For all the consternation over tariffs, stealth price increases, and a dearth of entry-level models, there are still deals to be had if you’ve got a little flexibility and a lot of imagination. In particular, I think there’s one big maneuver I’m trying to convince people to consider, and now there’s more data to suggest that my crazy idea might work.
The Morning Dump will continue its campaign against overwrought dourness today, or at least I’ll do so at the top of this post. To everything there is a season, and this is the season of uncertainty, but maybe it’s not all so bad. Auto loan payments have hit a record high, and delinquencies are up, but not at a level that’s necessarily a danger sign, and the overall amount of loans held is actually lower.
When it comes to Chinese-American trade relations, there’s no deal, but there’s a deal to remove some of the penalties that were making a deal less likely. That’s not bad. If anyone is hurt by all of this Chinese-American trade drama, it’s actually Germany, which has seen its fortunes rise and fall with its longtime Asian partner.
If you’re an autoworker, the news that GM will bring more truck production back to the United States is a good thing. If you’re going to buy a truck in the future, it might mean more expensive trucks, but a wise woman once said that if you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and then you have the facts of the auto industry.
The Cost Of EVs Continues To Drop, Gas-Powered Cars Not So Much
I often like to start TMD off with a chart, and today it’s an old favorite via Cox Auto/KBB:
You can see the whole picture in this chart of Average Transaction Price and Incentive Spend. The slow rise in prices, the immediate panic and shortages after the pandemic, and the stubbornly high prices that were somewhat offset by rising incentives. Then you see the impact of tariffs, just a bit, with decreasing incentives.
Here’s how Erin Keating from Cox Automotive explains the situation we’re in now:
“While tariff policy is adding uncertainty to the new-vehicle market, prices are holding remarkably steady, a reminder that auto industry change is often slow. Many automakers are keeping true to a promise to hold the line on pricing, at least in the near term. We are still expecting prices to move higher through the summer, as the inflationary impact of tariffs begins to hit. Right now, we believe dealer profitability is being squeezed, as costs on many products are going up, but raising retail prices in this environment is a real challenge.”
That sounds correct to me. Something has to give, and automakers seem likely to pass on stealth price increases via lower incentives, increased delivery fees, or whatever they can do that isn’t raising the price of the actual car. There is one segment of the market that’s been consistently trending downwards, though. The ATP for EVs dropped to $57,734 in May, compared to $59,123 in April. Incentive spending also increased to 14.2%. That’s the highest incentive since 2018, and way more than you’ll get for a comparable gas-powered car.
Why is this happening?
Tesla average transaction prices declined in May, falling 1.5% to $55,277. Tesla prices in May were lower year over year by 2.8%. Model 3 and Cybertruck prices increased modestly – less than 1% – month over month in May, while all other Tesla products showed a month-over-month decline. Tesla’s best-selling product, the Model Y, had an average transaction price in May that was 2.9% lower than in April, at $53,895. The Model Y is also the best-selling EV in the U.S.
The revised Model Y is rolling out, so it’s possible that this decrease in Model Y pricing is just a reflection of old Model Ys still being sold at a large discount. If Model Y prices stay low into the summer, that’s more indicative of a demand issue.
So what can you do about this? Our longstanding advice about leasing new EVs/buying used EVs still holds. Depreciation remains elevated for these models, and leasing allows most consumers to access the tax credit (while it still exists). As I’ve written before, this creates a specific opportunity for a flexible buyer. With many excellent lease deals out there on an electric car, if you can support one in your life, then now is the time to potentially grab a new vehicle with a much lower monthly payment.
What happens at the end of the loan? The key to this gambit is that you have to make sure you get your buyout price locked in now. Depreciation on used cars is super high at the moment, so after the tax credit/incentives you might end up with a car that started at an MSRP of $60k, that you’re leasing on a reduced MSRP of $40k. A lease buyout is premised on the estimated residual value of the car at the end of the term, which we’ll just estimate at $30,000 for easy math.
If the market absolutely tanks and no one wants EVs, or something else happens, then you might discover your car is worth less than $30,000. At that point you should just walk away, be grateful you got a cheap car payment for a while, or maybe even take advantage of the crappy market and lease something else cheaply. If the market gets tight due to tariffs or an alien attack on magnets or whatever, your car may be worth a lot more than the estimated residual value, meaning you can buy out your lease and end up with something that was net cheaper than if you’d have bought the car outright.
