooters along as workers assembling them ahead of extensive rider inspections and test rides.

I also had the chance to test ride several of NIU’s electric vehicles, from the standing electric kickscooters to their higher speed mopeds and full-size electric motorcycles, to even the organization’s Sur Ron-competitor electric dirt bike.

That bike, the street-legal NIU XQi3, was impressively powerful, and I had to be careful to keep the front wheel down when rolling off the line.

I’ll still always be partial to the corporation’s mopeds though, or “seated electric scooters” depending on how true to the term moped you’d like to be. As much fun as electric motorcycles and dirt bikes can be, there’s something so utilitarian about a seated electric scooter that makes it the perfect car replacement for me.

I’ve been riding EUNORAU electric bikes for years and years, but this was my first chance to finally meet the team behind the bikes. I visited their headquarters near Hangzhou and took a tour through many of the organization’s past, present and future e-bikes, including models still in the works.

From there, I visited their operations center where the corporation has a large warehouse stocked with just about everything you could ever need to service and support e-bikes. In addition to EUNORAU’s Las Vegas service center, the corporation is ready to ship out parts from its headquarters when necessary.

I even got a look behind the curtain at the organization’s new BKRE service, which is more essential than ever with the increasing number of e-bike organization closures. Basically, BKRE stocks many of the parts used in common electric bikes from companies that have folded. That means owners of those e-bikes will have somewhere to turn in the future if they need support. Trying to find a random controller or display can be nearly impossible without knowing the actual factories those parts come from. With its deep network of connections in the e-bike manufacturing industry, EUNORAU can find replacement parts for nearly any electric bike made in China.

They stock many of those parts already on several rows of shelves in their warehouse. For parts they don’t already have on hand, owners can contact BKRE and with any luck, the right part can be found in a few days and sent out anywhere in the world.

Last but not least, I wasn’t about to leave without the chance to ride a bunch of EUNORAU’s electric bikes.

I had everything from the new version of the firm’s fat tire electric trike to triple-battery electric bikes to four-wheeled electric quad bikes at my disposal.

I zipped around the area of the city they were located in on several of the corporation’s e-bikes, testing out the new components and improvements that have come from listening to the feedback of thousands of consumers.

There’s a lot more to come though, so be on the lookout for my deep dive article and video on the experience!

This was absolutely wild! The last time I was in China, I visited one of Yadea’s massive factories. Yadea is the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. They make everything from light electric scooters for recreation and commuting to heavy-duty electric trikes for commercial use. But their main products are seated electric scooters, of which they produce millions.

This time, Yadea invited me to attend the enterprise’s Retail Dealer Show. There were over 4,000 dealers there, mostly from China but also from all around the world. The show was absolutely massive!

In addition to the huge attendance, Yadea had examples of many of the various models of electric vehicles they produce. I saw some familiar models but also experienced dozens of models I’d never seen before.

From Sur Ron-style electric dirt bikes to Vespa-style vintage-looking electric seated scooters, Yadea had it all there. I even checked out the corporation’s new sodium-ion batteries and fast charging technology, which could be a huge game changer for longer-lasting, safer batteries.

The sheer variety seen at the show was mind-blowing. I’ve covered electric vehicle companies for years, attended dozens of trade demonstrates, and test-ridden literally hundreds of vehicles. But I’ve never seen a single manufacturer with such a breadth of vehicles as this.

Dahon wasn’t the first to invent a folding bicycle, but the organization was one of the earliest to popularize them with commercialized models. The organization’s first folding bikes, released in 1984, are still highly sought after, and surviving examples carry high prices on the resale market. More lately, Dahon has expanded its wide line of folding bicycles to include many different types of folding electric bikes.

I toured Dahon’s showroom to see many of the soon-to-be-released models that will land in dealerships later this Spring. Talking to the team, I learned more about what makes Dahon’s folding e-bikes so special, including a focus on frame rigidity that helps reduce that telltale flexy feeling on many folding bikes in the market.

After checking out the new lineup of Dahon folding e-bikes in the showroom, I headed outside to experience them firsthand. From ultra-lightweight e-bikes to a new electric gravel e-bike and even a heavy-duty electric tricycle for carrying cargo and kids, the Dahon models were a blast to ride.

