Trump's Tariffs Will Hurt America's Automobile Industry, Including Workers Who Build Cars

[EasyAce]

And the EU's response to the tariffs will whack workers who build motorcycles
By Eric Boehm
http://reason.com/blog/2018/03/07/trumps-tariffs-will-hurt-americas-automo

At six facilities that stretch across the American heartland from West Virginia to southern Texas, workers build more than 1.3 million Toyota cars each year, accounting for more than half of all vehicles sold annually by Toyota in the United States.

Meanwhile, at plants in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, workers on Harley-Davidson production lines churn out more than 230,000 motorcycles every year. About one in every five of them will be shipped overseas, mostly to Europe and Japan.

One is a Japanese company that has brought jobs and prosperity to Middle America. The other is an iconic American brand that exports the physical embodiment of freedom to the world. Both will be hurt if President Donald Trump goes forward with his plan to impose a 25 percent tariff on all steel imports to the United States, propping up America's steel industry at the expense of almost everyone else . . .

. . . It's not just manufacturers who will be hurt. Tariffs will likely raise prices on all automobiles—indeed, on all products made with steel—setting off a chain reaction that will burn the entire industry.

"Auto sales have flattened in recent months, and manufacturers are not prepared to absorb a sharp increase in the cost to build cars and trucks in America," says Cody Lusk, president of the American International Automobile Dealers Association. "These proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports couldn't come at a worse time" . . .