Tariff Nation
New tariffs imposed: Yesterday, President Donald Trump announced he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all imported cars starting April 3, and car parts starting May 3.
Half of cars sold to Americans are imported. Those that aren’t imported include imported parts, with roughly 25 percent of American-made cars containing foreign components.
“Shares of Toyota Motor Corp. dropped 2% in Tokyo,” reports Bloomberg. “In Europe, Stellantis NV fell 4.1%, Valeo SE sank 5.1%, Porsche AG declined 4.3% and Mercedes-Benz Group AG dipped 3.5%. Shares of General Motors Co. were down 6.5% in pre-market trading, while Ford Motor Co. was down 2.6% while Tesla Inc. inched 0.4% higher. The MSCI World Automobiles Index has tumbled 22% so far this year.” Markets don’t love tariffs, and they sure as hell haven’t been loving Trump since he’s taken office.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain says the tariffs “end the free-trade disaster that has devastated working class communities for decades.” Not really. They will instead make it extremely hard for normal people to afford new cars while lining government coffers a bit.
Trump envisions these tariffs as permanent, not mere negotiating tools, and he’s not stopping there: “Other industry-specific tariffs are also in the works, with Trump threatening levies on lumber, semiconductors and pharmaceutical drugs,” reports Bloomberg.
“If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!” wrote Trump on Truth Social in the middle of the night. Again, it’s not clear what economic harm he’s referring to, or how he believes jacking up car prices for middle-class Americans already struggling with inflation will help. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that a pretty scathing Trump tariffs episode—in which I repeatedly attempt to steelman Vice President J.D. Vance’s economic policy preferences and can’t quite get to something cogent—will be dropped on the Just Asking Questions channel later today, just in time for your evening commute home.)
One last thing. Those paying close attention might notice that the most American-made car, with its price least affected by these policies, just happens to be a Tesla Model 3. Fascinating. Wild that the head of that company just so happens to be a very special government employee.
No more tote bags? Dragged before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, NPR and PBS heads were forced to grapple with the bias present at their partially government-funded institutions. NPR President Katherine Maher—yes, the “truth might be a distraction” lady—”said the radio network was wrong to dismiss what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop as a non-story,” reports the Associated Press. Better late than never, I guess. “After they were repeatedly referenced by Republicans on the committee, Maher said she regretted posting some anti-Trump tweets before she began working for NPR.”
Here’s a full, hilarious clip of lawmakers reading Maher’s own tweets back to her—incl
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