Obviously, specific companies have specific policies, and there’s no guarantee this will work, but the existence of the tax credit and the uncertainty in the market could make it an OK gamble.
Auto Loan Delinquencies At Record Highs, But Maybe It’s Not All Bad
The number of people who are at least 60 days late on auto loans was up 1.4% in Q1, according to TransUnion. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found the same was happening, although the overall national auto debt balance was down. What’s going on here?
I’ve been talking about this since… checks notes… 2023. There are some specific vintages of loans given out during the pandemic that are just plain bad, suffering from both inflated values for cars and poor underwriting that assumed higher creditworthiness on the part of buyers. Those loans have to work their way through the system.
You can read the whole report here, but the bottom line is that the rate of serious delinquencies is “stable” and probably not something to freak out about yet. The long-term concern might be over car payments, which do remain high, as Automotive News reports:
The average balance on the 80 million auto loans the credit bureau counted in the first quarter was $24,413, up 1.6 percent from a year earlier.
Average loans are going up, it seems, but the number of people holding those loans is going down a bit.
Did Germany Get The Most Screwed By The China Situation?
Here’s a thought exercise. Germany benefited greatly from the industrialization of China, providing both cars for a growing middle class via joint ventures and the tools necessary to manufacture cheap goods to sell to the West. This caused a “China Shock” here, and there’s a way to look at all of the political issues in the United States as a slow-moving reaction to the gutting of industrial jobs in the Rust Belt and other places.
The good times for Germany are coming to an end, it seems, as the local Chinese automakers have figured out how to build cars consumers want, and the brand value of, say, an Audi is perhaps lower than it was. Chinese automakers can also manufacture at a high level, thanks in part to companies like Apple, so how much do they need German industrial exports and expertise? Now it’s Germany that is dealing with political issues as China needs less from it.
I mention this because the United States has another deal to make a deal to make a deal with China.
After some 20 hours of negotiations in London, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said both sides had established a framework for implementing the Geneva consensus that last month brought down tariffs. “First we had to get sort of the negativity out,” he said. “Now we can go forward to try to do positive trade, growing trade.”
While a more upbeat tone should reassure investors worried about a decoupling of the world’s largest economies, details were scarce and the deal could still be nixed by top leaders. The discussions also did little to fix issues such as China’s massive trade surplus with the US, and a belief in Washington that Beijing is dumping goods on its markets.
It’s something. It’s not much, and it might not move markets as much as slightly cooler inflation than expected, but it’s not nothing. Getting access to Rare Earths and magnets in exchange for letting Chinese students come to the United States is a short-term win. You know who is also begging for rear earths? Germany, as Nikkei Asia reports:
Germany’s importers of rare-earth minerals and magnets are keenly awaiting details after Beijing said last week that it would fast-track approvals of exports to European companies.
Two key importers told Nikkei Asia that Chinese export controls over seven rare earths — implemented April 4 in retaliation for Washington’s wide-ranging trade tariffs — cut off virtually all supply into Germany for nearly two months. Some companies have exhausted their inventories, given that China has a near-monopoly over those commodities.
It’ll probably get worked out, maybe. Eventually.
GM To Shift More Truck Production To The United States
General Motors made another big announcement about investments in the United States and, unlike seemingly most of the investment promises made by companies trying to woo the Trump Administration, this one feels new and a direct result of tariff threats.
Here’s what GM had to say about it:
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Orion Assembly, Orion Township, Michigan: GM will begin production of gas-powered full-size SUVs and light duty pickup trucks at Orion in early 2027 to help meet continued strong demand. As a result, GM’s Factory ZERO in Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan will be the dedicated assembly location for the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, Cadillac ESCALADE IQ, and GMC HUMMER EV pickup and SUV.
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Fairfax Assembly, Kansas City, Kansas: Fairfax Assembly will support production of the gas-powered Chevrolet Equinox beginning in mid-2027. Sales of the recently redesigned Equinox were up more than 30% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025. Fairfax remains on track to begin building the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt EV by the end of this year. GM expects to make new future investments in Fairfax for GM’s next generation of affordable EVs.
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Spring Hill Manufacturing, Spring Hill, Tennessee: GM will add production of the gas-powered Chevrolet Blazer at Spring Hill starting in 2027, alongside the Cadillac LYRIQ and VISTIQ EVs, and the Cadillac XT5.
