Donald Trump is about to seriously disrupt the automotive world
Mike Rutherford looks at what Donald Trump's return to power means for car companies that don't build cars on American soil
Like him or loathe him, Donald Trump has just started his two new jobs: President of the United States and No.1 mover and shaker in the automotive world he’s about to seriously disrupt.
He’ll undoubtedly go easy on his Big Two domestic manufacturers, Ford and General Motors. But plenty of other firms will be in his sights. It’s impossible to know exactly how tough he’ll be on foreign manufacturers. But Chinese and other Asian companies are likely to be punished, especially if they have the temerity not to build automobiles in American factories manned by his American workers who pay their income and other taxes to his American Government. So that’s bad news for, say, BYD which has no US car plant (although it does make buses in California), but not so bad for Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and a few other Asian companies who do.
And despite BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen building cars on his soil, he’s understood to have a problem with Germany and what he sees as its annoying ability to successfully and lucratively sell so many premium, performance or luxury products to his citizens.
As for Britain’s auto industry, it’s causing Trump unease on two fronts: firstly, for having no job-creating car-building facilities on his patch; secondly, for selling so many of its pesky cars to wealthy US residents who are failing to support US manufacturing and local jobs. At least that’s the way he sees things. And that’s why he’s threatening to impose brutally large tariffs on cars that don’t wear ‘Made in America’ badges.
The London School of Economics (and others) recently reported that he “has proposed a 100 per cent tariff on all imported vehicles”, but for some non-US factories, the figure could be higher. He mentioned “200 or 400” per cent to Fox News before adding “I don’t care” and vowed to stop foreign-built cars “destroying Detroit further”.
He’s hardly a fan of electric cars. But in the run-up to the start of his second term, there has been a surge in the sale of such vehicles. Why? Because there are reports that he could soon kill off the $7,500 (£6,150) incentive to buy them and some consumers are grabbing what they see as their last chance to purchase an EV with a sizable government subsidy.
But a far larger proportion of US motorists are staying with ICE tech – not least because Trump has adopted a ‘drill-baby-drill’ ethos aimed in part at reducing pump prices.
Away from cars, he’s vowed to take under his wing the most inappropriately named country on earth - Greenland, which I know (because I went there as part of my epic London to Miami by Jeep drive) has very little greenery, because it comprises 836,330 square miles of ice!
All this (and more) from Donald J Trump before he’d even started his new job as the 47th President of the United States.
Do you agree with Mike? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section...
