General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the automaker she leads has already begun to see cost increases in steel and aluminum as the United States ignites potential trade wars and imposes tariffs.
Automotive News reported on Tuesday that Barra believes GM “will eventually” see the impacts of sustained trade uncertainty.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces in trade and the auto industry is exceptionally complex,” said Barra. She added that negotiations should continue, come to a conclusion and then GM can digest how the outcome will affect its business.
However, GM is keeping a close eye on things, especially after President Trump asked the Commerce Department to review whether vehicle imports threaten national security. A decision could add additional tariffs to already imposed steel and aluminum taxes.
GM originally brushed off steel and aluminum tariffs and noted it already purchased most of its materials from U.S. makers.
Comments
As the member of a family, steeped in the Pittsburgh steel industry for ~60 years, it’s easy to see. The US has been taking it from both ends in foreign trade for decades, President Trump should back off and just allow it to continue. LOL!
So far, I see that 3 people enjoy being slapped around and taken advantage of. How many more are there?
Trump thinks that all 300 million US-citizens and residents should pay more for steel and everything made of steel.
He is that real estate shark who has increased the fortune inherited from his father just by slapping around and taking advantage of others (his books always ended with Chapter 11), and now he is taken advantage of all US residents.
A little disgruntled, huh?
No, clearsighted.
So “clearsighted” that you voted for the losing candidate.
Yup, ok…
What makes you think that you are able to know which elections I took part in and whom I voted for?
Your phantasy is galoping quite far beyond the area you are able to know.
Some day you have to wake up and realize you lost the election, Hitlery Clinton will never ever be President, and that Obama’s corrupt, illegal governing acts are getting erased from history for good by President Trump’s actions, and that no amount of repeating the same tired propaganda, spinning things, scaremongering, or just flat out lying about President Trump will change this reality.
Time to move on and take care of that Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), don’t ya think?
Poor Sean is still butt-hurt his candidate lost the election…
And poor Mary is running into some trouble as GM slides into lower sales, profits and other problems under her watch…
Excuses, excuses…
And Ford and Chrysler aren’t any better off since their proposal is to kill off most of their cars due to low sales and causing plants to close in the near future, that’s just as pathetic.
The majority clearly disagree with Sean and Sean’s alias Observer7 (same IP address) judging by comments and upvotes on here.
I guess you mean the IP address of the GMauthority blog….
Or of gravatar.com, where the avatar images are stored for blogs using WordPress software.
Try to learn some facts before writing!
“Sean and Sean’s alias Observer7 (same IP address)”
Calling your bluff. Prove it. You should be able to prove it right down to the MAC address, but I don’t believe you for a second.
Dear Blogger Sean:
Some day you have to wake up and realize you lost the election, Hitlery Clinton will never ever be President, and that Obama’s corrupt, illegal governing acts are getting erased from history for good by President Trump’s actions, and that no amount of repeating the same tired propaganda/ your “car stories”, spinning the truth, scaremongering, or just flat out lying about President Trump will change this reality.
Time to move on and take care of that Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), don’t ya think? Or it is going to be a long and rough next 7 and half years for you.
Sincerely,
A Car Fan That Really Wishes You Would Focus On Auto Stories Without Your Political Bias
NoMorePropoganda,
I’ve said it multiple times here, but when I’m called out by name, I will respond.
I do not have an alias on this website. Any comment will show my photo and be signed personally. I’m here to present General Motors related news, no matter the subject. The news is news; there is no political spin here. Save the rhetoric for CNN, Fox, MSNBC. Pick your poison.
Thanks for reading,
-Sean
what are you complaining about? the us government has been bought by corporations. the trade policies we have are there to help them. if that means some industries suffer, too bad. adapt and move up the supply chain or get left behind.
Sorry, as part of a union family member that is finally seeing more manufacturing jobs in my comoany and area, and the economy looking bright, I completely disagree. I support President Trump 100% and he is doing what is right.
“Backing off” is exactly why Pittsburgh is a mess. Remember when people told President Trump to back off on North Korea? The President just did what no other President or talking head could do, bring peace to Asia and the world bvia North Korea.
The economy is amazing under Trump and only getting better. No amount of anti-Trump propaganda from sore loser Sean or ypu will change that…or the fact that Trump was elected by the American people.
My comment was pure, unadulterated sarcasm. Read it again.
What is a “part of a union family member”?
Anyway, returning to serious matters, I am a union member, and I know that workers have no common interests with their bosses, but common interests with their co-workers in other workplaces and other countries.
What many don’t want to face is the entire point of a global economy.
