President Donald Trump indicated that auto tariffs were coming.
President Donald Trump will announce tariffs on the automobile industry at a press conference later on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed.
“All of this good is happening for our country,“ Leavitt told reporters at the March 26 press briefing. ”This administration is working hard on behalf of the American public every day.”
The president has also recently mentioned levies on lumber, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductor imports.
“We are going to be doing automobiles, which you’ve known about for a long time,” Trump told reporters at the White House on March 24. “We’ll be announcing that fairly soon, over the next few days probably. And then April 2 comes. That will be reciprocal tariffs.”
The president has hyped April 2 as America’s “Liberation Day,” when he is expected to unveil reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
Shares of U.S. automakers slumped midweek after reports circulated that Trump would soon announce auto tariffs. Ford fell 1 percent, General Motors shed 1.4 percent, and Tesla Motors fell about 6 percent.
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The broader financial markets also slumped. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index plunged nearly 400 points, or 2.2 percent. The broader S&P 500 declined about 75 points, or 1.3 percent. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 200 points, or 0.5 percent.
Automakers have started considering plans to shift more car production to the United States.
Earlier this week, South Korea-based Hyundai announced a $20 billion U.S. investment, including a $5.8 billion manufacturing plant in Louisiana.
Depending on the tariff rates, Volvo might move the production of some of its models to the United States. Volvo CEO Jim Rowan said the company possesses the capacity at its American assembly facilities to support the shift.
“We have space, paint shops, the buildings, all that’s there,” Rowan said. “We just need to make a final decision on which models and which platforms that we would move to the USA.”
Stellantis plans to reopen a shuttered Illinois plant in 2027. Honda might manufacture its next-generation Civic hybrid in Indiana rather than Mexico.
Over the past week, there have been mixed signals about whether these tariffs will be industry-specific or universal.
In a March 18 interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the administration will examine various non-tariff trade barriers, including currency manipulation, government subsidies, and labor conditions.
“We are going to go to them and say, ‘Look, here is where we think the tariff levels are, nontariff barriers, currency manipulation, unfair funding, labor suppression, and if you will stop this, we will not put up the tariff wall,’” Bessent said.
Investors have been optimistic about a potentially softer trade policy from Trump, with the leading benchmark averages popping after weeks of a sharp selloff.
Trump signaled at a March 24 press conference that he could “give a lot of countries breaks.”
“They’ve charged us so much that I’m embarrassed to charge them what they’ve charged us, but it’ll be substantial, and you’ll be hearing about that on April 2,” he said.
Last week, Trump told reporters from the Oval Office that he could be flexible in his efforts to implement universal tariffs next month.
“I don’t change. But the word flexibility is an important word,” Trump said. “Sometimes it’s flexibility. So there’ll be flexibility, but basically, it’s reciprocal.”
