Automakers Back New Coalition To Roll Back Trump Era Import Tariffs
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Several of the world’s major automakers, along with other special interest groups close to the automotive industry, have banded together to form the Tariff Reform Coalition in an effort to roll back Turmp-era import tariffs on steel and aluminum.
According to Automotive News, the group is urging policymakers to remove Section 232 tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and reassess Section 301 tariffs on imports from China.
Rufus Yerxa is the president of the National Foreign Trade Council, one of the coalition’s 37 members. Speaking to AN, Yerxa said the Trump-era import tariffs are “unwarranted, ineffective and self-defeating” and called on the Biden administration to “reconsider the Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs that are causing serious damage to those already struggling.”
“All sectors of our economy are being affected by these tariffs – manufacturers are faced with long lead times and high prices for inputs, farmers and ranchers are having a hard time exporting their goods to countries that have imposed retaliatory tariffs, consumers are paying higher prices for everyday goods and investments in new facilities are being reconsidered,” he added.
Trump’s trade war with China began back in 2018, when the former president’s administration slapped tariffs on more than $350 billion worth of Chinese-made goods. These included a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports. The Tariff Reform Coalition claims the tariffs are inflicting a significant cost on U.S. companies, like General Motors for example, and making it harder to do business with China and other countries.
Auto industry backers of the Tariff Reform Coalition include the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Ford, Stellantis and General Motors, along with the American International Automobile Dealers Association, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) and the Truck & Engine Manufacturers Association. The group was initially formed in 2019 to help address future U.S. trade policy, but re-launched this week in a bid to convince the Biden Administration to roll back the Trump tariffs.
Several non-auto industry groups are also represented by the Coalition, including the Beer Institute, Farmers for Free Trade and the United States Fashion Industry Association.
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lowercase gm strikes again. Of course they want us to buy lots of poorly made crap from China to help fatten Mary’s pockets. I really am having a hard time fathoming how gm stock is so high, when their one BEV only sells 20k units a yr and is supposed to be the foundation of the companies future. Meanwhile, the rest of the gm lineup is stagnant and wallowing in mediocrity… Shame.
GM sells the most vehicles in the United States out of all the brands.
Your point being? lowercase gm is hemorrhaging market share. Toyota has passed Ford and they’re right on the heels of lowercase gm, who is continuing to lose market share in the US. Completely dropping competitive vehicles like the Cruze and Sonic is going to prove to be a mistake. The replacement Trailblazer has not received good reviews, probably because it’s not good car. The Bolt platform is clearly undesirable at the price point offered.
It’s just my opinion, but if gm didn’t sell so many trucks the company would be essentially worthless rn. Just find in kind of hypocritical that Mary claims to want to be so green, but the companies bread and butter (trucks and full size suvs) products are some of the least gas efficient vehicles sold. Maybe policy should focus on taxing that carbon more than forcing BEVs. But, if that were the policy Mary and gm wouldn’t be able to play both sides: “Free money” from the Biden for BEVs and high profits on gas guzzlers.
Personally, I’m considering putting much more stock into the Japanese companies like Toyota, Mazda, and Honda and their efficient gasoline engines. But good luck going down with Mary on this sinking ship.
Ford isn’t in GMs ballpark as far as production and innovation, their 99 cent share price reflects that, your personal dis-content with the TB (which is selling well) isn’t a baseline on what GM is doing, remember GM went BK while #1 so marketshare isn’t the only measure of success.
EVs is the future and only foolish automakers at this point don’t have a EV plan but i’ll agree it isn’t overtaking ICE soon
Well FoMoCo was just got surpassed by Toyota in US sales during 2019-2020, so I figured it was probably worth mentioning.
As far as the TB goes, just look at the reviews, or go drive one. I’ve personally driven both the TB and Seltos and I don’t know who would choose the TB over a the 1.6t Kia. The Seltos was a vastly superior vehicle in literally everyway. The TB’s henco en Mexico 3 cylinder drivetrain is unrefined and a displeasure to drive.