Think of the game Monopoly. It starts with players with equal amounts of money and opportunity. As the game progresses some players begin to get richer at the expense of other players getting poorer. There comes a point where it’s no longer fun for the ‘losers’ to play and yet the ‘winner’ wants to see the game complete to their ultimate victory.
A global economy was , and is, in part, a recognition that players will leave the game if the rich countries only become richer and richer. It is a form of maintaining the peace. It is…WAIT FOR IT… wealth redistribution.
All we’re doing with N Norea right now is giving them a slice of the pie to keep the peace. Mouse that Roared. And that money is going to come from somewhere.
They feel the inevitable first and immediate consequence of the artificial price increase for steel and aluminium for a part of the steel consumed in the country: the general price level for steel and aluminium goes up.
It doesn’t matter if the auto industry “already purchased most of its materials from U.S. makers” — those US makers wont hesitate to profit from the governmental encroachment on the normal functioning of the competition and raise their prices. With or without irrelevant justifications for the price increase.
How much the government interference in the delivery of steel will increase the prices generally depends on the actual percentage the imported steel o the overall consumption of steel in the USA, a number which is unbeknownst to me.
The first victims of raising the price of steel via the imposition of a 25% price increase for imported steel are the construction industry, which uses about half of all steel, then the automobile industry with around one quarter of it and all other industries.
what happened to those daily reports on canadian politics?
The economies of Michigan and Ontario are tightly linked to one another as they both rely on the automotive sector. Putting tariffs on steel and aluminium to spark a trade war with one economy will indirectly attack the other, thereby accomplishing nothing by giving misery and economic stagnation for all.
You are completely wrong…
First, Ontarians completely disagree with and just voted out the. The Liberal, pro-tariff party was soundly beaten in a landslide by a Conservative candidate. The left-wing Liberals were so badly defeated that they even lost official party status in Ontario. The PRO-TRUMP Conservative won. You sound like a butthurt neo-nationalist Canuck who is about to see his special taxes and tariffs on American products disappear. You will now have to compete fairl and freely. “Free and Fair Trade”, right?”
All Canada has to do is trade FREELY AND FAIRLY. NAFTA = free trade, right? Then why does Canada impose so many taxes and hidden fees (270% tax on American dairy!) when the U.S. doesnt on Canadian products. Why are Canadian so afraid of trading fairly? They cant comoete with Americans? Stop trying to hide behind the “our economies are interlinked” bs. You got caught cheating, we now have a President who will call you out, own up to it and stop whining.
Visit www (dot) promiseskept (dot) com for the truth on President Trump’s accommplishments. Not one thing on the site has been proven factually inaccurate.
You don’t even know what official party status is. You mistakenly think it means they’ve become extremists by party status.
I’d also like to point out how, what you may think speaks for provincial politics doesn’t mean the same thing goes for federal. In fact, all of the parties on Parliament Hill showed solidarity against all of Trumps tariff talk.
Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/4266663/trump-trudeau-trade-dispute-solidarity-fallout-continues/
That’s right. The Libs, the PC, the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens are ALL opposed to Trumps steel and aluminum tariffs.
That means all of your wasted post shows nothing except how ignorant you are of the difference between provincial and federal politics.
I’ve said it before American. Canadian politics isn’t just a maple-flavoured version of American politics, and it’s quite so simple as this idiot thinks it is.
Quit lying.
First you said President Trump being tough on China would cause a massive trade war and maybe even a real war…FACT: The Chinese gave into to the U.S. and lowered auto taxes, will buy more American farm products, and work to reduce the massive trade deficit.
Second, you said standing tough to Kim Jung Un of North Korea was going to cause nuclear war…FACT: President Trump is the first and only president to have peace talks directly with a North Korean leader and we are now on our way to a de-nuclearized North Korea…no missle launches, no more nuclear research, etc. Congrats, President Trump! You did what Obama and all other failed at.
President Trump has been clear…Free Trade is FREE trade. BOTH countries have to adhere to the rules FAIRLY. Canada wouldnt exist without trade with the U.S. which is 85% . Biggest employer of Canadians, pay 80%+ of the taxes that fund its heakth care, etc…Dont bite the hand that feeds you. Wonder why little Trudeau is running around frantically trying to renegotiate NAFTA after he laughed off any renegotiation before?
Thank God for President Trump!
I never said a word about China.
You are lashing out like a child at things that aren’t even there.
Mr. Gijo,
1st: you are confusing taxes and import duties. These are two different things, and you have to learn the difference between them.
