Americans buying cars will very soon be liberated from even more of their money than usual.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25% auto and other tariffs, timed to roughly coincide with his "liberation day” announcement of so-called reciprocal tariffs, are expected to add several thousand dollars to the average price of a vehicle in the U.S. (not cheap as it is).
Besides the dollars involved, there is the unsettling, extreme rationale behind these tariffs with which to contend. Peter Navarro, Trump’s uberhawk trade adviser, was asked recently about manufacturers potentially cutting jobs to deal with the costs of tariffs. His response to CNN’s Kasie Hunt was astonishing:
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