Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Wednesday, April 2.
It’s the multibillion-dollar question emerging from President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz on U.S. trading partners: Do domestic assembly plants have enough excess production capacity to take on work otherwise slated for Mexico, Canada or elsewhere?
This report today from Kurt Nagl of Crain’s Detroit Business focuses on Detroit 3 plants in Michigan with vast amounts of space that could be revived. There’s also a credible question of whether space earmarked for electric vehicles could be refit for other vehicle programs in response to tariffs.
Obviously, this is what the UAW wants — and it’s why the UAW heaps overwhelming support on Trump’s efforts even though Shawn Fain and the union leadership otherwise despise this president. How much space do the Detroit 3 have?
As Nagl reports, Ford Motor Co., which boasts more domestic manufacturing than its Detroit competitors, has a 69 percent U.S. plant utilization rate this year, according to GlobalData. General Motors’ U.S. plant utilization is 67 percent. Stellantis is at 55 percent — and it remains committed to reopening its long-idled assembly plant in Belvidere, Ill.
Read more: Live updates on tariff news and impacts
Still, it will take several months or years for automakers to move more production to U.S. plants. And brand-new plants would take longer to plan and build than Trump presumably would be in office.
Democrats who support the UAW and U.S. jobs are forced to respond to Trump’s tariffs like U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., in today’s story by Nagl:
“I think all the companies are on board to try to bring more jobs home. That’s the goal, and hopefully that will happen,” Peters said March 31. “I would just caution it’s not going to happen overnight, and there’s going to be a fair amount of repercussions as a result of that in the short term.”
Among those repercussions, this story today by Richard Truett explores two smaller parts of the automotive ecosystem: the dealers who import classic Japanese and European cars and the companies that sell restoration parts for American classics.
Folks in these segments are just as confused as the rest of the industry about the tariffs scheduled to start this week.
Gary Duncan, owner of Duncan Imports, the Virginia mega-importer of thousands of Japanese and European classics, told Truett he’s on the hook for a big bill if the tariffs apply to the vehicles he has on the way.
“I have Porsches, BMWs, and a Ferrari coming. Plus, more! Probably tag me for $200,000,” he wrote to Automotive News in an email.
Another repercussion? Automotive advertising. Automakers and their ad agencies are still assessing how they will respond to the tariffs, our affiliate Ad Age reported today.
“It is still looming for all of us,” Shenan Reed, global chief media officer at GM, said at the Association of National Advertisers Media Conference on April 1. “I think our businesses need to adjust first, and our money will adjust second.”
And one more repercussion: Canada’s Unifor and the UAW aren’t seeing eye to eye on tariffs, but the two unions don’t seem to have much time to fight each other about it.
“I don’t worry about that right now,” Unifor President Lana Payne told Automotive News Canada in this story. “I’ve got too many other worries, including tens of thousands of workers in Canada who are relying on me to do the political work that I must do and all of the other work I must do to make sure we’re protecting these jobs and that we come out of this stronger than when we went into it and that we have an auto industry in this country for the next 100 years.”
Fain said last week: “At the end of the day, there’s plenty of work to go around for all of us.”
The two unions can agree to disagree for now, but it’s a good bet this issue won’t be forgotten when Unifor and the UAW start contract talks with the Detroit 3 again in 2026 and 2028.
That’s it for now. Check here for Trump’s latest tariff news this afternoon. Have a great rest of your day.
If you want to view this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