This “ev” push is trying to get back that market share. GM knows trucks SUV’s and sports cars will always be their bread and butter, but there was a time when GM had 44% of the marketshare, before the carter administration shot american auto in the kneecaps with regulations that let the rice burners walk all over them. With GM currently at 17%, where did the rest go? Not to ford fanboys for sure. They need a way to bring back toyota and honda buyers, and cheap cars isn’t the way. The Malibu has had a lower life cost than the Camry for over 20 years now. The sonic could be had for better prices than the corolla, and it’s driving dynamics are fantastic. Why is toyota still around? Who in their right mind buys a tundra (better fuel economy with a 2012 silverado HD with the 6.0), supra or heaven forbid a prius!?!? No logic, math or care for style. Just people who know nothing about cars. They are the target. FYI, toyota didn’t pass ford, ford dropped behind toyota as ford sales loose to jeep and chevy with the wave of ugliness we see with the new escape and bronco.
Part of letting the Asians run free in America is idiotic or blatant decisions that cost them dearly, like fwd everything, faulty transaxles, no effort pushing into Asian markets and so.
And now thanks to them we have covid all over the country.
This intiative is about making car production in USA profitable again, by reverting the increased price for raw materials like steel and aluminium which are needed for body panels and lots of other things in an automobile.
One can’t built a car completely out of plastic.
Tesla does! plastic and batteries!
Nothing like destroying the remnants of our US steel industry. America first all the way.
yep, ever since NAFTA back in 1993.
Liberals will never take responsibility for outsourcing and ruining American manufacturing with overpaid union workers and impossible regulations and taxes no corporation can afford to pay.
Don’t do it, the higher prices is due to pandemic adjustments and Wall St mishaps, before the virus prices weren’t much of a factor. We can function without major offshoring.
GM struggled? Ford Struggled? Maybe Stellantis/FCA did but seriously I hope Biden reads through that BS reasoning being used
“I hope Biden reads….” The only thing Biden can read is a teleprompter – even that, he has problems with.
You prefer presidents that rant incoherently and retweet white-supremacists from their toilet at 3am?
Absolutely
stfu!
At least Trump can climb stairs with or without a broken foot.
China is like Walmart,temporarily sell at a loss,kill the competition,raise prices and in the case of china what do when they get a hemorrhoid and pull the plug how will we build fighter planes and warships?
But you know, budlar, that China has four times the population of USA? Represents nearly one fifths of all human beings on this planet?
China is no longer the semi-colony with cheapo coolies, but a leading technological force.
What do you propose bow down now and lay down in 20yrs?
I think bending over is more what they have in mind
To collaborate in making this planet into a place of good living for all human beings.
Not possible without mandatory belief in God.
There go the technocracy acolytes
China doesn’t LEAD anything, they plagiarize and copy everyone else’s technology and they’re very good at it.
That’s “RAYYYYYCISSSSS”!!!!!!!
China’s indeed a MONSTER with 4x the population – who can thank the US “empire” for dragging each and every one of them kicking and screaming into the 21st Century – at our own citizen’s expense. Let’s never forget Uncle Sam’s outsized role in securing postwar Europe, either. A whole lot of US steel saved the free world. How quickly we consign history to the rearview and my how the spoiled, “enlightened” little Western globalist boys and girls love to bite the hand that feeds them.
Wake up weak-kneed programmed Marxists, pacifists and apologists, your misguided woke affection for dictatorial Mother China will soon enslave or kill you and/or your progeny. Great Leader (for life) Xi approves this message.
unbelievable, looks like trump is right, china is eating our lunch and we get to suffer as a result.
For an enlightening case study on how a misguided, fundamentally treasonous and yet still shockingly influential “model state government” misspent millions of taxpayer dollars on a botched major public works infrastructure project farmed out to China that in any sane society with a modicum of self respect and scruples would’ve been by mandate awarded to a domestic contractor and built with 100% domestically sourced and manufactured materials, read the award winning investigative series of articles on the SF Bay Bridge fiasco archived by the Sacramento Bee.
effyuuCheerleaders4Xi-https://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay-bridge/
China’s technological prowess and the quality of its cut-rate product are highly misrepresented and overrated. Simple truths: You get what you pay for, man – and you take care of your own if you intend to survive and thrive.
If you hate America so much you can always move to China.
This headline should say “Don’t plan on Domestic Auto Production on US soil to expand any longer” (AVON LAKE OHIO…FIRST CONTESTANT IN THE LATEST AMERICA LAST CONQUEST) Stay tuned for more…
On the contrary, it translates into „make the US auto industry profitable again“, by taking back the price increases for steel, aluminium, and other essential materials needed to build automobiles.
Trump’s moves worked to make it cheaper to import automobiles than building them inside the USA.
