Obviously, it’s important I not ignore the big trade news from the weekend even if that’s what I want to do. This is going to be hard. I want this place to be a respite from a lot of the divisions in the world because car culture can be a way to get away from all of that. We’ll try to keep the rest of the site that way, so just consider this a bit of a trigger warning.
Here we go…
How could the Mavericks trade Luka Doncic to the Lakers?!? If you’re a Dallas fan, this is just another disappointment in a long line of disappointments. If you’re a Lakers fan, you might be happy in the long term, but what does a Lakers team look like this season? Next season? These are all tough questions.
Just kidding! I’m going to talk about all the trade war shenanigans. I’m not going to be alarmist about it and, instead, I’m going to try to embrace the unreality of it all with a bit of a Swiftian analysis. Jonathan, not Taylor, just to be clear. If you want alarmism you can feel free to head over to the Millennial retirement home known as BlueSky, where everyone is screaming like a banshee (though I wouldn’t use that phrase on BlueSky unless you want 12 people you don’t know to accuse you of Irish cultural appropriation).
This will be one of those Morning Dumps that’s mostly focused on one thing but, if you stick around, we’ll have some Stellantis executive changes a new Alpine paint job. Exciting!
The Anti-Cars Trump Presidency?
An electric car entrepreneur is running the government, he’s raising taxes on gasoline and destroying the supply chains used to make traditional gas-powered cars and somehow the left is upset. pic.twitter.com/pfaOQAQvkf
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 2, 2025
President Trump is going through, maybe, on tariffs he previewed last week. The goal, in his words, is to stop Canada and Mexico from allowing the drug Fentanyl and illegal immigrants from crossing the border.
What if President Trump had other plans? I didn’t come up with this idea and, in my heart of hearts, I’m a little loathe to cite my old friend’s old roommate Matthew Yglesias, but here’s the tweet/x/whatever, which I’ll quote below:
An electric car entrepreneur is running the government, he’s raising taxes on gasoline and destroying the supply chains used to make traditional gas-powered cars and somehow the left is upset.
If you can’t see the quote, he’s referencing this story from Axios about how the “U.S. auto industry could be decimated by tariffs” because, as we’ve pointed out, there are a bunch of cars made in Canada and Mexico. Even worse, now that we’ve got an idea of what the tariffs will look like, it seems like goods get charged every time they cross. Some car parts/cars will cross a border up to five times.
Over at The Detroit Press, there’s a big and ongoing list of automakers that could be impacted. It’s basically all of them.
Around 90% of auto exports from both Mexico and Canada go to the U.S., according to the Mexican Automotive Manufacturers’ Association and the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association.
Detroit is at the epicenter of domestic impact, and the Detroit Regional Chamber and its MichAuto affiliate on Saturday evening the tariffs “will have detrimental effects to our automotive industry in Michigan, the Great Lakes Region and across the continent.”
“Our economies are inextricably linked by manufacturing and many other critical industries,” Glenn Stevens Jr. the executive director of MichAuto said in a statement. “MichAuto and its constituents are concerned about the collateral damage that will be done to manufacturing, the impact it will have on Michiganders’ jobs, and the fact that the consumer will feel the increased cost of doing business in the prices they pay from vehicles in the showrooms to the grocery store.
Do you want to know one car that’ll be super impacted? The Ford Maverick. They’re coming for the Maverick! Sound the alarms!
From Automotive News we’ve got “Tariffs threaten to bring North American auto production to ‘screeching halt’” and this tidbit:
Tariffs aimed at Canada’s auto sector will also “score direct hits” on auto producing states from Michigan to Alabama and Georgia to California, said Flavio Volpe, CEO of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association.
“The dominoes will fall as the quick debates happen on who is going to absorb the 25 per cent.”
The tariff rate is “15-per-cent higher than anybody’s profit margin,” and neither automakers nor suppliers will be prepared to take those losses, resulting in idled plants, Volpe added.
Oh, right, automakers have been squeezing supplier margins for approximately forever and so a 25% tariff is not sustainable for them if it happens, as promised.
