In a recent Fox News interview with Bret Baier, President Donald Trump discussed a wide range of issues related to his first month back in the White House. One of those topics was the ongoing trade dispute with Canada and Mexico, specifically regarding cars.
“If you look at Canada, Canada has a very big car industry,” Trump told Baier. “They stole it from us. They stole it because our people were asleep at the wheel. If we don’t make a deal with Canada, we’re going to put a big tariff on cars. Could be 50 or 100 percent because we don’t want their cars. We want to make the cars in Detroit.”
Although this was just an off-hand comment in an interview, Trump’s suggestion of a tariff of up to 100 percent on cars imported to the U.S. from Canada speaks to the president’s intentions of bringing more auto manufacturing to the States.
Trump’s threatened 25-percent tariffs on all goods coming to the U.S. from Canada and Mexico are on hold at least until March 1st, following negotiations with Prime Minister Trudeau and President Sheinbaum regarding border security. Although those tariffs are on hold, Trump has implemented 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the States.
Just this week, GM CEO Mary Barra and CFO Paul Jacobson spoke at a conference about The General’s ability to mitigate up to half of potential import tariffs. GM’s solutions are fairly simple: utilize existing U.S. manufacturing capacity to build more USDM cars in the U.S. and source more made-in-the-USA parts. This would likely involve shifting more full-size truck production, which occurs in all three North American countries, into the U.S.
Other than the Chevy Silverado 1500 and Chevy Silverado HD, the only USDM vehicles GM builds in Canada are the Chevy BrightDrop 400 and 600 electric commercial vans. These are assembled exclusively at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario.
A tariff like the one Trump suggested in the interview would certainly impact the cost of selling BrightDrop vans in the U.S. However, with a starting price of $78,625, the BrightDrop vans are already pretty expensive compared to more traditional commercial vans like the U.S.-built Chevy Express and GMC Savana.