As the article states, the goal isn’t just to buy cheaper steel. It’s the retaliatory tariffs that really hurt. I work for an off-highway OEM, we export a significant amount of product from the USA. We still lobby for no tariffs because the retaliatory tariffs really hurt our exporting, and drives us to build factories overseas and regionally produce product to avoid tariffs instead of worldwide sourcing out of America.
The product I work on specifically used to be world wide sourced out of my plant in the US; now it is manufactured in the US, Brazil, and China – each factory supplies their own region. And volume out of the US plant is half of what it used to be.
The real effect of tariffs is it will cause companies to make the product for America in America. Which sounds great, but you also won’t really ever grow your manufacturing either. When companies grow and expand into new markets, the US plant is not going to get that business because the tariffs make it impossible to be competitive. We need to figure out how to help our manufacturers be competitive on a global scale, not just isolate ourselves to cling to the manufacturing that’s left.
Great points Ryan. What many don’t understand is that there needs to be balance. Shutting off all imports into the US is going to create enormous price increases. And we aren’t going to be exporting as we once did.
Need to find that balance between importing and exporting that allows companies to thrive and residents to buy at reasonable prices.
Export what? Soybeans? Ever look at the United States’ trade deficit versus the rest of the world>
Excellent!
»The real effect of tariffs is it will cause companies to make the product for America in America.«
Or to put it bluntly: shrink the US industry just to cater for local consumption, with high prices and low wages, while the the real big industry is moving to other countries.
The result of Trumps policies following the fool Peter Navarro would result in a de-industrialisation of the USA.
Yesterday I listened to a part of POTUS Bidens 1st press conference, and heard this remarcable information, that some years or decades ago, 2% of US national product was spent on scientific reasearch and development, today only 0.7%. MAGA-politics à la Trump would drive that further down. The eternal law of the unintended consequences…
Trump ordered an export ban of specialized semiconductor products to China, which meant for some US companies to lose 40% of their sales. What would these companies to in face of a sharply reduced income? Reduce personel, which is mainly scientific personel, since these companies do not engage in material production, but only in the design of those chips.
BTW, there is a good discussion of the relative merits of protective tariffs and free trade, especially regarding the USA becoming an industrial country, by Frederic Engels, written in 1888:
marxists dot org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade/index.htm
I noticed some typos in that version, which might stand against understanding. But the article is worth reading, especially for an US public.
If you hate the “US public” move to China. You seem to love Joe The Dictator and Marie Antoinette Barra.
Kind of like burning the village to save it.
Can you hear the sounds of an American worker punching his/her companies time clock for the very last time, I can and China is laughing with joy!
SO TRUE!!!!
Punching a time clock?
You must be out of work for a loooong time or having never worked for a wage in your life.
Time keeping is done electronically, and is already antiquitated when it requires a physical contact of the id card with the recording device.
Literal observer7
Every trading partner we have tariff the US . They cling to there tariffs and there is no chance they will stop them. I will GLADLY change my mind on US imposing tariffs, once our trading partners end their tariffs…
And those other countries are saying the exact same thing. Has to be negotiated to drop the tariffs at the same time, otherwise you are correct, no one is going to make the first move.
They have been SAYING that for decades and do nothing because for so long the US caved and did nothing.
The ONLY reason there is outsourcing and importing is LIBERAL UNIONS, LIBERAL TAXES AND LIBERAL REGULATIONS. Get rid of those and China won’t be able to sell anything to us and we won’t need to outsource anything to them.
Melania Hilton wants workers in USA to be defenseless and forced to work for starvation wages.
Fat angry feminists NEED to eat less AND work more doing a “mans job” so they won’t be in such a rush to criminalize manufacturing and masculinity and tax it to death.
ah, this „Melania Hilton“ is actually a male. Frustrated to the max.
In shape women can’t be against fat angry feminists who are jealous?
This is a really bad idea period.
Making China more powerful for another buck isn’t my idea of an appreciative American company. Too many dead Americans killed by Chinese made weapons for my liking. Y’all might want a little further ahead than your next bonus.
Excellent summation reposted from sovereignman.com:
On October 6, 1789, a group of French peasants surrounded the country estate of King Louis XVI of France and demanded that he and his family relocate to Paris.
The people were sick and tired of the king living the luxurious palace lifestyle at their expense. And, fearing what might happen if he refused, Louis consented to their demand.
The French Revolution was already well underway at that point, sparked in large part by people’s disgust with their out-of-touch aristocracy.