Maybe Canada and Mexico will blink? According to the NYT, that ain’t happening yet:
Canada announced on Sunday that it would target everything from American-made honey, tomatoes and whiskey to refrigerators and toilets as Mexico’s president said her country would respond soon to President Trump’s far-reaching tariffs in products from the United States’ neighbors.
If you’re so inclined, you can go find videos of Canadians booing the “Star Spangled Banner” and taking bottles of Tito’s Vodka off the shelves (so far, blue state liquors seem safe).
It’s here I would like to tag our own Canadian correspondent Thomas in this conversation, but he’s curiously absent today. He’s claiming he “has the flu” from a recent trip. Curious timing, Thomas!
It’s possible this will be limited in timing and scope, but former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers doesn’t think so, telling CNN’s Manu Raju:
“This is a self-inflicted wound to the American economy…. I’d expect inflation over the next three or four months to be higher as a consequence, because the price level has to go up when you put a levy on goods that people are buying.”
Welcome to the Resistance… Larry Summers? Lol.
So, it seems bad, but maybe it isn’t going to be bad! In a bit of good timing, I’m reading a book about the history of free trade in the United States right now and it’s probably worth mentioning that few people ever correctly guess what the result of tariffs are going to be. In fact, economists still don’t even necessarily agree on the impact of trade policy from 100 years ago.
I’m going to take the most unlikely case this morning. Not because it’s what I believe is true. I don’t. I just find it amusing. Right now the people over at the r/fuckcars subreddit are treating it as good news and “The War On Cars” account on BlueSky (where else?) had this to reiterate that they’re “not going to welcome Trump to The War On Cars” even though people keep asking.
What if this trade war is a war on cars? If you wanted to make people drive less and buy fewer new cars, this would be a not-terrible way of doing that.
First, you’d make cars really expensive. Unnecessarily so. And you’d do it right at a time when everyone is concerned about vehicle affordability. Then, just for fun, you’d make gas more expensive. Is gas going to get more expensive? Maybe!
From NBC News, we get “Gas prices set to rise as Trump tariffs hit Canadian and Mexican oil” and this:
The likely hike in fuel prices reflects the double-edged nature of Trump’s trade protections which are designed to bolster domestic business and pressure U.S. neighbors to curb illegal immigration and drug smuggling, but which will also run counter to his promises to tackle inflation.
The U.S. imports some 4 million barrels per day of Canadian oil, 70% of which is processed by refiners in the Midwest. It also imports over 450,000 bpd of Mexican oil, mainly for refiners concentrated around the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Tariffs on those imports mean higher costs for making finished fuels like gasoline, much of which is likely to be passed along to U.S. consumers.
I’m not going to get into a whole petroleum lesson here (although, as a Houstonian, about 40% of my history and science education in public schools was designed to prepare me to do so), but the type of oil we’re really good at refining is the kind of thick, gloopy stuff (crude oil) we get from Canada. We need Canada’s crude oil and Canada needs our refining. This is especially true in the Midwest, which can’t easily get crude oil from anywhere else. A deeper explanation here if you’re curious.
If the tariffs go into effect on Tuesday and aren’t quickly reversed, it’s possible that cars and gas will both get more expensive. If they are reversed in short order, then, perhaps, not much of this will happen.
Is this a totally ridiculous argument? Of course it is. President Trump has made it clear he wants to strengthen the domestic car industry and, over a long enough time period, it’s likely that carmakers will relocate more production in the United States.
Also, Tesla will probably suffer from these tariffs, so it’s not like President Trump’s new best friend Elon Musk will escape the impact, nor will this avoid impacting EVs (all GM EVs, for instance, will get hit).
Hey, what’s that Musk feller up to right now?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk And His Band Of Mysterious Young Engineers Are Attempting To Take Over Control Of Government Payments
The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments https://t.co/GabhBL7gxf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
The ostensible car company CEO Elon Musk and “six young men” are — under the guise of DOGE, which is supposed to improve government efficiency — apparently running around the federal government trying to stop payments to federal contractors.
WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.