This is great news if you’re in one of these communities, and it’s not a bad thing to have more jobs in America. This is especially true after the United Auto Workers negotiated much higher wages for their work.
That being said, will this, on a net basis, make the prices of those vehicles go up, considering it seems like much of that production is potentially offsetting Mexican production? Additionally, is this GM saying it doesn’t think the USMCA is going to survive? That’ll likely have upward cost impacts for consumers as well.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I woke up singing “Walkin’ on the Sun” by Smash Mouth this morning. I do not know why. Smash Mouth is one of those bands that people like to pretend to enjoy ironically while, in reality, enjoying entirely unironically. The bass line here is stellar. You love it. Don’t front.
The Big Question
What’s the highest amount you’d pay a month for a car?
Top Image Credit: Kia
“What’s the highest amount you’d pay a month for a car?”
Zero.
Actually that’s not true. I typically don’t do loans and I don’t do leasing. All vehicles I’ve owned so far were bought outright.
Now having said that, I would consider a loan if the interest rate was really low or zero… and there weren’t any other gotchas or other BS… like the vehicle price being higher if you go with the financing.
I’m not concerned about the monthly payment as much as the TOTAL amount I’ll pay compared to buying it outright.
I never did hate Smash Mouth. Other than the name.
Also, Pacific Coast Party is a banger. Will history remember it? Probably not, but I will.
My highest single car payment was ~$1200 for my ’16 BMW M235i on a three-year note. Highest total was around $1400 for my ’17 VW GTI and ’18 Fiata at the same time, but I paid them off in ~2 years each – they overlapped for a few months.
As I have told several car salesmen, I can generally pay for a car in ONE payment or as many as it has months of warranty or less, and the interest rate will determine which. So I am not in any way a “payment shopper”. If I had gone through with the deal I had negotiated for an ’18 Porsche Cayman, it was going to be about $2K a month for three years (the three year interest rate was basically “free money”). My inner Yankee Cheapskate scuppered that deal and I bought the Fiata instead.
Interest rates being what they are at the moment, I probably won’t be borrowing any money to buy cars, the sort I have any interest in any more I will just pay cash for. I would have paid cash for my current Mercedes other than I had to cough up $20K for a new roof after the same hurricane that meant I needed a new car. So I borrowed half for the six months it took to get the insurance settlement on the roof, and then paid off the car. I paid cash for my ’11 BMW Convertible when I bought it five years ago. Well, technically to avoid the bother of buying a car remotely in another state in cash, I let the dealership finance it for two weeks. So I guess THAT was actually my highest ever “car payment”, a bit less than $15K, as I put the biggest down payment they would let me on my credit card to get the miles.
“You know who is also begging for rear earths?”
umm…diddy?
The highest amount is 0% interest.
My maximum car payment seems to be terminally stuck at less than $500, which is what I decided back when I bought my first new car 25 years ago. I make a lot more now than I did then, but I seem to be allergic to paying more for a vehicle; even one I really like and enjoy driving. This has shifted my purchasing options further and further down the used market, but cars also last a lot longer than they did 20 years ago.
High prices plus features I don’t want are conspiring to keep me in the aged used car market for the forseeable future. I do like the Slate, if I can get an offline option. At the end of the day anything over 30K just seems wasteful and indulgent to me.
$300. Maybe $400 on a shorter term, as in 2-3 years.
I’m sorry, did the US Secretary of Commerce say that he intends to increase trade with China? Do the people who work for this Administration ever, like, talk to one another?
The less, the better.
Anything to exacerbate their inherent incompetence.
Yes! Rowdy Roddy Proper is back! (My choice for the stock photo VW guy installing prop rods)
Most I’ve ever paid per month was mid $300s, don’t think we’ll ever do that again, $300 max, ideally more like $200.
Also I liked smash mouth but was sad to hear the singer “lived the life”. But I also like mighty mighty boss tones and such, the latter primarily from Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast.
I traded the 2023 RF Miata (after the trans replacement just didn’t trust the longevity of it) for a Polestar 2 crazy how much those depreciated mine was only like 26k. As for car payment I would say at most I would do is 700 but would feel safer in the 500-600 range with paying extra.
I haven’t had a car payment for over fifteen years and don’t plan to start now. I now put the amount of a car payment into savings and then pay the difference after the trade with cash—this provides lots of flexibility and fewer concerns with market volatility.
For the daily transportation appliance, I prefer certified used cars and only hold onto them for 3-5 years, which means I haven’t had a repair bill (above scheduled maintenance) on a vehicle for over ten years.