France had been rendered bankrupt by the late 1700s; decades of costly foreign wars, coupled with endless extravagances by the nobility, had completely depleted the treasury.
The government’s solutions alternated between pretending their financial problems didn’t exist, to raising taxes at every possible turn.
The nobles hardly noticed. They lived lavashly while passing on the inflation and tax increases to the peasants.
French aristocrats were either completely clueless, or didn’t care one bit, that their policies were ruining people’s lives.
The Queen, Marie Antoinette, is rumored to have summed up this attitude when she said “Let them eat cake”, in response to hearing how countless peasants were starving.
Most likely that story is just urban legend. However there is plenty of historical evidence that she cared far more about her hair and royal gardens than any plight of the French people.
Her lavish spending was so famous, in fact, that the French used to refer to her as “Madam Déficit”.
And yet— the king, the queen, the nobles— they were the elites. They knew best, and they were in charge of making decisions for everyone else.
You know the rest of the story: the royal couple eventually paid for their conceit with their heads. But that didn’t solve France’s problems.
Soon a wave of radicals took over and formed a new elite (which became known as the Reign of Terror). And just like the old elite, they knew best, and they were in charge of making decisions for everyone else.
This new elite encouraged the population to rat each other out for petty crimes. They printed stupifying quantities of paper money and engineered hyperinflation across the country.
France’s revolutionary history is an incredible example of what happens when a tiny, out of touch group of elites manages to seize power and set the priorities for an entire nation.
We’re experiencing a version of this today in the West.
Prominent media personalities, politicians, tech companies, and self-absorbed social media celebrities, have appointed themselves our cultural nobility and seized the power to dictate just about everything, from how tax dollars are spent, to the words that we’re allowed to say, to how our children are to be educated.
It’s astonishing how quickly it happened, and how much has changed.
For example, it wasn’t that long ago that the entire purpose of the US military was to fight and win wars… and to be the most lethal fighting force in the history of the world.
But today our new elites have changed the priorities. So now instead of the latest weaponry and unit readiness, senior military leaders brag about maternity flight suits, or reducing physical fitness standards in order to be more inclusive.
Twenty years ago the military was about shock and awe. Today the priority has become diversity and inclusion.
Here’s another example: once upon a time, politicians at least paid lip service to fiscal responsibility.
In fact there were numerous government shutdowns and debt ceiling crises in the United States, i.e. political battles to prevent excessive spending, as recently as 2011, 2013, 2018, and 2019.
Today, the new elites have changed the priorities. They tell us that the debt doesn’t matter, and the government can spend as much as it wants.
And with every new massive spending bill, they’re emboldened to spend even more money. It’s been two weeks since the $1.9 trillion ‘Covid’ bill was passed, and they’re already planning a $3 trillion ‘infrastructure’ bill.
Basic fiscal responsibility is simply no longer a priority.
Then there’s education, which used to be about—you know—EDUCATION.
But now that the new elites have taken control, teachers have kids praying to Aztec gods of human sacrifice in order to expunge their whiteness.
Critical Race Theory abounds in schools to teach children they are either victims or oppressors. And the new elite tells us that grading students based on getting the right answer in math class is White supremacy.
Then there’s the media— a once-trusted source of news and information.
Today, under the new elites, the priorty is no longer truth. It’s about force-feeding the narrative they want you to believe, whether about Covid, race, politics, climate change, or anything else.
For example, when a deranged lunatic went on a rampage and killed eight people last week in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian, the media immediately reported that the shooting was due to White supremacy.
Yet the FBI said there was no evidence to suggest a racial motivation, and even the killer himself stated that he was motivated by his sex addiction.
But the media kept pounding the White Supremacy story anyhow.
Yahoo News immediately told its audience in a reprinted article entitled “Whiteness is a Pandemic” that:
Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people. . .
Naturally this is considered to be perfectly acceptable content, and not racist in any way.
In 18th century France, people were starving, but the elites who ruled them were so out of touch that the prevailing attitude was, let them eat cake!
Today there’s a new elite that makes all the rules. They’ve completely corrupted western civilization. They are fanatics who embrace Marxism, violence, racism, and censorship.
And like the French elites before them, they’re completely out of touch with how much they’re destroying the country and people’s lives. Let them eat woke!
What was the landed nobility in feudal Europe back then, are the „60 families“ who rule the US today, the Morgans, Rockefellers etc
Marie Antoinette Barra.