Elon Musk has called these young men his “Spartans” and, yeah, not gonna touch that one. According to Bloomberg, the Lutheran Family Services funds went to a faith-based charity that has been providing social services to refugees.
Looking into the list that was highlighted, this includes Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, which provides foster care to children. There’s also Lutheran Social Services of the South, in Texas, whose mission is to “break the cycle of child abuse by empowering children, families and communities.”
I mention all this because… it’s weird! Some people may find these specific cuts totally normal and there’s a Libertarian sort of logic to it, maybe, but most automotive CEOs are usually loathe to get involved in politics. Like, I’m pretty sure Koji Sato wasn’t out trying to stop dialysis patients in West Virginia from getting rides to the doctor.
The Bloodletting At Stellantis Continues
Carlos Tavares, pictured above, is out at Stellantis and, as was inevitable, a lot of his successors and deputies are getting shuffled out of their roles.
Chief Software Officer Yves Bonnefont is stepping down from his role, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. Linda Jackson, who has been in charge of the Peugeot brand, is also losing her role, the people said.
Considered a Tavares protégé, Bonnefont has been in charge of the software business that was responsible for delays to key new models in the U.S. and Europe, including an all-electric Ram pickup truck, the people said. Chief Engineering and Technology Officer Ned Curic will oversee software in the future as part of operations streamlining, they said.
Sometimes you pick the wrong horse. It happens.
Hey, Look, New Alpine Livery
This TMD was a long, hard squeeze. Apologies. Here’s a nice, short, smooth log of news to help round it out. It’s the new Alpine A424 hypercar livery for 2025. Looks good, Alpine!
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Are you ready to have your socks absolutely charmed right off of your feet?!? I was trying to explain to my daughter what being 16 felt like, and Bjork’s “Oh So Quiet” is about as close as it gets. She didn’t get to see the great Spike Jonze video, though, because we were in the car.
The Big Question About Trade
How long will this last? Will this trade war even make it to COTD?
Top image: White House/Captain Planet
If you’re just barely aware of the Elon Musk/DOGE/boy wonders thing, let me just emphasize to you that this is frightening news. The immigration crackdowns are more heart-wrenching, the anti-DEI stuff is more aggravating, but what Musk and company are doing could fuck up American life for years, maybe decades, to come.
What they’re doing arguably violates the law and definitely violates standard information security measures. Every policy expert and political scientist I can find is screaming bloody murder about this, and you should, too.
But the co-equal branches of government and checks and balances will save us.
To bad the founding fathers never envisioned the people doing the checking and balancing would be complicit in running roughshod over the Constitution.
Was really expecting Castro….uh..I mean Trudeau to fold first. Surprised Mexico caved first.
Anyway, aside that point: I suspect this is the death knell of GM, Ford, and Stellantis’ Canadian operations in the near future.
Each has divested significantly in Canada, and I expect the trend to continue as the unpredictability of the situation will make continued investment unwise. Each company has lost a significant amount of the North American vehicle market since 2000, so further consolidation of their operations seems almost a given.
GM is down to Oshawa Assembly (HD Silverado), CAMI (electric vans) and St. Catharines Engine/Transmission. Oshawa came within a sliver of being closed recently. The demand for electric vehicles remain somewhat uncertain, and Silverados can be produced in other facilities.
Ford is down to Oakville Assembly, which is being re-tooled for Super Duty pickups at this time. I have my doubts if it continues or Ford just decides to walk away. Then there’s Ford’s Windsor engine plant, which produces V8 engines. Not sure any of this is key to Ford’s survival.
Likewise, Stellantis’ Brampton plant is being retooled for Jeep Compass assembly. Again, not sure if they bother to finish that given the way the winds blow. That leaves the Windsor Assembly plant (Pacifica). Then there’s Stellantis’ financial health overall.
It’s not looking good.
I suspect Toyota and Honda will continue to produce here as they sell a pile of CR-Vs, RAV4s and Civics here; probably enough to keep their operations partially going.
I guess I’ll be looking at a Civic for my next car.
Now can I say that I judge people that drive Telsas without getting called out in an article by HDDT?
