Donald Trump is the most powerful car bloke on the planet

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I did – several months ago when predicting that Donald ‘The Disrupter’ Trump was all set to become the automotive world’s No. 1 mover and shaker.

Right on cue, he’s provocatively manoeuvred himself into this commanding and scarily influential position and can, and will, claim to be the most powerful car bloke on the planet in 2025. If not him, then who?

Despite their enormous salaries, the CEOs at most of the largest European and Asian global manufacturing groups seemed quiet, almost lethargic last winter, instead of resisting the imminent assault from tariffs this spring.

Because these guys left the door open for Trump, he declared financial war against them and their cars – or at least those not built in ‘his’ America. This he did by imposing hefty, potentially ruinous 25 per cent ‘tariffs’ on all vehicles that don’t wear the MIA (Made In America) stickers that the US president wants them to don.

But away from the global corporations, smaller manufacturers have been eerily silent, too. The UK is the world’s best at building and shipping to America expensive cars made in comparatively tiny numbers. Did these small Brit-based firms do enough to prevent the now-confirmed 25 per cent tariffs that could render their presence in US showrooms unviable? Worryingly, car building in Britain is already about half of what it was just six years ago. The obvious concern is these surcharges might further reduce the number of models being made. Fewer products built in Blighty means fewer jobs for British workers.

For their US counterparts working in Detroit or hoping to land new positions in the Deep South, well paid job prospects look rosier. First, because Trump has repeatedly vowed to bring the glory days back to the Motor City. Second, because Hyundai has just confirmed it will spend $21billion (£16billion) building additional US factories and steel plants in Louisiana, creating thousands of extra jobs for Americans. Trump assured the South Korean giant that the only way to avoid his 25 per cent tariffs on its ‘foreign-made’ cars was to build them in the US. And it took that advice. Could JLR’s owner, Tata of India, take similar action by making some of its Jaguars and Land Rovers in the US?     

When delivering his announcement at the White House on 2 April, Trump’s guests were what he called his US “autoworker and Teamster Union friends”. Symbolically, they wore work clothes and hard hats. While millions across the world watched, he handed his microphone to at least one of those grassroots car factory workers. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, please consider doing something similar at Downing Street or Parliament for representatives of the almost one million threatened British workers in and around our/your now-struggling domestic car industry.

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