Ford’s EV Collapse Is a $19.5 BILLION Taxpayer Failure (And We’re the Real Losers)

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Ford just tapped out on electric vehicles — and no, this isn’t a moment to gloat. The company took a staggering $19.5 billion write-down tied to its EV business, one of the largest impairments in auto industry history. That’s not a win. That’s proof that we were lied to — and we paid for it.
In this episode, we break down:
 • Why Ford’s EV retreat isn’t a business failure — it’s a government failure
 • How subsidies, loan guarantees, and mandates wasted billions in taxpayer money
 • Why Americans never wanted forced EV adoption in the first place
 • How CEOs folded to Washington instead of standing up for shareholders
 • Why “regulatory changes” really mean Americans aren’t being coerced anymore
 • How the EV fantasy mirrors past government disasters like the Chevy Volt
 And why state-run capitalism never works — not in autos, not anywhere!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Ford Taps Out, Taps Out on EVS. Heard a couple
of people kind of gloating. I told you it was
going to happen. Yeah, we told you that was going
to happen too. But I'm not bluddy gloating because Ford
had to take a nineteen point five billion dollar write down.
That's like gloating saying, see, I told you my house

(00:39):
was going to get robbed. See, and it did. We lost, folks, Okay,
we lost. How many government handouts, loan guarantees, subsidies did
Ford get? Did all of these companies get? This is

(00:59):
your money, it's my money. We were robbed, We were screwed.
They wasted our damn time with this crap billions.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Oh, we're gonna spend billions on bar you know, building,
charging networks.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
And all of this stuff. We're the biggest loser here.
Do you understand it's not Ford, it's we the people.
Why because we're morons? Well, because maybe the country's got
what fifty percent of the country maybe reads at a
sixth grade level. And we listened to these people in Washington,

(01:34):
d C.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
There are it's gonna be the future, and we're gonna
have electric vehicles everywhere. We're all gonna die from CO two,
which happens to be what plants crave. Here's the story today,
nineteen point five billion dollars and charges tied to its

(01:55):
electric vehicle business. Yeah, this is among the largest impairments
taken by a company, and mark's the US auto industry's
biggest reckoning to date that it can't realize its electric
vehicle ambitions anytime soon. And again, some of this stuff

(02:21):
also happened due to Bush, Bush and Obama with bailing
out the automakers.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Man, I know Ford didn't get a bailout. I know,
I know they didn't, but you know they said, this
is what this is what we're doing. You better better
listen to Washington, d C. And then you look at
these CEOs listen I'd rather be I'm honestly, I don't
know how people do it. I don't know guys like
Jim Farley, the CEO, I don't even afford How do

(02:50):
you even do this? How do you even go to
Washington and sit at the White House with these presidents
that don't know what the hell they are talking about
and dictate to you how you should run your company.
I'd give him the flip and middle finger. What I Honestly,
nobody has you know, a set out there to finally

(03:14):
stand up. Oh, you're gonna be hurting the shareholders. Well,
you didn't hurt them anyway, have you? How well is
how well is foreign GM stock done? Going back what
two three decades now? Anyway? Ford lost? I mean, he's
a serious number thirteen billion on its EV business since

(03:36):
twenty twenty three. It's gonna bolster its lineup of gas
powered vehicles while shifting to hybrid and extended range electric
vehicles that include onboard gasoline engines. This is here's the
CEO's Jim Farley. Instead of plowing billions into the future

(03:56):
knowing these large evs will never make money, we are pivoting,
that's what you're calling it. We're pivoting. Pivot as playing basketball,
you know your pivot foot. We're pivoting. We now know
enough about the US market where we have a lot
more certainty in this second inning of reduced emissions powertrain. Jim,

(04:17):
you're calling this the second inning. You now know about
enough about the US market, then why do you have
your job? Seriously, how is it that I knew more
than you did. You're the bloody CEO of Ford, who

(04:38):
knows how much money you're getting paid? Okay, and now
you know and you're calling this a second inning. Regulatory
changes and lackluster demand. Regulatory changes means we're not forcing people.
The government is not forcing people to buy cars that
they don't want anymore. And again, thank you Donald Trump

(04:59):
for that. Regulatory changes and lacklust demand from Americans are
forcing US automakers to abandon plans to quickly step to
an electric vehicle future. Yeah yeah, you're watching this stuff.