2nd: No, China did not lower auto taxes, but announced that they will lower import duties on automobiles, and allow foreign automobile companies to conduct their business in China without having to enter a joint-venture with a Chinese company. This is simply the logical move after Chinese automobile companies have grown strong enough by themselves and are expanding internationally, like Geely who acquired Volvo several years ago and acquired the share of 49% operator of the Malayisian automobile manufacturer Proton and 100% of Lotus (I would guess that Mr. Gijo has never heard of those).
China did the same as the USA in the 19th Century, when the Union waged a Civil War against the slavocracy of the South (the friends of Trump and Breitbart) over the question if the US would be an exporter of raw materials (cotton for the British textile industry) and import cheap European industrial products, or if the USA would be an industrial power which could develop its own industry behind the wall of protective import duties. And those import duties were later lowered after the USA had become not only an industrial power, but an imperialist one which went to war robbing all colonial posessions of Spain in the Americas and the Pacific.
3rd: The PDRC proclaimed an end of their development last year in November (I think), after they had successfully demonstrated in ICBM (InterContinenatal Ballistic Missile) able to transport a nuclear war head to the mainland USA. It was the Koreans policies which brought the US POTUS to the negotiating table, not the other way round.
4th: NAFTA has now won the holding of the 2016 World Football Championship…
One more about Trump’s whining of “all the world is taking advantage of us” —
Think about the next time you redecorate your house or apartment. Do you do it yourself or get a professional painter to do it? Make or buy?
This “make or buy” question moves more to the “buy” the richer the person or entity is. The original settler-immigrants to North America built their huts with their own hands. Their richer grand children get a construction company and pay an architect.
When the USofA fought their way to the top of the world in the two big wars of the first half of the previous century, they also increasingly moved collectively toward “buy” instead of “make”. It became the “let others do the dirty work, we enjoy our life with what others produce”.
Trumps rants about “being taken advantage of” is another way of telling the US working people that they have to become poorer and consume less and have to resume to work again longer hours and under worse conditions and without the protection of coalescing into trade unions, instead of simply gathering from around the world what others had produced with their hands.
For too long America has played th3 game of appeasement and all it has done is put us at a strategic disadvantage.
In WW2 the world came to us to MFG the needed weapons, planes, ships and tools needed to defeat Germany.
When disasters still hit who does most countries turn to for help with food, water and other supplies they can not get on their own.
Today the problem is we are now in a place we’re we can not supply ourselves let alone anyone else. If we had to rely on our allies we would fall as they just don’t have the capacity. The G7 less US is $19 billion annually America is $20 billion a year.
A strong America is not just good for us it is good for the globe.
We as a country should work to be as self sustaining as possible. This one world view is dangerous and risky.
America is not trying to undermine our allies but we are just looking to fix the appeasement mistakes of past admins.
Their will be some pain at first but adjustments will be made and all parties will thrive.
American companies swept north in the 90’s and bought Canadian companies by the boatload on a cheap 65 cent dollar. They sucked the life out of those companies and folded them over the course of the next 20 years. Canada has lost the better part of 80 percent of the skilled trades here in Ontario. What more do you want? Are you being treated unfairly? Look inward at yourselves for the true answer. Fuck Trump.
While this blog is not about general political analysis, but about this one automobile manufacturer competing in the globel automotive industriy, I can’t refrain from putting down a correction of, or an alternative view to, Scott3’s views laid out above, which I view as distorted.
The USA did certainly not go to war for altruistic reasons, but for her own imperialist interests.
With the 1898 war against Spain to rob all of Spain’s remaining colonies in the Americas and the Pacific, the USA both entered into the exclusive club of colonial masters and opened the era of inter-imperialist wars for the redivision of the colonial empires. The US “go west” continued in the Pacific, turning the USA into a contender for ruling the Pacific Ocian as an American “mare nostrum”.
In this context, George F. Kennan (1904 – 2005), US diplomat and historian, explained that
>>
We can see that our security has been dependent throughout much of our history on the position of Britain; that Canada, in particular, has been a useful and indispensable hostage to good relations between our country and the British Empire; and that Britain’s position, in turn, has depended on the maintenance of a balance of power on the European Continent. Thus it was essential to us, as it was to Britain, that no single Continental land power should come to dominate the entire Eurasian land mass.
<< (from "American Diplomacy 1900 – 1950" – The University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 10)
This, or course, explains why the USA did intervene in the 1st World War, to prevent that Germany could establish herself as the dominant power on the old continent, "organizing Europe", and by that token established the USA as a major power not only within Europe but worldwide, terminating that "Britannia rules the waves": at the 1922 Washington maritime conference, the USA dictated that Britain was not allowed to have more war ships than the USA.
