The Prices Of Cars And Meds Are About To Go Up
I gotta say— sometimes I wonder if Trump tells his kids to short the market right before he does something crazy that causes stocks to fall. Like Wednesday afternoon— he announced 25% tariffs on cars made overseas and shipped into the U.S., including by American car companies. That covers about half the cars sold in the U.S. annually. So Nasdaq and then the rest ofthemarket and the Dow Jones Futures all fell and stocks with nothing to do with cars started collapsing too like Nvidia, Rubrik and Palantir. General Motors, Stellantis, Ford and Tesla all fell.
The tariffs go into effect April 2, the days after the big election in Wisconsin and Florida. The price of new cars will up by several thousand dollars, as much as 10 grand.
“The move,” reported Ana Swanson and Jack Ewing, “is aimed at pushing companies to set up more factories into the United States, a primary goal for Trump, who called the move ‘very exciting’ during remarks from the Oval Office. ‘Anybody who has plants in the United States, it’s going to be good for,’ Trump said. But the tariffs could disrupt supply chains for carmakers, chill their investments and raise costs for consumers by thousands of dollars. The measure could also spark more trade clashes with foreign countries, particularly European nations, Japan (Think Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda and Subaru) and South Korea, whose companies send many cars to the United States.”
“Tesla,” wrote Ewing, “will suffer less from the tariffs than most other automakers because it makes all the cars it sells in the United States in California and Texas. But Trump said that Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and a ubiquitous presence at the White House, did not influence tariff policy. ‘He’s never asked me for a favor in business whatsoever,’ Trump said. [If that’s true, which is doubtful, it’s only because he doesn’t have to.] Tesla would have been hit much harder if the tariffs had applied to components rather than just to finished vehicles. Like all other carmakers, Tesla imports significant numbers of parts and would have had to raise prices to cover the cost of tariffs.”
Trump also said he will put tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. That could be devastating for seniors. Approximately half of finished prescription drugs consumed in the U.S. are manufactured overseas. A much higher percentage—around 70% to 80%—of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used in U.S.-consumed drugs are sourced from overseas. Generic drugs, which are mostly imported, account for about 90% of prescriptions by volume but only 25% to 29% of the total dollar value of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. This reflects the lower cost of generics compared to brand-name drugs, many of which are still produced domestically.
This latest tariff stunt is more than just economic posturing— it’s a direct attack on working- and middle-class Americans. The higher price for cars is bad enough, but Trump’s tariffs also threaten auto jobs in states like Michigan and Wisconsin by disrupting supply chains and making it harder for companies to stay competitive. Trump claims this will force automakers to bring production back to the U.S., but history shows that tariffs usually lead to higher consumer prices and corporate downsizing, not job creation. The last time Trump tried a trade war, it devastated American farmers— this time, he’s coming for autoworkers and car buyers.
Trump and his team know these tariffs will be be unpopular, which is why they’re coming after the Wisconsin and Florida elections, not before them. They’re banking on voters not realizing the economic pain they’re about to experience until after they’ve cast their ballots, something tens of thousands of voters have already done. It’s a typically Republican cynical and calculated move, designed to keep working-class voters in the dark about just how much they’re about to pay for Trump’s reckless trade policies. Wisconsin, in particular, has a huge auto manufacturing sector that will be hit hard— but the GOP is hoping voters won’t connect the dots in time.
As for slapping tariffs on imported prescription drugs, millions of seniors who rely on affordable medications will see their drug costs spike this year. He claims this is about bringing pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the U.S., but the reality is that these tariffs will do nothing in the short term except jack up prices for the most vulnerable Americans. For older voters, this isn’t an abstract policy debate— it’s a direct threat to their ability to afford life-saving medications. And yet, laughably, Republicans continue to market themselves as the party of working people and seniors while pushing policies that will make their lives harder.
Where is the Republican veneration of the free market? If it's cheaper to import stuff, the market demands that we import it, rather than making it ourselves. It's not like we don't already hand out huge tax breaks to any company willing to promise new jobs, but even these incentives don't prompt significant new manufacturing construction. Maybe if we had single payer healthcare and could take the cost of insuring workers off the books of employers, that would help.