General Motors is just the latest company to come out against President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs. GM joins a boat builder in Florida who has to absorb $4 million in lost business and expects more pain. Then there is the pork producer in Ohio who will lose out to a vital export business.
We can also add a motorcycle shop near Cologne, Germany, and a number of steel manufacturers in Canada. “We’re bleeding pretty bad right now,” said Jim Heimerl, a pork producer in Johnstown, Ohio, according to PBS.
In a filing with the Department of Commerce on Friday, GM warned that higher tariffs on imported vehicles under consideration by the Trump administration could cost jobs and lead to “a smaller GM” while “isolating U.S. businesses from the global market.”
In another filing by the National Association of Manufacturers, they warned the tariff plan would “put the U.S. manufacturing sector at a global disadvantage, undermining growth and job creation throughout the United States.”
Toyota Motor North America said the tariffs “would have a negative impact on all manufacturers, increasing the cost of imported vehicles as well as domestically produced vehicles that rely on imported parts” like their Camry facility in Kentucky.
Friday deadline for comments on Tariffs ends
Today was the final day for comments on Trump’s call for the Commerce Department to investigate whether automotive imports pose a threat to national security. Trump had already used the archaic Cold War Act to justify his tariffs on aluminum and steel earlier.
On June 6, the World Bank, in its latest Global Economic Prospects report, warned: “A broad-based increase in tariffs worldwide would have major adverse consequences for global trade and activity,” the report said. “An escalation of tariffs up to legally-allowed bound rates could translate into a decline in global trade flows amounting to 9 percent, similar to the drop seen during the global financial crisis in 2008-09.”
And as the president continues to ratchet up the rhetoric on imposing tariffs to “make America great again,” and protect our “national security,” the noose is tightening around the necks of large and small companies across the country and the globe.
American automakers need foreign partners
General Motors, like Detroit automakers Ford Motor Co and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles NV, all import many of the vehicles they sell in the U.S. According to the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research, of the vehicles GM sold in the U.S. in 2017, 30 percent were imported from other countries.
To break it down further, 86 percent of the vehicles came from Canada and Mexico while the remainder came from Europe and China.
“The overbroad and steep application of import tariffs on our trading partners risks isolating U.S. businesses like GM from the global market that helps to preserve and grow our strength here at home,” GM said.
And here’s a real kicker for those who haven’t figured out Trump’s game plan yet – Some White House aides have said the only reason Trump is pursuing the national security” issue on tariffs is to get Canada and Mexico to agree to his concessions on the North American Free Trade Agreement, reports Reuters.
So with midnight tonight being the deadline for comments, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement, “We have received approximately 2,500 comments already” adding they expect more.
“The purpose of the comment period and of the public hearing scheduled for July 19th and 20th is to make sure that all stakeholders’ views are heard, both pro and con. That will enable us to make our best-informed recommendation to the President,” the statement said.
