By Holden Baird
Observer Contributor
Tariffs have been a major topic of discussion over the last several weeks, from national news reports to kitchen tables around the country. That is unlikely to change as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up this major piece of his economic policy, about which conversation ranges from a revitalization of American industry to the dawn of a new global recession. More recently on April 2, Trump introduced a sweeping expansion to the existing tariffs as part of his “Liberation Day” announcement, imposing elevated tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories.
Many sectors will see price increases, including motor vehicles. If you own a car, you will probably see a rise in the cost of maintaining it. As the President’s 25% auto tariff is expected to affect over $400 billion worth of imported vehicles and auto parts, the Observer reached out to the college’s Automotive Technology division and spoke with department chair Eric Almeida. With decades of experience in the automotive service industry, Almeida is well acquainted with how the field responds to fluctuating economic conditions.
“We have not seen any of the effects of the tariffs yet,” Almeida said, but added that he expected to see them in the near future. “Right now we have a labor shortage, and the direct cost of labor has gone through the roof,” Almeida says of the current industry conditions, citing a wave of retirements and a shortfall of new entries into the trade to fill those positions. “We’ll not only be experiencing the increased labor cost, but now the cost of parts will increase. I think it’s going to be a shock to the American people as to the typical repair bill,” he said, citing the baseline 25% increase. Parts are also taking longer to procure than they did five years ago, which is another area Almeida indicates as being potentially complicated by the new policy, as a large portion of the auto parts used in the United States are sourced from other countries. “Just about everything we get for the automotive industry is sourced globally,” Almeida said. “It might be American built, but it’s not American made.”
Could an increase in US manufacturing solve this problem? Although Almeida supports the idea of restoring jobs that have been lost in the American manufacturing sector in recent decades, he has no illusions about the intrinsic challenges of making it happen. “It’s about three to five years just to get a warehouse up and running to produce this stuff, and you’re going to have CEOs saying, ‘I’m gonna wait a little while and see what happens’ before they move everything back to the US.” Almeida estimates it could be five to seven years before a transition of this magnitude would be sustainable.
Like those CEOs, the rest of us will have to wait and see how this tariff policy plays out.
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