All bets that there will be an ‘26 are off with the tariffs being implemented on Tuesday.
All cars built in North America contain numerous parts and raw materials (steel, aluminum, oil and petroleum products) that have crossed either or both the Mexican and Canadian border before they are assembled into a vehicle.
Some of the parts cross several times during the production process.
E.g., the Bullitt I owned before my first Blackwing was assembled in Michigan but its engine came from Canada, as many Ford engines have for more than half a century.
That engine no doubt itself contained parts from the US, not to mention the rest of the world.
The LSA engine in the V Wagon I owned before the Mustang had an engine that was assembled in Mexico which similarly very likely contained components that originated in the US as well as many other parts of the world.
That whole integrated long-standing production industry will now require reorganization, retrenchment, and mitigation of costs and losses unless an exception is made for cars and car parts. (For those that don’t know: there has been free trade in the auto sector between Canada and the US since the sixties, so the connections are deep, long-standing, and complex.)
Without such an exception, which I’m becoming less hopeful about every time your president speaks about the issue, I believe that we will soon see factories closing, huge layoffs on both sides of the two borders, and the discontinuation of numerous models of cars as part of the retrenchment.
I expect this will include
all the CT5s as they can’t be making GM much money given their low sales volumes.
In other words, and I hope I’m wrong, it’s over after the ‘25, and they may even cut production of that model year short.
There’s one good thing that may come out of all this: some leading politicians here are advocating for a 100% retaliatory tariff on Teslas that are shipped to Canada.
Please God make it so!
