Trump Quietly Threatens U.S. Automakers Over His New Tariffs

Trump is holding U.S. automakers hostage by scaring them into not raising prices while he puts massive 25 percent tariffs on all of the materials they need to make their product. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that the president told automakers at an event earlier this month that he would look “unfavorably” on any price increases after his tariffs, causing automakers to fear retribution unless they just grin and bear the incoming cost increases. He also told them that they should be happy and thankful for him ridding them of Biden’s electric vehicle mandate, and that the tariffs would actually just be “great.” 

“You’re going to see prices going down, but going to go down specifically because they’re going to buy what we’re doing, incentivizing companies to—and even countries—companies to come into America,” Trump told the CEOs.  

This is a huge contradiction. The president claims he’s trying to lower inflation and reinvigorate the domestic manufacturing industry while simultaneously making everything more expensive. Trump’s new 25 percent automobile tariffs will go into effect on April 2. Almost half of all passenger cars in the U.S. are manufactured outside of our borders in places like Mexico and Japan. Carmakers already have begun to stockpile new, completed cars to try to offset the tariffs until May. 

“It is difficult to see how imposed tariffs over time would not have some impact on prices,” American Automotive Policy Council President Matt Blunt, who represents General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor, told the Journal. 

It’s unclear how the Trump administration will punish car companies that do indeed raise prices—something they’ve been forced into doing by Trump himself.

On Saturday, Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships around the world will be met with protests. 

Organizers are calling it the Tesla Takedown Global Day of Action, and plan to hold rallies at over 200 Tesla locations, including close to 50 in California. They hope to send a message to Tesla CEO Musk and the Trump administration that they oppose their overhaul of the federal government, from the mass purges of federal workers to closing entire agencies. 

The organizers describe themselves as grassroots activists who will “protest Tesla for as long as Elon Musk continues to shred public services,” according to their organizing page. The movement is decentralized, with local organizers planning their own protests rather than coordinating with a national group. Musk is “destroying our democracy using the fortune he built at Tesla” and so, in turn, they are “taking action at Tesla,” the website states. 

“Nobody voted for this, and nobody voted for Elon,” Vickie Mueller Olvera, who is organizing protests in California’s Bay Area, said to The Guardian. “He’s an unelected super-billionaire and he’s a thug.”

Olvera advises people not to buy a Tesla or  buy stock in the company and to join the protests, which started shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Since then, Tesla stock has plummeted, with Musk leveraging his influence over the Trump administration to have the president shill for the car company on the White House lawn and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick beg the public to buy Tesla stock.  

Trump’s ill-advised automobile tariffs may even affect Tesla less than other automakers, according to industry experts, raising questions as to whether that is Trump’s real goal. But Musk is largely responsible for damaging his own car company, which makes a fortune not on car sales but on exploiting the carbon credit market. If he’s upset about Tesla’s (and his own) damaged image, perhaps he should stay out of the federal government. But that would mean the end of his gravy train.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney officially broke things off with the United States Thursday, marking a seismic shift in relations between the longtime allies.  

“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” Carney said during a press conference, following a meeting in Ottawa with his ministers to “discuss trade options” in response to Donald Trump’s “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles and auto parts.

“What exactly the United States does next is unclear, but what is clear, what is clear is that we as Canadians have agency. We have power. We are masters in our own home,” Carney said. 

“We can control our destiny. We can give ourselves much more than any foreign government, including the United States, can ever take away. We can deal with this crisis best by building our own strength right here at home.” 

Carney warned that Canada, which is currently one of the top importers of U.S. goods, would need to reshape its economy to wean itself off its southern neighbor.

“We will need to dramatically reduce our reliance on the United States. We will need to pivot our trade relationships elsewhere. And we will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations,” Carney said. 

On Wednesday, Carney called the latest round of tariffs a “very direct attack.” 

“We will defend our workers. We will defend our companies. We will defend our country,” he said at the time.

