Does Donald Trump Want to Ban German Luxury Cars from America?

Back on topic, and economists in my sector have assessed what they see as the impact on the US automotive industry if the tariffs are put in place, and then if counter tarfiffs also get put in place.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20180605/RETAIL/180609868/
http://tradepartnership.com/reports...pacts-of-tariffs-on-motor-vehicles-and-parts/

Long story short, its going to make your cars more expensive to buy, slow down growth in the industry and cost jobs.

Its important to note that this is not a political analysis, but a business one, and as a part of the industry I can back up the comment that the industry neither asked for, nor wanted these tariffs (on either side of the water).
 
Back on topic, and economists in my sector have assessed what they see as the impact on the US automotive industry if the tariffs are put in place, and then if counter tarfiffs also get put in place.

http://www.autonews.com/article/20180605/RETAIL/180609868/
http://tradepartnership.com/reports...pacts-of-tariffs-on-motor-vehicles-and-parts/

Long story short, its going to make your cars more expensive to buy, slow down growth in the industry and cost jobs.

Its important to note that this is not a political analysis, but a business one, and as a part of the industry I can back up the comment that the industry neither asked for, nor wanted these tariffs (on either side of the water).

I wish I had $20 for every time a prediction from an economist was wrong. Paul Krugman and several other notable US economists predicted the Dow Jones would collapse if Trump was elected president.
 
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I wish I had $20 for every time a prediction from an economist was wrong. Paul Krugman and several other notable US economists predicted the Dow Jones would collapse if Trump was elected president.

I wish I had $1 for every time a prediction from an economist was right!

Cherry picking weaknesses is like the press going wild every time there’s an accident involving a Tesla.

Maybe the opinion of the Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal will carry some weight with you? Or is the WSJ also “Fake News” when it doesn’t support Trump?


https://www.wsj.com/articles/auto-tariffs-mean-lost-jobs-1527720218

It’s behind a paywall, here’s the text I can see for free:-

Auto Tariffs Mean Lost Jobs
Plenty of Trump voters will suffer with a 25% tax on imports.
The Editorial BoardMay 30, 2018 6:43 p.m. ET
By
The Editorial Board
President Trump tweeted “big news coming soon for our great American Autoworkers” ahead of his Administration’s announcement last week that it will seek new tariffs on imported autos and auto parts. If he had more Twitter characters, perhaps Mr. Trump would have added, “Tough luck for the rest of you.”

Just kidding, but that would have been accurate. Mr. Trump is boasting of potential gains for one narrow constituency from his latest protectionist threat. But he’s ignoring the forgotten Americans who will lose their jobs...
 
Study: Trump's Proposed Auto Tariffs Will Destroy 195,000 American Jobs

A new study says the American automobile industry will lose 195,000 jobs over the next three years if President Donald Trump presses forward with a plan to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported cars and auto parts. That's on top of the existing tariffs on steel and aluminum, which are already forecast to whack automakers and other manufacturing jobs.

According to the study, which was released by the D.C.-based Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a 25 percent tariff on automobiles and auto parts would cause production in those industries to fall by about 1.5 percent and would force the industry to shed around 1.9 percent of its American workforce. The resulting slowdown would affect more than $200 billion in U.S. exports, PIIE projects.

Last week, Trump ordered Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to investigate whether the U.S. should slap new tariffs on imported vehicles and auto parts under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to impose tariffs unilaterally for "national security" reasons. It's the same process the White House used to craft the tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that Trump announced in early March.

It's absurd, of course, to argue that imported cars are a threat to national security.

The auto tariffs "would deal a staggering blow to the very industry it purports to protect and would threaten to ignite a global trade war," Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

The American automobile industry employs 50 percent more people than it did in 2011, Donohue noted, and domestic production has doubled in the last decade. According to PIIE, the United States imported $183.8 billion of passenger cars, SUVs, and minivans in 2017, mostly from the European Union ($46.6 billion), Canada ($43.3 billion), and Japan ($43 billion). The U.S. currently imposes a 2.5 percent tariff on cars and a 25 percent tariff on trucks—a hangover from a 1960s trade war with France and Germany.

If other countries respond to American tariffs on automobiles and auto parts with similar tariffs, PIIE projects, the consequences could be even more disasterous. In that scenario, American production would fall 4 percent and 624,000 American jobs would be lost.

"Both scenarios demonstrate how reliant the domestic industries are on imported parts, or intermediate inputs, that are not produced in the United States or that have no easy US-made substitute," PIIE's analysts write. "Consumers could expect to see prices rise for both imported and domestically produced vehicles."

I'm inherently dubious of articles based on studies, but that this comes from Reason Online and the Reason Foundation, a right-libertarian "think tank," demonstrates just how weak the support for this course of action really is.
 
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I wish I had $20 for every time a prediction from an economist was wrong. Paul Krugman and several other notable US economists predicted the Dow Jones would collapse if Trump was elected president.
If it were partisan sources you might have a point, but this is across the board.
 
So he's threatening to impose tariffs on Canadian-built automobiles — a good chunk of which are from US manufacturers — to punish Canada?

Er, okay. I mean, it will hurt the economy at some level, sure. But it will also pass the costs to the consumers in the States, which could be quite significant too. Considering four of the Top 10 best-sellers in the US last year are built in Ontario, that's roughly 1.5 million cars that would see a likely sticker bump.

Also really confused about which reality Trump is currently occupying to say Trudeau's comments were false statements or suggesting they're an about-face to what's come before. Trudeau announced counter-tariffs and a tough stance on the subject a while ago; his closing G7 statements were very consistent with that.
 
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