This comment section is going to be a complete shitshow, better grab the popcorn.
Again…
And we thought inflation was bad before, just wait. If Trump actually has a spine and keeps his word we are all in for a whole world of pain.
In the aftermath of the most destructive conflict in human history (WWII), the United States made a choice to pursue a series of internationally cooperative and rebuilding policies. (Marshall Plan)
The fruits of those policies were the strongest democratic voluntary military alliance in history (NATO), nearly 80 years of uninterrupted prosperity in the developed world, a high degree of trust in our institutions, and the flourishing of human rights and ideals to a degree unimaginable in 1939.
We are all products of those choices by those great people, and I will forever be grateful for the great and wise insight of those leaders. Their revered names echo through history.
We approach an era where we undo this for short-term gain; sadly our aged leaders will not bear the consequences of their myopia. Our children will suffer for this, and I hope that I am not witness to that. It would be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.
On its northern border, the United States helped an ally prosper. For the fruits of those labours, it got the world’s longest undefended border, a secure bounty of resources to build its economy, and a united team committed to defending North America (NORAD). I am glad to have the United States as a neighbour. Canada and the United States may have issues with the other, but we should never forget:
“Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.”
All well and good, but consider that like 15 people would have significantly more money if we undid all of that. Really not a bad deal.
I have never been so glad about not having children.
“We want this to be an escape”
*Proceeds to write a weird bluesky millennial cancel culture joke.*
You know not everyone who reads this site is over 50, right?
I get where you’re coming from, but have you been to BlueSky? I’m firmly on camp “cancel culture is a myth”, but to be honest there’s so much rage-bait there, you’ll be hard pressed to convince me half of the “hardcore librul” accounts that popped up there are nothing but right wing propaganda (as well as a content creating machine they can then meme when posts gain traction). This propaganda is designed to do what it just did: have people talking about the platforms left-wing people are converging to and discrediting them and left-wing politics as a whole, so yeah, the joke landed funny to me as well.
Before I have to put an asbestos suit on, I should clarify: Cancel Culture as an emerging trend to discredit honest people? Total myth. Blacklisting? Absolutely a standard practice that’s been used since forever to harm innocent people and barely ever affected awful people up until recently.
Trying to come up with a separate concept for when shitty powerful people have to deal with backlash from their own shitty actions? Doesn’t fly with me.
I primarily use bluesky now over Twitter so yeah I’ve been there. I generally dont participate in politics over social media as a rule but most of the stuff political being posted there that I’ve seen is just reactionary to whats going on politically as a whole. It’s going to be amplified since the current surge of Bluesky users are there because they wanted to leave X after Elon attached himself to Trump and did a couple Nazi salutes, so hardcore stances against him and what the admin are doing are going to be the main topics in the political space on Bluesky for quite a while.
I wouldn’t necessarily call most of it rage bait though, unless we just have different definitions of what rage bait is. There’s no real incentive to do that on Bluesky because you aren’t paid for engagements or anything like on X.
It’s not necessarily that our views differ that much, I may have been less lucky with the shit I keep getting suggested there. The incentive for what I’m talking about here isn’t financial, it’s purely propagandistic.
BTW is that username related to the synth brand? I love Arturia – the brand, I have a few of their synths and drum machines 🙂
I can see Mexico (and rightly Canada) stopping every US-plated vehicle or big rig at the border, doing a full inspection (wait times be damned) and any American with more than a couple of Advil in the car will be paraded around the evening news as proof that they are doing what was asked of them in order to prevent the flow of drugs across the border. Things that of course really should be done by the country that doesn’t want them coming in, not the country seeing them depart…
Put a few Spring Breaker college students in the Tijuana jail for a week and you’ll see a whole new level of drama.
Yes, if Mexico wants to show Orange Foolius how serious they are about stopping Fentanyl they should just stop American citizens from entering Mexico in the first place as 86% of fentanyl smugglers caught at the border are US citizens.