Example:
A 2021 Rav4 Hybrid certified used can be had for $28k. A 2017 can sell for $23k and tends to get lots of trade-in offers. So if the difference is $8k at a dealer (sales tax only on the difference), the total out-the-door cost is maybe $10k tops. Spread over 48 months, that is only a bit over $200/m for a very good car that is covered under warranty for most of its time with me. Rinse and repeat every 3-4 years.
The other bonus is that the type of car I get can match what I need. I’ve gone from a small hatchback to a pickup to a convertible depending on my situation.
Back before I realized Dave Ramsey wasn’t the end-all of financial advice, I was choosing to pay $1000 a month towards eliminating a cheap car note. But the car note was paid ahead and ultimately gone at a time I found myself much less financially secure than when I’d purchased the car. That peace of mind knowing my ride wouldn’t get repo’d let me focus on making myself more financially secure.
Today the logic of paying things off early is a lot harder, since savings/money market accounts are still around 4%. And even if you took the roller coaster ride of the stock market, it’s still up over 2% and the year isn’t even halfway over.
I like the peace of mind of being debt free, but I also run my home finances like a business. Strategic debt is a great tool, and paying cash (pure cash) is almost idiotic with the amount of credit card rewards available.
Dave is a great place to learn discipline, sort of like a slighly pudgy middle aged former athlete who discovered Crossfit. That’s great, but talk to me in 6 months when you tear your rotator cuff and we’ll have a chat about “balance.”
Dave Ramsey is like vaping.
If you’re already a 2 pack a day smoker, you’ll get some benefits from switching to him.
If you’re a responsible person, starting out your life taking his advice is a big mistake.
Well said, love it.
With my personality, having tons of cash sitting around in envelopes feels like one step away from a serious life of drugs and crime 🙂
I’ll be stealing this one.
So well said. I think he’s great for teaching responsibility to people who can’t get their financial house in order otherwise, and overall, he does a lot of good, but that’s because it’s simplistic and tries to be a one-fits all solution that is easy to understand. But I want credit cards (that I pay off every month) for the security of transactions and I never use a debit card. I’ll take on some low interest debt from time to time. I have a car loan at 1.74% right now that I’m not paying off early. I’ve leased cars before that have been much better deals than buying (gasp).
And he finds a huge audience beyond the people who actually need the kind of advice he offers because it’s a simple solution to a complex problem. It’s not comparing an interest rate and a money factor, it’s just “don’t lease.” It’s not keeping track of spending and making decisions that balance your needs, desires, and financial situation, it’s just “cut spending.” And it’s not figuring out how to use credit cards to your advantage and never pay interest, it’s “pay them off and stop using them.”
If you make the solutions simple, they’re easier to digest.
Agreed, strategic debt done right is a good tool to have. There’s no point in being debt free when that money can be invested to make more than the interest on the debt. Obviously don’t miss the payment.
One thing that gets me is people thinking that they have to carry an interest accruing balance on a credit card to keep a good credit score. No, no, no! Pay the monthly statement balance off every month! The CC company reports that monthly payment just the same and it doesn’t cost 30% interest on the unpaid statement balance.
Yep. My FICO of 826 can confirm, even with an (ex-wife induced) defaulted home loan in my past. I use my cards for everything I can and pay them off in full every month and reap the rewards in points and increased credit score. That said, if someone doesn’t have the discipline to keep their credit-card balances at manageable levels, then following Ramsey’s advice can be a good thing. He certainly helped my less than responsible son get his finances under control.
Yeah, the best way to get a high credit score is to ask for credit limit increases often so your balance to available credit ratio is high. I’ve hit 850 a couple times and never carry a balance and don’t really work at it. Never carry a balance if you can help it. It’s designed to keep you in debt just like a payday loan is.
They really prey on the poor and financially struggling.
I do enjoy taking those CC rewards as cash back every year. So far it’s basically tax-free income.
Paying cash for everything is basically the same as not investing at least enough into your 401K to get your company match dollars. Why would you intentionally miss out on that extra income?
This site is awesome. Cars and financial advice done respectfully.
For me mentally a car payment stops making sense once it’s over $600 a month. I’m not saying that’s logical, but that’s the point when my brain breaks and I enter the “this is a stupid use of my money” realm. I could technically go get approved to finance an $80,000 car if I really wanted to but why the fuck would I do that?