(05:19):
Oh yeah, that that Ford F one fifty lightning. That's yeah,
that's going away. That's going I was a joke in
the first place. I wrote a column. I wrote a
column about electric vehicles and how dumb they were. This
is I don't know how to be two thousand and six,

(05:44):
two thousand and seven. I'm trying, you know, I'm gonna
look it up. I got I gotta have a lot
of columns I'm actually going through them right now. Okay,
oh yeah, actually no, I'm sorry. It was actually of
twenty ten. The title of the column is the Chevy Illogic.
The Chevy Illogic. I want to discuss a company. This

(06:06):
is a company that each and every American owns in
our portfolio. Can you guess what that company is?

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Ah?

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, If you guess General Motors, you're correct if you've
either been living on another planet or just awoke from
a rip Van Winkle type of an app. In two
thousand and nine, the President decided to step in, break
secured creditors, and basically take over the automaker known as
General Motors. I had and still have very serious issues

(06:33):
with the actions of our government in regards to General Motors.
Simply put, the government is the umpire and referee of
the auto industry. It's not fair to the other auto
companies at the entity that makes calls the rules is
also a player in the game. It's also not fair
that the government decided to take secured creditors and essentially

(06:54):
wipe them out, breaking the most fundamental of business law.
Again Mouch. This was to bail out unions. This was
all conducted under the usual auspices. If we don't do this,
millions of people are going to be laid off. We
can't have another company go under.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Communities are going to be destride, and towns are going
to be destroyed.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Remember that whole argument that was both Bush and Obama,
the cases the government was making for their unprecedented takeover
all straw man arguments. Yeah, at the time, I happened
to own a GM vehicle. The GM vehicle that I
owned I acquired before the government took the company over.

(07:38):
I love the car. And again they're winning awards on
these cars. And the funny thing is, if General Motors
went into bankruptcy, guess what, they'd still be making that
car at that time. Okay, however, they would have been
making that car with a labor agreement that actually mirrored
the prevailing market based wages that Toyoda, Honda, Hyundai, BMW,

(08:02):
and Mercedes manufacture in the United States. General Motor cease
being an automobile manufacturing company years ago, instead became a
pension and healthcare provider that just also happened to have
a side business of making cars. But anyway, make a
long story short here, at the time government's involved Okay,

(08:26):
I talked about cafe standards. Thank god Trump just got
rid of those as well. Years in the making, years
in hype an automobile so ridiculous that it can only
be possible due to the meddling of our government and
our tax dollars. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the
Chevrolet Vault. Yeah. Yeah, did you remember when Barack Obama

(08:50):
got in that car, buckled himself in and drove it
ten feet. He actually buckled himself in and of the
car ten feet at the New York Times. New York
Times called it an electric lemon. Yeah that. The car

(09:11):
was first introduced in two thousand and seven the Detroit
Auto Show, and at that time the car looked like
it was something out of a James Bond movie. It
was an attractive car basically. Now that changed. Oh, I
know cars. People are gonna buy it for his looks,
are gonna buy it because it's efficient, right right. At
the time, the car got forty miles on a charge.

(09:36):
That's it. The starting price was forty one grand, which
is as much at the time as a Mercedes Benz
C Class C three point fifty. Oh. I could go on,
but again, the basic basically, the car was the same
thing as a Chevy Cruise, except at the time, the
Chevy Cruise set you back seventeen thousand dollars. And again

(09:59):
it was an internal combustion engine, and all to save
money on gas. Really really forty one thousand dollars minus
seventeen twenty four thousand dollars in gas savings. The whole
thing was illogical, and that was the point behind my column.
But again, that happens with everything when it comes to government.
Keep government out out of the way, keep them out

(10:22):
of business. Now, I've just recently given kudos to Trump
on what he's done with autos and cafe standards and
pulling regulations away, but his involvement in other areas of
the economy, whether it be with Nvidia, whether it be
with Intel, whether it be with US steel, It's similar

(10:43):
to some degree. State capitalism never works, never works, interesting
combat it. Today CEOs are learning to live with Trump's
turn to state capitalism. CEOs will adapt and they'll learn
to you know, asked the right way and cut deals
with whoever is in charge. But let's take a look

(11:06):
at who is actually executed state run capitalism. Yeah, Soviet
Union Russia. You want to go back to the nineteen
nineties when you had the Asian financial crisis, and that
was due to state capitalism and the cha bowl that
was both South Korea and Japan. It never works, it

(11:28):
never works. The government needs to get out of the way.
And again this nineteen point five billion dollar right off, well,
we paid too, We paid with our tax dollars. Watchdog
on Wall Street dot Com