Auto Tariffs Coming in April, Trump Says

President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to roll out auto import tariffs around April 2, following his claim that Canada “stole” the car industry from the United States. 

“We don’t want their cars, we want to make the cars in Detroit,” Trump told Fox News, threatening tariffs of 50% to 100% on Canadian vehicles.

Industry experts counter that the notion of purely national vehicles no longer exists in North America. “I think it would be extremely difficult to find, if not impossible, frankly, to find a car that is entirely made in Canada or entirely made in the US — or entirely made in Mexico, for that matter,” Tu Nguyen, an economist at RSM Canada, told CBC.

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The manufacturing reality involves complex cross-border supply chains built over decades. Chrysler‘s Windsor-assembled Pacifica minivans use Michigan-built engines, while Ford’s Windsor plants produce engines for vehicles assembled throughout North America.

Auto executives warn the proposed tariffs could devastate the industry. Ford CEO James Farley cautioned that a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports would “blow a hole in the US industry that we’ve never seen.”

The impact could cascade quickly through the sector, according to University of Windsor automotive engineering professor Peter Frise. “A car is a very deferrable purchase,” he said. “If the sales of cars slow down a lot or stop, then production will stop. The factories won’t make cars if they’re not selling. And so there could be, you know, hundreds of thousands of people laid off very, very quickly if these tariffs take hold.”

Currently, domestic manufacturing accounts for about half of US auto sales, with remaining imports split between Canada/Mexico and other major producing nations including Japan, South Korea and Germany. The American Automotive Policy Council, representing Detroit’s Big Three automakers, has urged exemptions for vehicles meeting USMCA requirements.

The auto tariff announcement is part of Trump’s controversial trade tactics. He is already moving forward on steel and aluminum import tariffs set to begin March 12. A separate 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods was suspended for 30 days following moves from those countries on border security and fentanyl policies.

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