Featured Trump tariffs put the US auto industry in disarray

never even presumed Dick Tracy's wrist worn device would come to fruition, so - so much for my presumptions.

 

Source:

• 1:08 Ford Posts $36 Million Q2 Loss
  • "FORD POSTS $36 MILLION Q2 LOSS
    Ford posted a net loss of $36 million in the second quarter. That’s not much of a loss, but a year ago it made a $1.8 billion profit, so it’s quite a swing and tariffs played a big role in the change.
  • https://s205.q4cdn.com/882619693/files/doc_financials/2025/q2/Ford-Q2-2025-Earnings-Press-Release-Update.pdf
• 1:52 Ford Cuts EV Programs to Feed ICE
  • "– It’s reallocating resources from future EV programs to commercial truck programs for Ford Pro and will come out with more EREV and PHEV retail trucks.
    – It’s going to save $1.5 billion for not having to pay for CO2 credits in the U.S. and will save several billion more over the next two years. This will especially help the ICE side of the business, Ford Blue, which was hit with those charges."
  • https://seekingalpha.com/article/4806530-ford-motor-company-f-q2-2025-earnings-call-transcript (CAUTION with this source, they have an anti-EV agenda)

Bob Wilson

 

ya gotta do what ya gotta do. that will make some people very happy

 

Apologies to our moderator(s), I was provoked:

The only reason I bought an AR-15 was after a punk kid stopped his car a year ago to yell a MAGOt campaign chant at me while I was trying to charge my BMW i3 REx out of town. He could just as easily have shot off something other than his mouth at this (1971-75) Marine. As for any "10 mm" road rager or EV charging critic:

• "Never take a pistol to a gun fight." - Wyatt Earp.

Bob Wilson

ps. Are we just beating the spot where the dead horse was dragged away?

 

Ford has some even bigger problems:
Workers at Ford Joint Venture Plant in Kentucky File to Hold Union Election
A representative for BlueOval SK said most workers at the battery facility have not yet been hired, and called the union's petition "premature."
"The UAW is trying to rush BlueOval SK into unionization before our full workforce has the opportunity to make a truly free and informed choice," the statement said.

This will probably mean their $6 Billion investment with SK in the new Blue Oval Battery Plant is dead in the water before it can even produce one battery. They will vote Union, and they will be unable to produce batteries cost competitively and will immediately become a Corporate Liability with all the associated labor problems also.
This joint venture held a lot of promise for Ford - what a shame!

 

it's not just tariffs, it's also regulation and incentive rollbacks putting the auto (and other) industries in disarray

 

Not yet

let me introduce you to my 4Lb 10mm 1,200 fps friend - the s&w foldable pistol carbine. Same accuracy as a 223 - 50 grain at 100 yards



but - to each his/her own
.

 

Many may understand this already, but when peeps exhale CO₂, that's part of a pretty tight equilibrium cycle. The peeps have been eating food that captured that CO₂ within more or less the same growing season.

That doesn't pose the same kind of disequilibrium issues as drilling into the earth for CO₂ that was captured there over millions of years, and desequestering it in a couple hundred.

 

Reminds me of my Keltec Sub 2000. I've rung steel out to 150yards all day long.9mm Hornady Red Tip feeds her. 33rd Glock giggle sticks serve them up.

 

That depends on where the bot gets it's electricity or power.

 

It's only a 'pistol' to the BTAF.
We all know it's a carbine cosplaying as a pistol.
Ballistically that's about the same as a .41Mag IIRC - which makes sense.......the 1CM is about the same size.

 

I don't think anyone is SAYING that, but the Chinese are highly transactional, as you yourself pointed out in your own post.
If you want them to manufacture a widget they will ask ZERO questions ABOUT the widget EXCEPT for how you intend to PAY for it, and they will not knock out the FIRST widget until payment clears for the order.

Since all of life is either a Star Trek episode or a Rocky movie - the CCP are like the Ferengi, only without as many scruples.
ANY Chinese industrial concern that involves itself with international monetary transactions either pays obeisance to, or is owned outright BY the CCP.
This differentiates them fundamentally from the Japanese.
We've 'infected them' with the virus that is capitalism, but thus far it does not seem to be getting through the blood-brain barrier.

I'm old enough to remember when people considered Japanese goods in America to be inferior knockoffs.......
We were disabused of that notion when those wily Japanese kicked 4 square yards of American industrial butt in the 80s.
For Gen-Z folks in the studio audience - that would be the 1980s.
Corrupt (US) labour (a redundancy) helped Japan considerably.

