Spectre of Auto Tariffs Sporn

Ziggy Duchnowski spent shopping in Queens on Saturday morning with two goals in the Northern Boulevard in Northern Boulevard.

He wanted to find a new little car for his wife and hoped to complete a deal in front of the new tariffs, which President Trump imposed on imported cars and trucks.

“The word on the street is that the prices will now be shooting open,” said Duchnowski, 45, a trade union tankman who voted for Mr. Trump and held the hands of his two small children.

The tariffs – 25 percent on vehicles and parts outside the USA – will have a widespread impact on the North American auto industry. They should come into force on April 3 and increase prices for new cars and trucks.

You will also force car manufacturers to adapt their North American manufacturing companies and try to find paths to reduce the costs of compensation for tariffs. And at least for the first time, they follow some consumers to buy vehicles before the sticker prices jump.

Analysts estimate that the tariffs will significantly increase prices for new vehicles and will add a few thousand dollars for entry models to $ 10,000 or more for high-end cars and partners. Higher prices for new vehicles are also likely to nudge the used car prices higher.

Every car manufacturer will have an impact. General Motors builds a large number of highly profitable pickup trucks and sports supply vehicles in Canada and Mexico. Toyota and Honda make popular SUVs in Canada. Volkswagen gathers the Jetta limousine, the Tiguan SUV and other popular models in Mexico.

“As soon as the tariffs come into force and people start to maintain quotes that make up 25 percent increases, it will start to sink”

Almost half of the cars that Hyundai sells in the USA are imported from South Korea, he said. “You will be hit with the tariffs in about a month or two,” said Pacilli. “Of course we are concerned. Any impact on pricing will influence the sales volume.”

While many dealers did not record a noticeable increase in buyers on Saturday, Jeremy Gleason, General Manager at McGrath Subaru Evanston in Skokie, Illinois, said his dealer has had his largest sales day since its opening in 2021.

“It was crazy,” said Gleason. “The tariffs appeared a lot and made people go forward faster.” He added that his car dealership usually sold about 15 cars on Saturdays, but sold 32 in this case.

Alvaro Duarte, an Ecuadore migrant who lives in West New York, New York, went to Hudson Toyota in Jersey City, New Jersey, to act against an electrical model on Saturday and fear that prices would rise if he were waiting.

“Customs all affects all,” said Mr. Duarte, 37. In his free time, he said, he often used his car to earn money as Amazon Flex delivery driver. “If the prices rise, I have to pay more for my car, and that is more expensive for me and my family,” he said. “I made the change because there is no gasoline and less maintenance for electric cars.”

In the meantime, a seller of Audi Manhattan in New York, Abdul Azeez, said that traffic was not more lively than usual, and suggested that it was because the people who live in the neighborhood usually have the means to buy new cars whenever they want.

“Overall, I do not believe that dealers in Manhattan will be also affected in comparison to dealers in other states or fewer busy cities, because even in the good economy, bad economy, there will always be someone who goes to the door to buy a car,” said Azeez, 24.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the car dealer west of the city center in Jackson Avenue, customer traffic for a Saturday on the last weekend of the month was quite normal – usually a busy time.

But a Tesla showroom attracted a lot: 300 to 400 people gathered to protest against the political activities of the company’s managing director, Elon Musk.

Mr. Musk heads the cost reduction initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency, which has removed thousands of federal jobs and has disappointed several government agencies, including the veterans Affairs Department and the Education Department.

Demonstrators bore signs in which Mr. Musks shaped shooting and asked people to sell their Teslas.

“We have to get a fundamental common sense in this country,” said Harold Blake, 73, a pensioner who drove 30 miles from Dearborn to take part in the protest.

“It is so extreme what is going on in Washington,” he said. “I’m not taking it.”

In the course of an hour, no customers crossed the line of strike to enter the Tesla showroom.

Protests took place at the Tesla locations around the world as part of the so-called Tesla-Takedown movement. On Saturday, more than two dozen such demonstrations were planned in the United States. Others were planned for Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

“I’m afraid of my children and grandchildren for what this world is coming,” said 67 -year -old Kathy Sines when he protested in Miami outside of a Tesla showroom and a poster with the inscription “Tesla Greed, which we will not consider.”

It remains unclear how soon the prices for new vehicles will increase. Most car manufacturers have enough customs cars and trucks on the dealers and last 60 to 90 days.

Juan Carlos Fagerlund decided not to wait. He was in a Toyota dealer in North Miami, Florida, to add window centered people to a Prius he bought this month.

Although he had already thought about buying a new car, he caused the potential of higher prices to accelerate him to shop, especially because he wanted a Prius. The car is produced in Japan and will be exposed to a difficult tariff.

The collective bargaining “was not quite the reason why we bought in March,” said Fagerlund. “But it was definitely in our heads.”

Adria Pina, 60, a Dominican immigrant and a bus driver from New Jersey, who lives in Bayonne, New Jersey, also decided to move quickly. She was sitting in the Hudson Toyota dealer in Jersey City minutes after she bought a new car and said she had the feeling that she had just had a tariff.

“My husband said we were lucky that we got a deal just before the tariffs,” said Ms. Pina. “If we didn’t do this in time, it would have cost us about $ 10,000. It’s a lot of money.”

Sal Sellers, 57, the general sales manager at Hudson Nissan next door, did not seem to be overly concerned about the impending tariffs, and found that he had gone through the pandemic and other serious economic downs. But that did not mean that his customers were not worried.

“Last week we had a few customers who said: ‘You know what, I’m not waiting. I’ll change my car now before the tariffs are hit,” said Sellers. “I would say that about 30 percent of my customers said that.”

Outside of Chicago, Enzo Costa supervises eight dealers as sales director for the Patrick dealer group in family-owned.

In March, he said, he increased his orders for new cars to round off his inventory before increasing prices, and his acquisition team bought 30 used vehicles – about three times the usual number.

So far, however, he had seen no increase in customer transport. “We set 80 to 100 appointments on a normal Saturday,” he said. “Today we have 75.”

He added that his sales team asked customers to consider new cars to get into the exhibition space. “Everything in the inventory is before the tariff,” he said. “You don’t have to worry now. It’s something that is down the street.”

At the Silver Line Auto Group in Queens, which sells used jeeps, Cadillacs and Mercedes, many customers are immigrants or other people with driving license, but not for social security numbers. Silver Line sold 35 cars in December, but the business has crashed since then, said a seller, Silver Bautista. The company only sold eight cars this month and recently released four employees.

Mr. Bautista said he believed that customers were not kept away because of increasing prices, but because they felt that they had the feeling of saving money.

“They don’t take care of tariffs,” said Mr. Bautista. “People are worried about being deported.”

Robert ChiaritoPresent Ryan HooperPresent Verónica ZaragoviaPresent Anusha Bayya And Nate Schweber Reported reports.