Finishing up the visit, the team took me on an evening group ride that they enjoy several times a month as a chance for the group to spend time riding together on the nice bicycle trails around Shenzhen.

Zhenmin gave me access to their entire factory to see how electric golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles are produced. The business builds a wide range of models and starts from the ground up, welding frames and fabricating bodies right there in the factory.

The process is largely manual, with workers hand-forming and welding the various components.

Many of the firm’s models are exported to India, while others are sold in various countries in Asia and South America.

The warehouse for completed golf carts waiting to ship out was massive, with hundreds if not thousands of units waiting in various packaging stages for their journeys.

As with many of my other visits, I was happy to take the opportunity for some test rides. I started with a lifted electric golf cart built for a US-based corporation (though I had to cover the brand’s logos). I can’t tell you which one, but I’ll be excited to see them bring this beast of a golf cart to market. It’s incredibly powerful, to the point that I almost threw myself out the side of it on a sharp turn.

I also tried smaller and less beast-like machines, including those designed for elderly riders. They were fun in their own way, and there’s something nice about not having centrifugal forces fighting over your limbs. There’s definitely still a place in the market for modest neighborhood electric vehicles!

Also in Shenzhen, I had the opportunity to visit Heybike’s new headquarters. The corporation in the recent past moved into a new Shenzhen office, and their team is obviously quite happy about all the extra space. There wasn’t too much to see inside yet, so instead we spent most of the visit testing out the corporation’s new Heybike Alpha electric bike.

It was just unveiled at CES and is the brand’s first mid-drive electric bike. The powerful motor proved to be incredibly torquey, helping me climb up both dirt and concrete hills with ease. I could even climb stairs on the bike!

The fat tires make quick work of both on-road and off-road surfaces, and mid-drive motor with included torque sensor is a joy to use. However, you definitely need to be careful with it because the extreme torque of the motor requires some care when shifting to go easy on that drivetrain.

We don’t know the final price of the Heybike Alpha at the time of writing, but it is expected to be one of the most affordable mid-drive electric adventure bikes on the market, helping to continue Heybike’s strategy of value pricing on the business’s existing line of diverse styles of electric bikes.

I’ve already shared my test riding video on that bike, so make sure you check it out here!

Make sure you check back over the next month or so as I release a dedicated article and video on each of these visits.

The trip was an eye-opening experience, and I hope to give you all that same feeling of going behind the curtain to see what goes into these vehicles that we so commonly use each day!

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New DOT Sec/reality TV contestant signs memo to increase US fuel costs by $23B

Former reality TV contestant Sean Duffy. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Sean Duffy, who was just confirmed as Secretary of Transportation on the back of the transportation “expertise” he showed as a contestant on Road Rules: All Stars, a reality TV travel game show, wasted no time in promising to raise your fuel costs by at least $23 billion on his first day.

The memo, signed yesterday, promises a review of all existing fuel economy standards, which require manufacturers to make more efficient vehicles which save you money on fuel.

Specifically, the memo targets the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard (CAFE), which was just improved last year by President Biden’s DOT, saving American drivers $23 billion in fuel costs by meaning they need to buy less fuel overall. The savings could have been higher, but were softened from the original proposal due to automaker lobbying.

However, the new DOT memo says it targets all similar standards, rather than just the improvements made last year – so in fact, our headline likely underestimates how much higher fuel costs would go if the DOT follows through on this memo.

A recent analysis by Consumer Reports displays that fuel economy standards are enormously popular with Americans, and that maintaining the current standards could result in lifetime savings of $6,000 per vehicle, compared to current costs, by 2029. And that fuel economy standards implemented since 2001 have already saved $9,000 per vehicle. Now, imagine the net effect of removing all of those standards, which Duffy has directed the DOT to examine doing.

The Sierra Club responded to the decision with this statement: “These common-sense, popular fuel economy standards save drivers money at the pump and reduce dangerous pollution from vehicles. Drivers spend excessive amounts of money to fuel their cars, and it’s often a large part of household expenses. Wasting no time at all as the new Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy is selling American families out to Big Oil, burdening us with higher fuel prices and more polluting gas-guzzlers that harm our health.”.

