 |
|
|
|||||
President Donald Trump signed executive orders Tuesday to relax some of his 25% tariffs on automobiles and auto parts, a significant reversal as the import taxes threatened to hurt domestic manufacturers.Automakers and independent analyses have indicated that the tariffs could raise prices, reduce sales and make U.S. production less competitive worldwide. Trump portrayed the changes as a bridge toward automakers moving more production into the United States.“We just wanted to help them during this little transition, short term,” Trump told reporters. “We didn’t want to penalize them.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who spoke earlier at a White House briefing on Tuesday, said the goal was to enable automakers to create more domestic manufacturing jobs.“President Trump has had meetings with both domestic and foreign auto producers, and he’s committed to bringing back auto production to the U.S.,” Bessent said. “So we want to give the automakers a path to do that, quickly, efficiently and create as many jobs as possible.”Trump signed one order on Tuesday that amended his previous 25% auto tariffs, making it easier for vehicles that are assembled in the U.S. with foreign parts to not face prohibitively high import taxes.The amended order provides a rebate for one year of 3.75% relative to the sales prices of a domestically assembled vehicles. That figure was reached by putting the 25% import tax on parts that make up 15% of a vehicle’s sales price. For the second year, the rebate would equal 2.5% of a vehicle’s sales price, as it would apply to a smaller share of the vehicle’s parts.A senior Commerce Department official, insisted on anonymity to preview the order on a call with reporters, said automakers told Trump that the additional time would enable them to ramp up the construction of new factories, after automakers warned that it would take time for them to shift their supply chains. The official said automakers would over the next month announce additional shifts for workers, new hires and plans for new facilities.Stellantis Chairman John Elkann said in a statement that the company appreciates the president’s tariff relief measures.“While we further assess the impact of the tariff policies on our North American operations, we look forward to our continued collaboration with the U.S. Administration to strengthen a competitive American auto industry and stimulate exports,” he said.General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the automaker is grateful for Trump’s support of the industry, and she noted the company looks forward to conversations with the president and working with the administration.“We believe the President’s leadership is helping level the playing field for companies like GM and allowing us to invest even more in the U.S. economy,” Barra said in a statement.Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company, stressed that his company does more than its peers to manufacture domestically.“We will continue to work closely with the administration in support of the president’s vision for a healthy and growing auto industry in America,” Farley said. “As the right policies are put in place, it will be important for the major vehicle importers to match Ford’s commitment to building in America. If every company that sells vehicles in the U.S. matched Ford’s American manufacturing ratio, 4 million more vehicles would be assembled in America each year.”But changing direction doesn’t help an industry that thrives on stability, said Sam Fiorani, analyst at business forecasting firm AutoForecast Solutions.“Finding a way to get the auto industry back working has to be paramount in this,” Fiorani said. “The tariffs have not looked at this industry, the way it works, and expect it to be able to jump and relocate production at the blink of an eye. It just doesn’t work that way.“Making a production change for vehicle manufacturing takes minimum, months, and usually years, along with hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars,” he added. “And so it is not something that they take lightly.”The Wall Street Journal first reported details of the actions. The White House’s Rapid Response account on X said Trump signed a second order Tuesday afternoon to prevent his various tariffs from being stacked on top of his existing taxes on imported autos and auto parts.The tariffs imposed by Trump were seen by some as an existential threat to the auto sector. Arthur Laffer, whom Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to during his first term, said in a private analysis that the tariffs without any modifications could add $4,711 to the cost of a vehicle.New vehicles sold at $47,462 on average last month, according to auto-buying resource Kelley Blue Book. Tariffs stress the automotive supply chain, a complex web which spans the globe. Not only do many auto parts cross North American borders several times before being assembled into a finished vehicle, auto manufacturers rely on suppliers around the world for thousands of components.Increased levies would certainly cost new car buyerssensitive to inflationmore, driving them to the used vehicle market and quickly straining the availability of pre-owned cars. Tariffs also impact the cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle.The modifications come as Trump marks 100 days back in the White House by going to Michigan, a state defined by auto manufacturing. Trump won the state in last year’s election by promising to increase factory jobs.Still, it remains unclear what impact Trump’s broader tariffs will have on the U.S. economy and auto sales. Most economists say the tariffswhich could ultimately hit most importswould raise prices and slow economic growth, possibly hurting auto sales despite the relief