I have always bought conspicuously under budget and will continue to do so because as much as I love cars they’re a very bad use of your money. If I can’t pay it off in 4 years or less and keep the payment at or below $600 then I’m out. My Kona N is about to be paid off and I’ve already eaten most of the initial Korean car depreciation, so in a few years when I buy my next car I should be able to get something pretty nice without having to increase my budget.
But I can’t wrap my head around a $1,000 car payment. I get that the market says that’s normal now but it couldn’t be me, and the wife and I make pretty decent money at this point…we’d just rather spend it on shit like traveling and saving for the 1 year old’s college than sink all of it into our cars.
Anyway terminally online music fans have been pushing hard for a Smash Mouth redemption arc recently, and there’s nothing ironic about it. People are dead fucking serious and genuinely love that band/think their meme status is unfair. I am not one of those people. I grew up with Smash Mouth and think they fucking suck outside of the actual ska shit they did early one…which was just kind of “meh” to begin with.
Don’t @ me, nerds. If you want to bask in 90s/early 2000s alternative rock nostalgia there are just so many better ways to do it that don’t involve trying to convince yourself Smash Mouth is actually good so you can have a unique/contrarian take.
My first mortgage payment was $650/month in the early 2000s, which was the era of “don’t throw your money away on rent” and it actually made sense for a house that would have been over $1,000/month to rent.
That creates a big (slightly illogical) hurdle for me to spend more than that on a depreciating asset. I say “illogical” because it’s only a 5-year loan (give or take) and not a 30-year loan. But for housing, my options are rent or buy. I’m spending money somewhere.
For transportation, it’s harder: No payment right now (and keep the car fixed)….or a big payment for something new. High payment = easy decision.
I currently pay around $1000-1500 each month (not my actual payment, just planning on paying off the whole loan in about a year or so instead of dragging it out).
Highest actual payment I’m willing to take on is going to depend on a lot of factors. Like V10omous, if I can get 0% interest, why would I give them more up front? If I’m accruing more interest than I’m paying, I’ll hang onto cash. If I’m paying more interest than I’m gaining, I will throw money at it. Right now, I’m getting about a half percent less than I’m paying (I was getting a better interest rate when I took the loan), so I’m paying it down faster, but not so fast that I burn all my cash reserves.
The second they get you to agree to a payment is when you lose. I get the price sorted, the interest rate sorted, and any trade value sorted. After that, it’s a matter of math to figure out my down payment and monthly.
I wake up all the time with unexpected songs stuck in my head. I’m convinced my wife softly singing Miami Sound Machine and ABBA songs into my ears while I’m sleeping to subconsciously mess with me. It’s the only logical explanation.
Same. For some reason I had NRBQ’s “I Want You Bad” stuck in my head for a week. Wake up in the morning? There it was. Right before I went to sleep? There it was. At least it was better than Miami Sound Machine.
Lately I’ve had songs creeping into other songs. Sound Machine is a good example, apologies to Gloria and Lin-Manuel:
Give it to your sister, you’re sister’s stronger…come on shake you body, baby do the conga!
Wow this mash up is really working for me
My daughter was like “What are you even singing?!” and I played it and now Encanto is ruined for her. But that song is really great, there’s a good cover by the Plain White Tees, as well.
low seratonin levels are correlated with ear-worm (song stuck on replay in your head), OCD, migraine, & anxiety-disorder.
i feel fortunate because i can often change my ear-worm if i don’t like the track, some people get same crappy song day after day…
The worst is having a song stuck in my head for months or years but not knowing the name of the song so I can listen to it and clear it out. That’s happened to me twice now. First with Rainbow’s Stargazer which took me 6 mos to identify and again with Time by Alan Parsons Project which took me almost 2 years to figure out.
yikes!
I’m not sure there has ever been a band that could produce ear worms that can live in my head quite like ABBA. Must. Not. Hear…
“Shhhh, he wispers…. Dancing Queen” 😉
“What’s the highest amount you’d pay a month for a car?”
Nothing.
User name checks out.
Oh he’s about that life. There’s never been a shadow of a doubt.
Why wouldn’t it?
Same, haven’t had a car note in almost 20 years and it feels awesome.
“Average loans are going up, it seems, but the number of people holding those loans is going down a bit.”
Fewer people carrying greater debt. Do people with money still finance? If this were “smaller numbers of rich people are taking out larger loans,” I wouldn’t care, but this feels ominous.