Of course our Fuhrer Trump doesn’t talk about the smuggling that hurts Canada and Mexico, which is smuggling banned guns like the AR-15 into both nations & large amounts of cash to the Cartels in Mexico. If US Immigration & Border Patrol gets their way, they will also be deporting us Native Americans to Mexico…
I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like for you. I was reading about this last week and got so pissed I could barely see straight. Native American tribal authorities actually have set up clinics to inform their population on how to keep from being hassled by immigration authorities and possibly deported. It’s sick.
The US did it before. My wife’s grandfather, born in the USA, was deported to Mexico along with 1.8 million other Mexican-looking people (some, I assume were actual Mexican citizens) during the Depression.
Yep, this is the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to face. Same with the hysteria over child sex abuse and kidnapping, trying to find pedophiles and sex traffickers around every corner when the vast majority of it is done by close and trusted family members and authority figures, or noncustodial parents in the case of abduction. Psychologically, it’s more comfortable for us to pretend the problem is always 100% external so we don’t have to face difficult realities closer to home
Petition to change the lead image so I don’t have to see a pedophile rapist when I open up the site please, kthx.
2nd
I have my own lede image – I hope this helps:
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3xpyo2ongryomj5unme4bcl4/bafkreia2owaekldu4bdgs2mfiejksap2ohpijbsljb5cp2wnughppyxegm@jpeg
This would also be fine.
Aww yeah… nothing like a postcard from LiarTown to brighten my day. Surreal times call for surreal humor.
This looks like one of his shitty NFT’s.
“I want this place to be a respite from a lot of the divisions in the world because car culture can be a way to get away from all of that.” While I respect and appreciate the sentiment, I think this is ultimately short sighted. The news should never be a place to get away from things, because things won’t get away from you.
Part of how we got so bad in the first place was the continual kicking the can down the road in the hopes of cooler heads prevailing. Looking the other way in the hopes things settle down doesn’t work, and journalism is no place to look the other way.
Nobody wants it to happen in their time, but this is the time we live in.
Also, the stopping of payments is known as impoundment, and is in fact very illegal. I don’t think that changes what’s happening, but I think it’s important people understand how the rule of law is being molested.
If you ever daydreamed about how you would change things if you were time traveled to Germany in the late 30’s, now’s your chance.
Things won’t get better.
I know, I remember Fuhrer Trump’s first term and the abuse his MAGA directed towards me for being half Native. We have an ongoing conversation in the Native Community as to why MAGA like to call us the Sp-word when they can’t all be that ignorant and or stupid…
I’m sad, that’s all.
Expected Year of the absurd, did not expect this level of illegal and unconstitutional (DOGE) activity right out of the gate.
I’m going to try to phrase this in a way that maga may relate to, even though I highly doubt many read here. Trump thinks dividing the baby in two is a viable option. That was not the wise takeaway from Solomon.
“Matt Yglesias Is Confidently Wrong About Everything”
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-opinions-of-matt-yglesias-should-be-ignored
I suspected that from the tweet in the post, but this article really drives the point home.
Yes, that’s why I said I was loathe to quote him, especially when he’s referencing a Felix Salmon article but… it is where I got the idea from so…
Oh sure, I got why it was relevant to post his tweet, and kind of imagined you struggled internally with using the guy as a reference from how you put it. But his statement shows such fundamental lack of knowledge of what the left stands for, it’s like he had the outline of “dumb” tattooed across his forehead, and visiting that article filled in the letters.
Guy is basically besties with noted trans “ally” Jesse Singal, so color me unsurprised his takes are equally questionable.
Love the Alpine livery! Hate what is happening to our country right now.
That Alpine livery is perfect. I decline to comment on the rest, it’s just too depressing.
Respect. I should have thought that way too.
To be fair, I said that while commenting on the rest.
Where do I get little Trump stickers that say, “I did that!”?
People should just start making Trump heads to stick on top of the Biden stickers.
Cue pearl clutching and “thats vandalism!” claims from the party of law and order.
that or it’s TDS. meanwhile all the let’s go brandon stuff surely showed a healthy regulation of emotion right? right?!
Don’t forget “FJB” and in some cases spelled out completely.
Have been thinking the same!