Back stateside, the Big Three automakers took an immediate hit Thursday as the market digested Trump’s tariff announcement, with new tariffs on vehicles expected to go into effect on April 3 and on vehicle parts one month later.

The White House has pretended that the steep tariffs on Canada are a bargaining chip to help curb illegal drug trafficking—a threat so minor that it warranted no mention in the Trump administration’s first Annual Threat Assessment—but Trump openly admitted that he hoped to use tariffs to bully Canada into becoming a U.S. state. His bullying has since escalated into an all-out trade war, which could potentially devastate states along America’s northern border. 

The Trump administration sent a Venezuelan national with no criminal record to a Salvadoran megaprison based on an administrative error, according to The Miami Herald.

Frengel Reyes Mota, 24 years old, was deported to El Salvador earlier this month along with hundreds of other Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration falsely claims to be Tren de Aragua gang members. Trump invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to bypass any judicial resistance (which has come anyway in the form of Judge James Boasberg). But Reyes Mota’s immigration records contain multiple errors, including marking him as a woman, using a different last name, and filing two ID numbers for him.

Reyes Mota has committed no crime—either in Venezuela or the United States—and has none of the tattoos that the Trump administration is absurdly alleging identify Tren de Aragua members. In fact, he has no tattoos at all. He had a pending asylum case before he was disappeared to El Salvador without a day in court.

“We are facing a novel and extremely concerning situation where people’s immigration court proceedings are still pending but they are being disappeared from the United States without any lawful removal order,” said Mark Prada, Retes Mota’s lawyer. “This is an affront to the rule of law.”

The Trump administration continues to assert that a DHS file notes that Reyes Mota “may be a Tren de Aragua associate.” But his lack of criminal record is mentioned in the very same file.

More bleak stories like this are sure to come, as the Trump administration doubles down on its indiscriminate deportations of tattooed Latino men under the guise of war.

Senate Republicans voted Thursday to overturn a $5 cap on bank overdraft fees, leaving working-class people vulnerable to exploitation from financial institutions.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adopted the cap late last year. It was scheduled to take effect later in 2025.

The rule was meant to protect consumers from unreasonable fees levied by banks and credit unions, saving consumers an estimated $5 billion per year total.

Chuck Bell, the advocacy program director at Consumer Reports, warned that repealing the fee limits “will hurt working families who are already struggling with high prices and inflation.” While Donald Trump has made plenty of promises to make the cost of living more affordable, he has functionally rubber-stamped the efforts of Republicans to undermine that very promise.

The resolution to repeal the rule was introduced by Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and done through the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to undo recently adopted regulations through a simple majority vote.

The resolution passed in the Senate on a nearly party-line vote of 52–48.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was the only Republican to oppose the measure. “Why would we help the big banks at the expense of working people?” Hawley said, after the vote. “I just don’t understand it.”

Every Senate Democrat voted against the measure.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee who helped establish the CFPB, slammed her Republican colleagues for undermining the consumer to help big banks. “Senate Republicans would rather you didn’t find out they just voted to give the biggest banks billions in profits from overdraft fees that kick working people when they’re down. Disgraceful,” she wrote on X Thursday.

The resolution is now expected to move to the House.

Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg urged voters Thursday to contact their representatives to “ask how they’ll vote.”

“Moment of clarity today in the Senate where Republicans sided with big banks & against customers. Higher fees, lower transparency,” Buttigieg wrote on X.

The CPFB’s rule previously faced a legal challenge from the American Bankers Association, which claimed that the agency had overstepped its authority to impose the rule, which would ultimately hurt consumers. Rob Nichols, the trade group’s chief executive, issued a statement applauding the resolution’s passage in the Senate.

“If implemented, the C.F.P.B.’s 11th-hour rule imposing government price controls would force many banks to limit or eliminate overdraft protection as we know it,” Nichols said. “Many Americans would be driven to less regulated and higher risk non-bank lenders to cover unexpected or emergency expenses.”

The Trump administration seems interested in eliminating the CFPB altogether. “CFPB RIP 🪦,” Elon Musk wrote on X in February.