I imagine this is tied pretty closely with interest rates.
Certainly my mindset would be to borrow all I could at 0-3% when stocks are generally returning 8-10%.
Now that rates are 5-8%, even for prime borrowers, and the market is much less certain, the risk is quite a bit higher and people who can pay cash might tend to do so.
How many people can afford to drop $50,000 in cash right now? It can’t be many when the median household income is 70k-ish.
The median household (who made $80K in 2023) isn’t the one buying new cars though, especially not $50K ones.
The metric isn’t really relevant to the question. The median buyer of a $50K car is statistically *much* more likely to be at least able to pay cash than the median person overall.
Preach. It’s like every time I see a complaint that “minimum wage can’t get you an average apartment in ABC city!”
Why would MINIMUM wage be an appropriate comparison for AVERAGE apartment costs?
At this point, min wage can’t get you ANY apartment anywhere.
In 2024 the average new car buyer had a household income of $115K
(From Cox Automotive)
Smash mouth is unironically good. Astro lounge and Fush Yu Mang are classics. Nobody sounds like them and they strike that perfect blend of catchy and complex.
I wonder if VW guy in the picture like Smash Mouth…
$700 is probably my top. $1000 is a hell no.
Impossible to answer cleanly with so many variables.
If someone is offering 0% for 36 months on a $50K car, that’s $1388/month. If the alternative is paying cash (and sacrificing returns on that money invested) or paying 5.9% for 72 months ($826/mo) am I doing wrong by paying more monthly? I don’t think so.
The actual answer is “no more than I’m comfortable paying, given my income and other payments at the time, my money in the bank, and what else I could be doing with the payment amount”.
“Walking on the Sun” has a distinct memory for me — one of the earliest hits of the era of post-grunge alternative music and I’m still a big fan. It played in heavy rotation on my morning radio alarm clock in college, and is a really interesting song to wake up to after a long night of partying, a couple hours of sleep, and the need to get to class in 30 minutes. It’s a little surreal.
Smashmouth deservedly got a lot of sh*t for selling out with some of their later songs, but the fact that my middle school kids still know them (mostly from Shrek) still boggles my mind.
QOTD: “Sorry, sir, I don’t shop based on payment, stop playing games with me and let’s talk price.”
Big Question :
Historically, my highest was ~$400/mo for a car. But I can’t see surpassing that in the future. Luckily I’m at the point where that is achievable, but also save for maybe a Slate as a toy, I don’t see ever buying a new car again, only used, likely 5+ years of age at a minimum.
Well, I currently have paid off both my 2021 Bronco (bought new) and my 2018 Porsche Cayman (bought used from Carvana), so right now I don’t have a car payment. I would expect that if/when new Scouts start delivering I should still get a pretty good trade out of the Bronco. Take the loan over 6-7 years with a payment in the $400-$500 range and pay it off in 2-3 years if all goes according to plan. I just can’t fathom a minimum payment in the $700+/month range.
Finally, FINALLY, don’t have car payments anymore. Really liking that. Of course I did buy my project car so that’s gonna take some money…
GM will start using US production in two years.
Or, more likely, they will stick to that publicly and revert to Mexico as soon as the political winds change.
I don’t envy manufacturing at the moment. Best case, we have quality issues as production shifts to new plants to avoid tariffs. Worst case, they mothball the old plants, lay everyone off, and can’t pivot when the policy changes.
This whole tariff mess is just one giant migraine and almost everyone loses.
The administration does not understand manufacturing.
They think it’s a faucet that remains fully functional even when not used for years, ready to be turned on at a moment’s notice to deliver flow just as it did when last operational.
You can’t just say ‘use American steel’ and suddenly have enough steel available to meet industrial demands. The factories may not have relationships and contracts with American suppliers. There may not be American suppliers of certain commodities, and you cannot bully supply into existence.
This administration doesn’t understand much. They also put tariffs on tropical fruits we can’t grow here.
Because the Penguins are ripping us and NATO off.
Burring the lead here: gas-powered Chevrolet Blazer at Spring Hill starting in 2027.
There’s a new gen of gas Blazer coming or is the soon to be dead (2026 MY was supposed to be the last) gas Blazer getting a random stay of execution?
I was about to comment the same exact thing but found a GM Authority article from just last month that it is continuing. Seems late in the game to suddenly throw a new gen in there but the Blazer is getting up there in years too.