How Reagan's Automotive Tariffs/Quotas Remade the Auto Industry

They are avoiding it everywhere things like this are posted.

I remember buying a Honda Civic then. It wasn't a tariff. The car had a great price. They just didn't have any. I walked into the Honda dealership and they had one sales manager and one chair for me at his desk. No cars in the showroom and no salesmen.
Me: 'I want to look at a Civic.'
Him: 'We have one coming in from Japan next week. It's grey. It costs this much. You can buy it today unseen or it will be sold to someone else tomorrow.'
I wrote him a check. It was an excellent car

They do tend to be short sighted.

quote:

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Yes it took Reagan a couple years to get the economy going as a result the middle '80's where awesome.

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There was a recession in 1982, then he won 49 states in 1984.

I wonder if the press even knows that or if they are trying to keep it buried.

I bet you could ask that Alabama bitch from CNN about it and she would not have a fricking clue.

No one is engaging with this because the circumstances of the Reagan quotas were completely different than those of today.

Let's tell more of the story that you left out of what is in your source material and found elsewhere as well.

This was a voluntary quota from the Japanese auto makers. It resulted in an increase in car prices of 8% The US consumer lost on this deal.

With auto manufacture being global, and existing plants here, we are never going to lose the ability to make cars and supply cars to the public, even if all European makers decided to leave our market, for example. If BMW leaves, we'll be fine in terms of having enough vehicles. Same with Mercedes, Fiat, Porsche, and others. We're never going to have a national security or economic crisis if other nations leave our market, save for Japan. We should be insuring Japan gets fewer restrictions now that they build so many cars here. To insure that, however, we need to bring back raw manufacturing and mineral attainment. These tariffs don't accomplish that.

Something not talked about - layoffs due to rising car prices. Stellantis got hit incredibly hard and has been laying off thousands of people. Avg car price is about $48k, but for Stellantis it's $56k, a 17% difference (about what Trump's tariffs are about to induce) and as a result their sales plummeted and they got rid of people. With Trump's tariffs, all cars are now Stellantis priced. How many more jobs are we going to lose there?
They also estimate that more than 165,000 autoworkers could be laid off if tariffs remain in place for any considerable time...

Each time a part crosses a border, it will be taxed...

...In the United States, 15.9 new vehicles were sold in 2024. If tariffs erode those sales by about 2 million vehicles, Abuelsamid would expect to see 15% to 20% of all U.S. autoworkers to be laid off. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 1.1 million motor vehicle and parts manufacturing jobs as of December. That means 165,000 or more people could lose their jobs...And, for every automaker job, there are seven other jobs that depend on those."
freep

The predictable response here will be "that is fake news, that will never happen, that guy is exaggerating." It probably won't be that high, but it will be a high number. If this was a Dem president, people here would be saying this is part of the conspiracy to remove more cars from the roads.

Something else that isn't talked about is that in Trump's first term with some tariffs on China, there was a short term growth in jobs, and that reversed later because of price increases that resulted. Charge more, people buy less.

If Trump wanted to help the US consumer, he would abandon this idea and remove restrictions on trucks from Japan which already get hit with an additional duty. I see threads here regularly with things like the Hilux and people wonder why we can't get that here - remove the restrictions and we can. Drop the barriers on Japanese trucks and we'll all start getting better trucks for cheaper prices. No nation on the planet, except perhaps Australia, loves trucks like the US.

Trump won because inflation was historically bad with Biden. Everyone here knows this. And now Trump is going to pile on more inflation. I want Americans to have more jobs but I don't think these tariffs will produce much of an impact here. My hunch is that we lose jobs. If so, that would be a disaster for Trump and Republicans in 2026 and 2028. The rest of the world will raise prices and wait for Trump to cave to public pressure or leave office. Volvo already announced that half their US employees will get let go if this goes into effect. It's not just Trump that can make bombastic threats. The rest of the world has grown tired of his act and they're going to simply start calling his bluff. If you're BMW, why cave? You can abandon the US market and close shop here, move to Europe entirely where EU govts will welcome you with open arms and give you subsidies. Right now BMW builds here and ships overseas back to Europe and elsewhere. Why would they listen to Trump? They can save money, close shop, and wait for someone that isn't an ego-driven lunatic to come into office, build in Europe 100% then ship here again and face no tariffs. Trump's elephant mouth is writing checks his hummingbird arse can't cash.

Trump needs to focus on the economy, not exerting leverage to soothe his ego. Making others bend the knee will just result in bringing US consumers to their knees. Get energy to rock bottom prices. That is where it all starts and this is what Trump knew his first term. Remove regulations. We have too much idiotic crap on vehicles. It drives the costs up. We have all seen the pictures of super cheap and super utilitarian vehicles from over seas. Bring them here. Go after insurance companies that are gaming the system. Oh that's right, Trump got rid of the people at the FTC and CFPB that could do that, so I guess we'll all get hammered on insurance as well, and this will be compounded soon as I mention below.

We also have mandatory surveillance due to be slapped onto vehicles starting next year, that Thomas Massie has been howling about for a long time. This will make cars even more expensive and turn them into surveillance devices and you can rest assured that insurance companies will penalize you for not having this stuff and for taking a turn too hard or whatever, because your driving data is going to be harvested while you are tracked. Where is Trump on this? Nowhere. He's too busy golfing with Lindsey and threatening people over tariffs and mandatory cost increases because he knows his plans are about to shove a giant rake up American's asses.

If Trump wants to do things for American jobs, then reduce H1B entries and start efforts to ramp up manufacture of critical infrastructure and items like medications, and power grid parts. There are estimates that many of our grids would require months if not longer to get back up if something significant happened. We don't make the parts here any longer. We are dependent on China for our medications. This dovetails fast but in short we can use the border situation to build stuff down there at our border, etc etc etc. This would be worthwhile and would be paid for by cutting off benefits to the invaders. But Trump, as usual, is distracted with nonsense and participating in self-sabotage, just like last time.

The point is that we are going to see price increases. We are not going to see significant job increases and this is not going to be great for the US economy. The Reagan quotas were at a completely different era with totally different circumstances. There was zero manufacturing here in the US from foreign companies when that took place. Anyone thinking there will be this tidal wave of foreign movement to the US is engaged in gaslighting. The other tariffs from Trump will make all of this even worse. We need cheaper energy, cheaper vehicles, cheaper food, less regulation, and to bolster infrastructure and critical items. This tariffs thing is not accomplishing this.