An August assessment of U.S. trade tariff effects and outlook for the auto market depicts a rough road ahead.
The AutoForecast Solutions analysis looks at conditions so far since the Trump administration announced a slew of duties on imports in March in a stated effort to boost domestic production and national security.
After a dizzying series of tweaks, reversals and negotiations that continues apace, U.S. auto sales ended the first half of the year up 2.6%, according to the report. But the increase included the spring consumer dash to lock in prices before tariffs could affect them.
As the second half is under way, AutoForecast foresees about a 6% decline for the full year to just over 15 million units.
“Once the industry adapts to this new level , sales will remain below 2023 levels through 2028 and not return to the 16 million level, and well below the 17 million level set just a few years ago, into the next decade,” wrote forecaster Sam Fiorani.
The outlook also reads automakers’ recent quarterly finance reports as signaling strong potential for “the start of a global downturn.” It cited Volkswagen’s $1.6 billion net loss in the first half, Ford’s $36 million net second-quarter loss and Nissan’s $770 million second-quarter loss, to name a few that either took hits or whose profits substantially declined.
Meanwhile, U.S. tariffs on imports, even those negotiated down, stand to raise prices on those vehicles to the point that some may be priced out of the U.S. market, Fiorani wrote. Entry-level models made in South Korea by Hyundai and for Chevrolet and Buick, for instance, could become too expensive to sell in the U.S. market, he said.
Will U.S. automakers sell more of their vehicles overseas? The report suggests that won’t be the case, “because if there were a larger demand for these items, U.S. companies would have been pushing previous administrations to let them in,” the report says.
On the contrary, many U.S. goods are considered overseas to be luxury or niche, and many U.S.-made vehicles in particular are much larger than foreign consumers want, according to the report. Taking Japan as an example, its narrow streets wouldn’t practically accommodate the oversize SUVs and pickups that have proliferated on U.S. roads.
Looking ahead, even if remaining high tariff percentages are negotiated down to 15% as they were for the European Union, that would put auto tariffs up 500% compared to the 2.5% “for countries outside China,” Fiorani wrote. He said that would price some entry-level models out of the U.S. market and further raise the average new-vehicle price here.
