NEW YORK, Oct 4 \u2014 President Donald Trump has claimed a \u201croaring comeback\u201d in American auto manufacturing following aggressive trade policy, but analysts view the cumulative impact as more of a mixed bag.<\/p>\n
Since Trump returned to the White House, General Motors, Toyota, Ford and other carmakers have announced plans to expand US plants or shift production from overseas to make use of underutilised factories, as the industry navigated measures such as a 25-per cent levy on imported autos.<\/p>\n
But as the president\u2019s allies in the Republican party look ahead to mid-term elections in November, the gains to the US carmaker profile look more incremental than decisive, and are accompanied by a drag in spending in some cases due to trade uncertainty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a partial win,\u201d Stephanie Brinley, an automotive analyst at Mobility Global, said of the lift from Trump\u2019s tariffs to the US auto industry.<\/p>\n
Auto industry experts view the unsettled nature of Trump\u2019s trade measures as a hindrance to bigger wins. This defect has most recently surfaced in the dust-up between the United States and Canada that has clouded the prospects of the North American trade agreement, known as the USMCA.<\/p>\n
In August, a top Honda executive said the company was operating near full capacity at its North American facilities and wanted to build a new plant, but might pivot if the fog around USMCA persists.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the disruptions from tariffs and Trump\u2019s reversals of US policies favouring electric vehicles have weighed on the US auto supplier sector, which provides parts and technology and employs some 930,000 people in the United States.<\/p>\n
There has been \u201ca noticeable slowdown\u201d in investment by suppliers due to policy uncertainty, including on tariffs, said Tyler Harp, an industry economist at the Centre for Automotive Research (CAR).<\/p>\n
Investment by suppliers plunged from more than US$8 billion (RM32.6 billion) in the first quarter of 2025 to around US$600 million in the two subsequent quarters before recovering somewhat, according to CAR data.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuppliers are more exposed to tariffs,\u201d Harp said. \u201cThey\u2019re not in a position to absorb them as well as automakers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investing in automation\u00a0<\/p>\n
After falling for much of 2025, US auto employment has been on an upswing for most of 2026. In September, the sector had just under 1.8 million workers, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s almost one per cent more than the level in January 2025 when Trump took office, but more than two per cent below the peak level from the last decade, in July 2024 when Joe Biden was president, according to the BLS.<\/p>\n
US auto production has also been broadly stable, but isn\u2019t expected to rise until around 2030, when GM\u2019s US$4 billion investments in Michigan, Kansas and Tennessee come into force, along with Toyota\u2019s US$3.6 billion plan to move Tacoma pickup production to Texas from Mexico.<\/p>\n
Global Mobility projects that US car production will be 10 million vehicles in 2026, about the same as last year, but rise to around 11.3 million in 2030, according to Brinley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is definitely an increase in there and it is partially related to tariffs,\u201d she said, noting that in some cases automakers are reconfiguring plants or making use of underutilised capacity.<\/p>\n
A brand-new plant such as the one floated by Honda must be used for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlants aren\u2019t put in the ground with the expectation of lasting a presidential cycle,\u201d Brinley said. \u201cThe tariffs have an impact, but it\u2019s just not the only input.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suppliers have ranked changes in government trade policy as the industry\u2019s \u201cgreatest threat\u201d over the next 12 months, according to surveys from MEMA, the Vehicle Suppliers Association.<\/p>\n
In the most recent report, nearly 80 per cent of companies ranked trade policy changes among the four top threats, alongside weakness in the US economy, an external or \u201cblack swan\u201d event, and poor vehicle sales.<\/p>\n
The industry has recovered only about half of tariff-policy-related costs, a \u201csustained margin drag that is likely to weigh on supplier financials,\u201d according to a commentary from Deloitte accompanying the survey.<\/p>\n
The industry is following a \u201cdiscipline-over-growth playbook\u201d while shifting more investment to automation and robotics, Deloitte said. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Oct 4 \u2014 President Donald Trump has claimed a \u201croaring comeback\u201d in American auto manufacturing following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[287144,114,54,11864,85,46,68267,287145,287143],"class_list":["post-635848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-american-auto-manufacturing","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-motors","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-toyota","tag-us-car-production","tag-usmca-trade-agreement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}