The worst-slash-latest: Marjorie Taylor Greene will be Musk’s overseer, leading the Delivery of Government Efficiency committee
Another day, another shock announcement. If he’s not nominating incompetents for attorney general or TV doctors to head Medicare and Medicaid, president-elect Donald Trump is threatening to slap 25% tariffs on anything built in Mexico and Canada crossing America’s borders.
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Nor is the pain reserved for Generous Motors. Of the top four importers from Mexico, three are domestic automakers (or, in the case of Stellantis, quasi-domestic). With the resultant bump in prices — which the automakers will no doubt try to mitigate with expensive subsidization — increasing the burden on already cash-strapped consumers, many analysts find it hard to see how American automakers or consumers benefit from the president-elect’s promise to enact “tough tariffs” by executive order on his first day in office.
Except that, as so many other analysts have dutifully pointed out, this is possibly — more like probably — all just theatre. Trump has always liked playing tough to his audience. But, if his first term in office is any indication, the tariff talk is just a negotiating tactic. As long as there’s a photo op of Trump in front of an assembly plant he “saved,” the tariff disappears. Hell, the USMCA, the plan he and then-chief trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer drew up — the one he now demands be renegotiated! — was itself the product of just such a Trumpian threat.
In other words, there’s a good chance this is all bluster and bluff, Trump thinking he’s being really sneaky and sophisticated as he brings entire countries to their knees. Hell, even Trump’s purported ruse for including Canada in this commedia del’tariff — that we aren’t being tough enough on drugs and immigration — is ridiculous.
Prime Minister Trudeau, to his credit — bet you didn’t think you’d read that phrase here — has already schooled the president-elect and informed him U.S. authorities intercepted just 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last year, while more than 20,000 pounds were seized at the Mexican border. And, while the American border patrol had 1,520,523 “encounters” at the Mexican border last year, there were only 23,721 along the Canada-U.S. border.
Even worse will be Trump’s long-standing desire to rescind California’s right to set its own automotive tailpipe emissions. You might remember that California does, in fact, have an “EV mandate” like those president-elect Trump has promised to eliminate, and that 17 other states have adopted the Golden State’s rules — jurisdictions that represent some 40% of all auto sales in the U.S. of A. — would no longer be able to force consumers to buy electric. Both EV proponents and automakers — who have committed much of their available capital to battery production — are askance at the emissions rollbacks and the possible elimination of California’s waiver.
But, as it is with all news weird and wonderful related to cars, the final word on the fantastical remains with Elon Musk. Now, we’ve already established that Musk — along with Vivek Ramaswamy — will be in charge of Trump’s ex-officio Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which seems intent on eliminating as many as 75% of the employees within the federal government. Musk is well-suited to the job because, as we all know, he famously fired Tesla’s entirecharging division — arguably the most important employees working for the EV automaker — because he had a disagreement with its manager, Rebecca Tinucci.
The tariff talk may just be a negotiating tactic—as long as there’s a photo op of Trump in front of an assembly plant he ‘saved,’ the tariff disappears
Seriously, I could not in a million years — and frequent readers know that I have tried — predict anything so monumentally inane. Indeed, for the next four years, Motor Mouth will adapt a new strategy for forecasting the future, which will, when analyzing the machinations of the American government vis-à-vis the North American auto industry, be predicated on the worst-case scenario possible being managed by the most ill-suited people available. Buckle in: it’s about to get stupid.
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