Stock in American car companies falls after Trump announces new tariffs: reports
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he would place a 25% tariff (or tax) on “all cars that are not made in the United States,” as well as certain automobile parts. The markets began responding with mere mention of a press conference about auto tariffs late Wednesday.
By Thursday morning, stocks fell at the market's opening.
CNBC reported, "General Motors stock was down about 8% in morning trading Thursday, while Stellantis lost nearly 4% and Ford Motor shares were down 2%. Shares of Tesla, however, were nearly 2% higher."
ALSO READ: 'Not much I can do': GOP senator gives up fight against Trump's tariffs
The general Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied by late morning.
On Thursday, Deutsche Bank analysts assessed that “GM has the most exposure to Mexico.”
“In our coverage, for [original equipment manufacturers], Tesla and Ford appear to be the most shielded given location of vehicle assembly facilities, although Ford does face incremental exposure on imported engines,” they also said, according to CNBC.
The site explained that most vehicles are made of "tens of thousands of parts, many of which cross back and forth over the U.S. border before a final product is completed."
A Goldman Sachs analyst warned that Trump’s 25% tariff could mean higher prices for imported cars.
"If roughly 50% of parts in a U.S.-made car came from foreign sources, the tariff could raise the price of those cars by $3,000 to $8,000," they added according to CNBC.
The United Auto Workers Union is excited about it, however.
“These tariffs are a major step in the right direction for autoworkers and blue-collar communities across the country, and it is now on the automakers, from the Big Three to Volkswagen and beyond, to bring back good union jobs to the U.S.,” said UAW president Shawn Fain in a statement Wednesday.
Signal scandal could send Trump’s cabinet crashing through ‘thin ice’: CNN analyst
Americans are keenly interested in the newly revealed Signal chats involving Donald Trump's high-ranking officials, and CNN's Harry Enten explained why that could pose a political problem.
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported earlier this week that he had been added by national security adviser Mike Waltz to a group chat involving vice president J.D. Vance and defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who disclosed top-secret plans about a military operation in Yemen, and Enten said interest in the encrypted messaging app and the publication has exploded.
"Sometimes I get a little surprised when I look at some of the data, and, of course, it's very early on in this, but we can look at Google searches, and I think it gives you an idea that there's a lot of interest in this story," Enten said. "All right, Google searches this week versus last week for these topics for The Atlantic, how many people are searching for The Atlantic – up 900 percent. That is the highest on record since Google searches began. They started tracking them back in 2004. How about for Signal, of course, the app on which this all occurred? Up over 1,000 percent again the highest on record. It has gone up through the roof on these two particular topics."
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"Whether or not people ultimately end up caring and it changes their minds about the administration, that's one thing," Enten added, "but the interest at this particular point is absolutely there. People are interested in this story, right? Beyond the interest, their take on it, you don't read that in a Google search, but there is interest, absolutely."
Other members of Trump's cabinet, including secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent, took part in the chat, which could have potentially exposed top-secret information to foreign adversaries, and CNN's Kate Bolduan wondered whether the scandal would hurt their already low public standing.
"Trump's cabinet, obviously, many of them are on this group chat," Bolduan said. "Many of them are facing a lot of scrutiny and questions right now. Trump's cabinet, to this point, before this, was already on somewhat, I don't know, we call it thin ice. "
Enten agreed they already had low approval ratings compared to previous administrations.
"Here we go, all right – disappointed with the administration appointments of these different presidents, you might notice only one of these presidents, only one of these terms that were a majority disappointed," Enten said, looking at data to Bill Clinton's first term, in 1993. "Look at this: In 2025, 52 percent were already disappointed with Donald Trump's picks for his administration. That is the first time you get a majority. Back in 2017, was only 44 percent [disappointed] for Donald Trump. Before that, you see 16 [percent], 17 [percent], 14 [percent]. Joe Biden's picks were not, in fact, polled, but less than 40 percent disapproved in separate Pew polling."
"So the bottom line is, even going into this, there was already a lot of skepticism about Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet, for his appointments," Enten added. "There's no doubt in my mind that this number will almost certainly tick a little bit upwards, because we already were dealing with a public that was quite skeptical. This story can only make things worse. "
The problem seems especially acute for Hegseth, who is already deeply unpopular.
"Obviously he's very much in the middle of this story," Enten said. "Despite what some of trump defenders try to say, if you speak to [retired general] Spider Marks, for example, he would absolutely say that Pete Hegseth was right in the middle, and again, what you see here was the most unpopular defense secretary going all the way back, you have to go all the way back to Donald Rumsfeld, who, of course, was basically kind of forced out a little bit back in 2006. The unfavorable rating for Pete Hegseth [is] 42 percent compared to this favorable rating, that was only 30 percent. Many more Americans disliked Pete Hegseth coming into the scandal than liked him."
"Again, skeptical, skeptical, skeptical public, they're only going to probably become more skeptical, and seeing how again, seeing where they begin and how it evolves as we continue to cover it," Enten added.
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Trump and Musk hand Dems ‘a weapon’ with ‘one unforced error after another’: Morning Joe
A panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday lit into President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk for making major political miscalculations that would come back to haunt the GOP in coming elections.
During a panel discussion about the cuts that Musk is making at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration, Politico's Jonathan Martin argued that the administration doesn't even seem to comprehend the damage it's doing to itself.
"Of all the issues Elon Musk is dealing with this side of Social Security, I think touching the VA benefits or the VA broadly -- talk about a third rail in a lot of parts of this country!" he said. "And it just hands Democrats a weapon with precisely the kind of voter you're talking about that is otherwise going to be inclined to support Republicans."
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Host Joe Scarborough agreed with Martin that hurting the VA and Social Security were gifts to Democrats who have otherwise struggled to put together a coherent response in opposition to Trump.
"It's one unforced error after another," Scarborough marveled. "You've got a billionaire who runs the Commerce Department saying, 'Well you know what... I mean my mother-in-law, she missed her paycheck, she wouldn't whine about it.' Wow... and then you've got Elon Musk, who tells Joe Rogan that Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. They don't understand that people that get those Social Security checks, so many of them... they're able to pay their rent, to stay in their apartment to get, you know, medicine, to get groceries because of that Social Security check."
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