that the administration intends to offer on its previous policies. St. John contributed from Detroit. Josh Boak and Alexa St. John, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Fraud remains a huge issue, with reports increasing 25% between 2023 and 2024, according to recently released data from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). That amounted to consumers losing more than $12.5 billion to various frauds and scams. Those eye-popping figures are what spurred AT&T to beef up its fraud-prevention smartphone application, ActiveArmor, with a slate of new features, says Matt Bailey, AT&Ts AVP of product management and development. And interestingly enough, the app will also provide protection for your physical propertyincluding your credit and debit cards and even your drivers license. On Wednesday, AT&T announced the five new features being added to the app: Lost wallet recovery ID restoration A password manager A password manager web extension Social media identity protection With the lost wallet recovery feature, AT&T says it will help you replace important items such as a driver’s license or checkbook with a one-click call to its recovery specialists. The service also cancels lost credit or debit cards and “restores other sensitive financial items,” according to the company’s description. Combined, Bailey says the new features will help fewer people become victims of various scams. The biggest impetus to our focus on security is the fact that consumers are consistently being victimized by fraudulent activity, and that its increasing, he says. Thats the key concern that our customers have been telling us about, and weve been focused on security relentlessly. Robocalls and other modern-day rackets Bailey says that while the ActiveArmor app was originally launched in 2016 to root out robocalls, its since become what he thinks is the most comprehensive security app out there. And its also available to everyonenot just AT&T customers. AT&T customers will not be charged anything extra, but those on other networks who download and install the app will face a $3.99-per-month charge. And as for why AT&Twhich is primarily a digital and wireless companydecided to add protection for physical cards, drivers licenses, and even checkbooks? Bailey says that the company already has a dedicated team to help customers replace some of those items, so it made sense to put the physical stuff into the mix, too. We thought it was a pretty natural tie-in to help customers remain protected, he says.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Speaking to investors earlier this month, D.R. Horton CEO Paul Romanowski said that the spring 2025 selling season for Americas-largest homebuilder is off to a slower-than-normal start. This years spring selling season started slower than expected as potential homebuyers have been more cautious due to continued affordability constraints and declining consumer confidence, Romanowski said on the company’s earnings call. It isnt just D.R. Horton. We do not see the seasonal pickup typically associated with the beginning of the spring selling season,” Lennar co-CEO Jon Jaffe told investors on March. “So we continue to lean into our machine focusing on converting leads and appointments and adjusting incentives as needed to maintain sales pace. These adjustments came in the form of mortgage rate buydowns, price reductions, and closing cost assistance. Last quarter, Lennar spent the equivalent of 13% of home sales on buyer incentivesup from 1.5% in Q2 2022 at the height of the pandemic housing boom. A 13% incentive on a $400,000 home translates to $52,000 in incentives. This weaker housing demand environment is causing unsold inventory to tick up. Indeed, since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, the number of unsold completed U.S. new single-family homes has been rising: March 2018: 62,000 March 2019: 77,000 March 2020: 76,000 March 2021: 34,000 March 2022: 32,000 March 2023: 70,000 March 2024: 89,000 March 2025: 119,000 The March 2025 figure (119,000 unsold completed new homes) published this month is the highest level since July 2009 (126,000). Lets take a closer look at the data to better understand what this could mean. To put the number of unsold completed new single-family homes into historic context, we created a new index: ResiClubs Finished Homes Supply Index. The index is one simple calculation: The number of unsold completed U.S. new single-family homes divided by the annualized rate of U.S. single-family housing starts. A higher index score indicates a softer national new construction market with greater supply slack, while a lower index score signifies a tighter new construction market with less supply slack. If you look at unsold completed single-family new builds as a share of single-family housing starts (see chart below), it still shows we’ve gained slack; however, it puts us closer to pre-pandemic 2019 levels than the Great Recession of 20072009. While the U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t give us a greater market-by-market breakdown on these unsold new builds, we have a good idea where they are based on total active inventory homes for sale (including existing homes) that have spiked above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. Most of those areas are in the Sun Belt around the Gulf. Builders are facing pricing pressure in some housing markets, especially in key Florida and Texas markets, where active inventory has jumped back above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Big picture: Theres greater slack in the new construction market now than a few years ago, giving buyers some leverage in certain markets to negotiate better deals with homebuilders.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||