Lsherm: Fissile: Some scumbag businessman takes advantage of desperate people by selling them Murica's junk.  This is now the definition of 'heroic'?

It's not junk, it's cars that Americans won't repair on their own but Ukrainians will. Insurance companies will total out a car for 20 hours of labor because they're estimating $150-200 an hour for labor on top of the parts/replacement cost. If Ukrainians are willing to do the work themselves, then it makes economic sense to ship totaled cars over there.

geekbikerskum: Fissile: Did you know Putin pissed off a lot of Western automakers after Russia passed a law that required those automakers to set up shop in Russia if they sold over a certain number of cars? Not only were they required to set up production facilities, they had to be making current models and not old models that were discontinued in the West. He outright stated at a news conference that Russia was no longer going to be the dumping ground for obsolete Western junk.

Most people would refer to that as "protectionism".  Usually scumbag governments do that sort of thing when people start shouting, "They terk er jerbs!" loudly enough.

The last time you saw this in the USA was as a response to inexpensive Japanese cars in the '80s.  We never passed tariffs but we threatened to, so the Japanese auto makers self-imposed "voluntary export quotas".  It was a case of "cut your exports to the US or we'll cut them for you, and you won't like what we do."