After getting into a car accident last month, Debbie Boyd held out hope that her Chevy Volt could be repaired.
But the car was declared a total loss on Monday, three days before President Trump’s 25% tariff on imported cars and light trucks is set to go into effect.
“It’s like the worst timing imaginable to be buying a car, and the uncertainty is killing me about what’s going to happen and how it’s going to affect prices,” said Boyd, 74, a retired attorney from Mar Vista. “I anticipated driving my car for quite some time, sailing through the tariffs, but now I’m faced smack up against them.”
She rushed to Culver City Toyota on Tuesday.
“I’m going to buy what’s on the lot, the current inventory, just to avoid it,” Boyd said. “Today, tomorrow, whatever they have available is what I will pick from. Obviously I need a car. I just wish it weren’t now.”
Boyd’s anxiety was widely shared among many car buyers in Southern California who were scrambling to make their vehicle purchases before the tariff kicked in.
The global trade war escalated further Wednesday afternoon, when Trump said during a Rose Garden event that he would impose 10% additional tariffs on all of the nation’s trading partners; some countries will be hit with even higher rates.
Calling it “Liberation Day,” Trump said the day would “forever be remembered as the day that American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.”
Tariff-related price hike estimates vary depending on the vehicle, but most industry experts predict new cars will cost several thousand more.
Erin Keating, an executive analyst at Cox Automotive, expects new vehicle prices to go up by 15% to 20%. On Wednesday, Anderson Economic Group forecast car prices to increase $2,500 to $20,000. Vehicles expected to be hit hardest, the group said, include luxury sedans and SUVs manufactured by Audi, BMW, Jaguar-Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Genesis and Lexus.
With sticker prices expected to surge, many consumers across Southern California are trying to get deals done ahead of the Thursday deadline.
“It is a natural consumer behavior when people see an impending price change to race in and respond accordingly,” said Dominick Miserandino, a retail and consumer analyst and chief executive of Retail Tech Media Nexus.
There is an element of panic contributing to the increase in demand, he said.
“You’re seeing it on a micro scale whenever someone posts online that they found a cheaper place to get eggs,” Miserandino said.
At Culver City Honda, more than a dozen prospective car buyers were milling about the dealership lot or waiting in the lobby for an available sales representative mid-afternoon Tuesday.
“People are just rushing in here like crazy,” sales consultant Carlos Rodriguez said, a trend that began the day after Trump announced the autos tariff on March 26. “We’re used to selling let’s say 10 cars a day; 1743634487 we’re getting into 20s. I know a lot of dealerships are hitting higher numbers.”
Outside, a car shopper named Rochelle was checking out a white CR-V.
“I should have done this a long time ago,” she said. “I’m all for America first, but a lot of us don’t like American cars.”
Roughly half of the 16 million cars, SUVs and light trucks that Americans bought last year were imported, according to the White House. Vehicles in the United States are imported from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Germany and other countries.
The Trump administration says it is imposing tariffs to strengthen national security and spur the growth of American jobs. Heavily taxing imported cars, the thinking goes, would put pressure on automakers to build manufacturing plants in the U.S.
“America cannot just be an assembler of foreign-made parts — we must become a manufacturing powerhouse that dominates every step of the supply chain of industries that are critical for our national security and economic interests,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.
But building more domestic plants takes years, and some companies are wary of shifting their supply chains to the United States because of regulatory uncertainty, economists said.
The 25% tariff will be applied to imported passenger vehicles (sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans and cargo vans) and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts (engines, transmissions, powertrain parts and electrical components), with the possibility of expanding the duty to include additional parts if necessary. The tariff on auto parts is set to take effect by May 3.
“President Trump is taking action to protect America’s automobile industry, which is vital to national security and has been undermined by excessive imports threatening America’s domestic industrial base and supply chains,” the White House said.
Car dealerships across Southern California — home to car enthusiasts and one of the nation’s largest auto markets — are unsure about what comes next. Some are preparing for spikes and drops in business as the global trade war plays out.
Rodriguez said Culver City Honda will have to increase prices, but he was hopeful that sales would remain strong as they did during the pandemic despite major supply-chain disruptions that led to skyrocketing car prices.
It’s not just the automotive industry that is contending with tariff tumult. Businesses of all kinds — farmers, home builders, tech companies, winemakers, restaurants and apparel retailers — are reeling from weeks of on-again, off-again confusion as Trump has announced a slew of levies, many of them aimed at the country’s top three trading partners. Some have been imposed, while others have been postponed, modified or reversed.
Bolstering the economy was one of Trump’s promises during the election, and tariffs are a core part of his strategy. He threatened to slap tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on his first day back in office, explaining the decision as a way to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.
In March, he wrote in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. “doesn’t have Free Trade. We have ‘Stupid Trade.’”
“The Entire World is RIPPING US OFF!!!” he said.
The prolonged back-and-forth has unsettled companies, both those that import goods from abroad and those that sell their products to foreign clients. California’s economy could be especially hard hit because of its heavy reliance on trade with China and Mexico, and because of its position as a global agricultural powerhouse.