I think that these protectionist measures are ultimately going to hurt the competitiveness of the US auto industry. Exports and international sales are a big, but not overwhelming part of the revenue for major manufacturers. It's something like 20% of GM's revenue, and maybe 35% of Ford's. When they can't compete internationally, it's small enough that executives will convince themselves to focus on their core market in the US. That will in turn lead to production volumes (and hence economies of scale) slowly dropping. Vehicles from American brands are going to become even more unaffordable than they already are,

At least we can hope that newer manufacturers like Slate and Rivian will keep things reasonable, and major foreign brands like Kia and Toyota might bring the fruits of their knowledge from competing internationally to their US models/factories. I'm not hopeful for the long term future of big three though, especially Stellantis and GM.

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DiabloD3 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In a way, its funny you say Toyota is the foreign brand.

Of domestically produced GM, Chrysler, or Ford vehicles, most are shipped to foreign customers; of domestically sold GM, Chrysler, or Ford vehicles, most are manufactured by foreign factories. They do some assembly locally, but the majority of it is of foreign manufacture.

However, Toyota manufacturers most of their domestic sales domestically, and operate one of the largest car manufacturing plants in the US, only slightly below Ford's US plant that largely exports to Europe. Of domestically made cars that are domestically sold, Toyota dominates that.

BMW and Nissan also operate plants in the US for domestic use.

I agree that this backwards Reaganite behavior is just going to further shut the Detroit Three out of any future. They're already on the way out, a slow decline since they left the US, but this is going to finally finish those zombies off.

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AlotOfReading 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Worth noting that the term "domestic" in auto has included Mexico and Canada since NAFTA. The legal meaning was recently changed to "USA-only**" by the current administration, but that's for tariff folks. In the common sense of the term, for manufacturing, absolutely.

I still think it's a useful distinction though. There's also a whole lot of people involved that aren't on the production line (like me). The corporate culture is also very different between the American and Japanese conglomerates I've worked for.

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roxolotl 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yea my father is looking for a new car, sedan, and will only buy American. Except American owned companies don’t really make sedans anymore. So he’s unsure what to do. I told him basically any Toyota sedan he buys would be made in the US and it blew his mind. I don’t understand how people who have strong opinions on these sorts of things don’t also do any research at all into their opinion.

	▲	DiabloD3 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Your father should only be looking at Kelly Blue Book values. What brand ends up retaining theirs year after year? Toyota. He's right to buy American made when it comes to cars, we know what we're doing... he's just gonna have to buy a Toyota to get American.
	▲	10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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4d4m 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Very true. This is the domestic auto industry shooting itself in the foot and to boot spending lobbying dollars to do it. The history of US manufacturing being a source of pride for automakers is also over - the people with tribal knowledge have been laid off or forced into retirement. Foreign brands are the majority of owners in US auto manufacturing now, it's a complete reversal of US dominance in the niche and these moves only accelerate the demise of these companies. We are 5-10 years away from seeing another major domestic shutter operations.