Mr. Trump signaled he intended to raise your fuel costs during the 2024 US Presidential campaign, when he asked oil executives for $1 billion in bribes in return for killing off more efficient vehicles. Now, after he finally received more votes than his opponent for the first time (after three tries, and despite committing treason in 2021 for which there is a clear legal remedy), he’s already following through on causing the inflation he promised during the campaign.

As we’ve already seen to be the case often with Trump’s allies, the DOT memo lies about its intentions. Just like his EPA nominee, who noted he wants to make the air cleaner by making it dirtier, Duffy, known for being a former reality TV contestant, says he wants to make fuel costs lower by making them higher. The memo attempts to argue that your car will be cheaper if it has lower fuel economy, even though it wont, because buying more fuel will mean you spend more on fuel, not less.

Unequivocally, over here in the real world, dirtier air is actually dirtier, and higher fuel costs are actually higher.

The result of this increased fuel usage also inevitably means more reliance on foreign data of energy. The more oil America uses, the more it will have to import from elsewhere. Other countries looking to exercise power over the US could certainly choose to raise prices as they recognize that the US has just become more reliant on them.

And, as we know from the most basic understanding of economics, adding more demand means prices will go up, not down. Reducing demand for a product in fact forces prices down, and EVs are already displacing oil demand which depresses oil prices.

Meanwhile, Biden’s higher fuel economy standards would mean that automakers need to provide a higher mix of EVs, which inherently get all of their energy to run not just domestically, but regionally as well. Most electricity generation happens regionally or locally based on what resources are available in your area, so when you charge a car, you’re typically supporting jobs at your local power plant, rather than in some overseas oil country.

Biden’s standards would have stood to benefit US-based EV makers, the most prominent of which is Tesla. However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Mr. Trump, despite it being very clear during the campaign that he intends to harm EVs, which his DOT is now following through on.

Musk has also thrown his support behind policies that will harm Tesla’s business (and Tesla recognizes this to be the case overseas), and thus its shareholders’ pocketbooks (though the shareholders are also doing that on their own, by pledging an illegal $55B payday to a bad CEO).

Some claimed that the result of this support would go towards ending NHTSA investigations into Tesla’s FSD technology, which the agency has heretofore taken a rather light touch on, and which are primarily focused on ensuring that the technology be implemented safely, which is something that everyone, including Tesla investors, should favor. But Duffy himself stated that he would not intervene in those investigations.

Also, whiplash changes in regulatory regimes are typically seen as bad for business. Above all, businesses desire regulatory certainty so they can plan products into the future, and there are few businesses with longer planning timelines than automakers.

This is why automakers want the EPA to retain Biden’s emissions rules, because they’re already planning new models for the EV transition. They went through this once before, in the chaos of 2017-2021, where they .

Further, if American manufacturing turns away from the EV transition, or continues to make tepid movement towards it, this will only hand more of a manufacturing lead to China, meaning more decline of American manufacturing (compared to the huge manufacturing boom seen under President Biden).

The new DOT memo is just one of many inflationary steps that Mr. Trump has indicated his interest in. He’s also thrown around tariffs and tariff threats willy-nilly, which have the effect of increasing costs, harming growth and reducing innovation. (This is also the case with President Biden’s tariffs on Chinese EVs, and you can read more about why they’re the wrong answer here).

Finally, the most significant problem with this memo is that it will increase emissions, which harms your health and increases climate change. Much like the other trends we’ve seen here, this administration doesn’t know much about the basics of climate science, which is already costing America $150 billion a year in increased infrastructure costs related to damage from natural disasters. Just yesterday, a new study came out showing how climate change created conditions that made the LA wildfires, which will be the costliest in US history by far at $20B, more likely.

And that’s not even counting health costs, which will be even higher. The aggregate of these damages could cost each American born today $500,000 over their lifetime.

But all of these harms will happen to real people. This isn’t reality television, where the intent is to make up drama for views. This is actual harm that’s actually going to be done to Americans, who are having a rough time as the global economy continues to grapple with the long-term disruptions resulting from a pandemic that was exacerbated by the same reality TV host, and of course the ever-present worsening climate change.

And so, Mr. Trump is doing his best to follow through on his campaign promises – which, in so many ways, will only make your life costlier, more unhealthy, less stable, and less secure from foreign influence. This is what 49% of America voted for.

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