That war was ended in an unstable truce because of the October Revolution in Russia, and that truce ended when the working class movement was utterly defeated by fascism in Germany in 1933 and the republic by Spanish fascism in 1939.
The German capitalist class hazarded a second try to "organize Europe", putting the reins of power into the hands of Hitler who had proclaimed that "Germany will be world power or it will not be". Hitler apparently had the illusion that the USA would be content with a division of the world where each empire would have her Monroe Doctrine and their "complementary continent", the USA to be confined to Latin America and Germany plus allies ruling over Africa, and Japan following her own "Asiatic Monroe Doctrine".
Especially the latter was impossible, clashing with the US "go west" in the Pacific, aiming at China. But China, the main prize of the war, was conquered neither by Japan nor the USA, but by the Chinese themselves which the US rulers considered to be an unpardonable crime. The Korean war, which began as an intervention of North Korea into the civil strife in the South, conceived as help to the forces of democracy struggling against the US-imposed dictator Syngman Rhee in June 1950, in October of that year became an international war between the USA and China, the latter supported by the Soviet Union. This became the first war, the USA did not win.
When it became obvious that the USA could also not win the war against Vietnam, in 1972 the USA finally conceded recognition to China, in the vain illusion that China could force the Vietnamese to give in to a "compromise" as the Chinese were instrumental for in Korea in 1953 and Vietnam 1954 (after the defeat of French colonialism at Dien Bien Phu). Against Vietnam was the first war the USA did lose.
Vietnam showed that the USA was an empire in decline. As in China 1945, it were the US soldiers themselves who rebelled agains the war, as one aspect of the mass mobilisation in the USA and around the globe. The peak of USA power can be located betwee the nuclear mass murder of 200.000 people in two strokes at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the Korean truce of 1953, which continues until today.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, many people dreamt of "the end of history", history in the sense of the Communist Manifesto, that "all recorded history is a history of class struggles" and that the working class and "socialism" had suffered a terminal defeat, opening the door for a "New American Century". But from Somalia via Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and beyond, the USA was and is unable to establish stable client regimes. The USA has lost definitely the power to impose subservient governments to other peoples.
The Iron Heel of the US empire, which has served so often via miltary interventions or CIA conspiracies to impose bloody torturing dictatorships on so many other nations, has lost its grip.
There is no way to stop the decline, the aggressive policies by Trumpism can only make things worse.
Its time for mankind to free ourselves from any kind of imperial rule and start living together in peace and harmony.
All these freaking cry-babies as Donald Trump is fighting for every working American against Europeans who have been taking advantage of our good nature since the end of WWII; Europe still thinks they’re entitled to a 25-percent tariff while Donald Trump is telling them that WW2 ended over 70 years ago and their 25-percent tariff is out of line.
Maybe it’s time for Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO.. then countries in the EU and Canada will need to spend their spoils on Defense because they never know when Russia may want to invade as they could take Canada in a heartbeat.
What 25% tariff in Europe?
Maybe if you read a little and researched the facts, you wouldnt be so clueless.
People like you make me so damn happy Trump is President.
Mr. Gijo, by your words you admit that you don’t have the facts that I asked for, i.e. that you simply vent prejudices for the sake of propaganda.
Try to get facts before you write!
PS:
A 25% import duty is levied by the USA on commercial vehicles for many years already; this is the famous (or infamous, as some would prefer to say) “Chicken tax”. I believe the en.Wikipedia.org has an article on this, so you can get some facts to counter your prejudices.
Observer7, the only time I see posts from you is when the opportunity arises for you to bash Trump. Do you have any interest in GM products or are you here just to troll?
It seems you are new to GMAuthority as this one writing as “Gijo”, so before you make statements about what I comment about, you should go back in this Blog’s history and check which topics I have commented on and in which effort of achieving factual accuracy.
I believe that my first contributions on this blog were about six years ago. Unfotunately I can’t check that accurately in this moment of time.
A lot of people forget to realize that if you keep milking the cow it’s going to eventually dry up. People act like America doesn’t have a debt problem and a huge trade problem. We are a capitalist economy and even if there is small effects at first we always adapt.
We have been the “Good Samaritan” for many years helping countries. It has been one sided for far too long.
The increase in steel and aluminium tariffs will barely affect auto manufacturing, they will just adjust a few trim levels. It mainly affects primary producers and multi storey construction work.
The domestic auto manufacturers would welcome a 25% tariff ; they would be able to increase prices by 25%.