Messing with Canada is stupid. Mexico? This all ramped up last year when BYD the world's largest EV manuf (yup they sell more than Musk) decided to avoid the threat of American tariffs by building a giant $4 billion assembly plant in Mexico. Trump then announced if elected he'd put a 25% tariff on all goods coming in from Mexico. Guess what? BYD which had already purchased the land and announced the project...scrapped the whole idea.
Voldemort wants automakers to follow Toyota, Honda and Nissan's model. You want to sell cars in the US, build a plant in the US.
The Biggest Auto Losers in Trump’s Trade War So Far: Luxury Brands
BMW’s 3 Series sedan is among about a dozen models caught up in new tariffs
By Ryan Felton and Christopher Otts, WSJ
Updated March 23, 2025
The BMW 3 Series once topped the list of the world’s bestselling premium cars. Today, the sporty sedan finds itself on a less-desirable list: tariff victim.
About a dozen foreign-made models, including the sporty, relatively affordable BMW 3, are ensnared in President Trump’s trade war. That is because the German sedans made in a Mexican factory don’t meet the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement rules that won many automakers a brief reprieve from new 25% tariffs that went into effect earlier this month.
The 3 Series until recently has only been subject to a 2.5% duty when imported into the U.S. BMW BMW -0.88%decrease; red down pointing triangle told its dealers that the car, with a sticker price of around $47,000, is now subject to a 27.5% tariff, potentially adding more than $10,000 to the price tag.
For now, BMW won’t stick customers with the added cost. The carmaker will fully absorb the extra 25% duty until May 1, BMW’s North American division told dealers.
Tom DeFelice III, who co-owns the Circle BMW in Eatontown, N.J., said the company’s pledge to absorb tariffs is a relief—at least for a while.
“It gives us tremendous certainty for the next two months,” he said. “Who knows what happens after that?”
Billion-dollar factory
A sporty version of the 3 Series was used in a chase scene from a “Mission Impossible” movie. The model was so popular it accounted for more than 40% of BMW’s total sales before SUVs gained more favor over sedans in recent years.
In 2019, BMW opened its new Mexican plant where the 3 Series is assembled, spending more than $1 billion on the factory. A year later, the Trump-negotiated USMCA took effect, requiring that a certain percentage of a vehicle’s parts come from North America, among other rules.
A BMW spokesman declined to comment on any possible adjustments to production or imports.
The company has an assembly plant in Spartanburg, S.C., where it makes SUVs, but it probably doesn’t have the room to shift 3 Series output there, said Stephen Reitman, a Bernstein analyst. Shipping in cars from Europe could be another option, he said.
In 2024, the carmaker imported roughly 150,000 vehicles from the European Union to the U.S., including some 3 Series made in Germany. But the automaker risks further exposure from additional tariffs Trump has threatened to tack on to goods sent from the EU.
DeFelice, the New Jersey BMW dealer, said he previously paid attention to the countries in which his vehicles were produced only because it affected delivery times for customers. That has changed lately.
“The intricacies of the BMW supply chain—I’ve never been more aware of it than now,” he said.
Profits take a hit
BMW said last week that the new tariffs will cut earnings by about $1 billion this year. The company also said it may try to base more of its factory work in North America in part to meet the free-trade agreement requirements.
Another early victim of the 25% tariff is the Audi Q5 SUV, which is made at the German automaker’s factory in Mexico. With a starting price in the mid- $40,000 range, the Q5 is Audi’s top-selling U.S. model, accounting for nearly one-third of its total U.S. vehicle sales last year.
The automaker is assessing what its next steps should be in a complex situation, said a spokesman for Audi, which is Volkswagen’s luxury brand. Separately, Audi said Monday that it will cut 7,500 jobs over several years in a bid to cut costs and improve productivity.
When the Trump administration paused the new tariffs for many automakers until April 2, it left about a dozen models—accounting for roughly 300,000 vehicles sold in the U.S. last year—exposed. That is about 2% of overall U.S. auto sales, according to industry data.
The China conundrum
So far, makers of upscale cars are bearing an outsize brunt of Trump’s tariff regime.
Separate from the import taxes on Mexico and Canada is a 20% levy on Chinese imports that took effect in stages. That has snared Volvo, the Swedish brand now owned by China’s Geely Automobile, which has been importing from China the S90 sedan and the EX30 electric car.
The EX30 already had been subject to a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs set by the Biden administration last year, a Volvo spokesman said, and now is hit with the additional 20%.
The Volvo spokesman said the company plans to begin importing models from a plant in Belgium later this year. That would avoid the China tariffs, although the Trump administration has signaled that import taxes on imported European cars are in the offing.
China-based Lotus Technology, which sells a $230,000 “electric hyper-SUB” under the long-running sports car brand Lotus, has already priced in the tariff, a spokesperson said.
Ford Motor and General Motors both relied on imports from China to support sales of their premium brands last year, industry data shows. Ford’s Lincoln Nautilus SUV, made in China, has accounted for about one-third of the brand’s sales in recent months. GM’s Buick brand leaned on the China-built Envision SUV for about a quarter of its sales.
Ford declined to comment. A GM spokesman said the China tariffs don’t pose a “meaningful financial impact” to its overall business.
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