I'm also old enough to remember fears that the Japanese would buy up Hawaii, the Empire State Building and Hollywood.

SO.....
NOT entirely a 'circle of life' thing.
The Japanese and the Chinese are two distinct people, AND by the way....THIS is WHY tariffs did NOT start WW2 - even though white Europeans STILL think that it started in September of '39.

That's 1939.....again, for the Gen Z crowd.

 

Why not; China could make em for us.

 

Uighurs are cheaper than robots.

 

There are no $20,000 American-made cars.

While I feel for the people who's jobs are at stake, I'd rather have one of those cool Chinese cars than any of the American-made cars, even if the price were the same or a bit more.

 

And just reason #1,000 on why we need tariffs against China!

Personally, I wouldn't touch any Chinese vehicle with a 10-foot pole. About 15-years ago, a co-workers bought a Chinese 150cc scooter and didn't know anything about maintenance so I had him drive it over to teach him. Cheapest thing I'd ever seen but did teach him how to change the oil. It started having issues within a year (lost power) so he called around to the motorcycle shops to see if they'd look at it....nope, not a single shop would service a Chinese scooter. He ended up selling it.

 

Seeing how I know plenty of people in other countries who are happy with their Chinese EV's I don't believe the stereotype that anything that's cheap from China is worthless.

On the other hand, I do know 6 different people who've bought a Ford Escape only to see it have a $5,000 to $9,000 transmission failure between 60k and 100k miles.

 

At least not in Europe it wasn't the cause of the war.

 

What you are describing is anti dumping tarrifs? People don't object to those. But what about general tarrifs. These have been tried in the past and always hurt the economy imposing them.

The US has severe trade restrictions on chinese made vehicles, so no americans can not except with few exceptions buy chinese made cars. Chinese companies own factories in the US, UK, and EU and it is likely with the 10% tarrif on UK vehicles, and 15% tarrif on EU vehicles, that they will pay higher tarrifs for raw materials (aluminum and steel have 50% tarrif) and parts (25% tarrif) for vehicles made in the USA. So no if the idea was to move manufacturing jobs to the US, these tarrifs will have the oposite effect and are already causing job losses in manufacturing (lost jobs every month trump has been in office, likely because of the trade policy and uncertainty). If you check the employment figures today they were really bad.

So yes you could put a 25% tarrif on cars assembled in japan, UK, and EU and move manufacuring slowly to the US. The steel aluminum and parts tarrifs will only raise prices and decrease employment in the auto industry, and every industry that uses a lot of steel and aluminum. I post earlier the fed's analysis that steel and aluminum tarrifs decreased employment in industries using them, and employment continued to fall in those two industries in the US, so a lose lose for most americans.

What do we get from these tarrifs. US businesses and consumers pay, but prices increase more than the tarrifs in many cases because they eliminate competition. Right now buying parts ahead, and eating the loss is happening, but that is ending according to july economic data. Trump is getting golf courses and help from those that he tarrifs, but most americans will end up being poorer because of it. Stagflation is the likely effect.

 

If this is the case then even the DNC will be able to beat him or anybody he backs when he runs for office again.
However (comma!) THUS far the Donkeys are making themselves look foolish by prognostications just like the one that prompted the title of this thread...AND they are assisting Trump in winning the fight!
Think about it.
If Trump had just come out and donked the EU on the head with a 15% tariff back in February, then the economy would have reacted very negatively.
Now?
Most norms are giving him a (well deserved) Dubbaya because he was originally threatening over 100% - and REMEMBER......the lowest VAT in the EU is STILL 17% - and some people luuuuuve VATs becuase they are....a tax.

If the Dems keep saying that Trump is going to end all life on earth as we know it and that people are going to be struggling to push ox-carts full of $100 bills around to pay for a loaf of bread, and we only get 10% inflation then.....they're going to be made to look like the fools that they have been acting like.
Go back six months and it was going to be the summer of empty shelves, hyperinflation and mass unemployment.

Quite frankly I AM glad that the fed is keeping the interest rate where it is because lower interest rates are making runaway spending as attractive to the Pubs as it is to the DNC.....and the current rate might serve to throttle the lingering Bidenflation...

Stagflation?
We will have to see....
The Pubs are talking like they want to give away $600 rebate cheques which would result in the US spending over 190 billions of dollars because we took in 27 billion more than we spent in June.


-can't make this stuff up, folks.