Trump’s Latest Tariffs Are Already Wreaking Havoc on the Auto Industry

U.S. auto stocks opened down on Thursday after Donald Trump announced “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on “all cars that are not made in the United States.”

The Big Three automakers took an immediate hit as the market digested the announcement, with tariffs on vehicles expected to go into effect on April 3 and vehicle parts one month later.

General Motors stock fell more than 7 percent in morning trading on Thursday, and continued to fall to roughly 9 percent down.

Deutsche Bank analysts noted that General Motors is likely to be hit the hardest by Trump’s announcement because it has “the most exposure to Mexico.”

A little over half of General Motors vehicles sold in the U.S. during the first three quarters of 2024 were assembled in the U.S., according to Barclays analyst Dan Levy. Thirty percent were assembled in Canada and Mexico, and 18 percent were brought in from other countries.

While a lot of General Motors cars are assembled in the U.S., they rely heavily on imported parts.

Ford saw a smaller dip, losing only 2 percent in trading. “Tesla and Ford appear to be the most shielded given location of vehicle assembly facilities although Ford does face incremental exposure on imported engines,” wrote the Deutsche Bank analysts. Seventy-eight percent of Ford vehicles are assembled in the U.S., while only 21 percent of U.S.-sold units are assembled in Mexico or Canada.

Stellantis, which assembles roughly 57 percent of its vehicles in the U.S., lost less than 2 percent in morning trading.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Tesla saw a bump of 5 percent in morning trading, after Trump’s last round of tariff announcements and reference to a seemingly imminent economic recession sent the stock cratering earlier this month.

Trump told reporters Wednesday that tariffs, which have already started to tank the valuations of the Big Three automakers, would “continue to spur growth.”

Trump’s tariffs on vehicles and auto parts is the latest move in his escalating trade war with both Mexico and Canada, which is very likely to have dire and long-lasting economic impacts on America’s border states.

Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers union, applauded Trump’s move, saying that the new tariffs were a step to “end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades.” In a separate statement, the union expressed optimism that Trump’s announcement could help bring back automanufacturing jobs to the states.

Representative Elise Stefanik will have to take a step back from her ambassadorial nomination in order to cushion Republicans’ narrow majority in the House.

The White House on Thursday yanked Stefanik’s nomination to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was aware of some of the discussions taking place earlier in the day to keep Stefanik in the lower chamber, according to CBS News. His caucus can currently only afford to lose six votes on any given issue, assuming that all Republicans are present. The House currently has four vacancies, with a five-seat Republican majority.

Donald Trump confirmed the news Thursday in a post on Truth Social. “I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress to help me deliver Historic Tax Cuts, GREAT Jobs, Record Economic Growth, a Secure Border, Energy Dominance, Peace Through Strength, and much more, so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he wrote.

“With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat,” he said. “Therefore, Elise will stay in Congress, rejoin the House Leadership Team, and continue to fight for our amazing American People.”

Except, there are currently no open House leadership positions. Stefanik previously served as the Republican conference chair, but that role went to Representative Lisa McClain after Trump initially announced Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador.

Stefanik was present at Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting at the White House in February.

The New York Republican has been one of Trump’s most ardent allies. She was, at one time, weighed as one of the top contenders to be his vice president, especially after she admitted in February 2024 that she would have put party before country and refused to certify the 2020 presidential election results if she had been in former Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes.

But having Stefanik, a longtime critic of the United Nations, act as the nation’s liaison to the global organization would not have been good for the country’s diplomacy, especially as America’s Western allies begin to turn away from potential trade and military arrangements due to Trump’s tariff war.

Stefanik called for a “complete reassessment of U.S. funding of the United Nations” after the Palestinian Authority attempted in October to expel Israel from the organization for alleged war crimes and human rights abuses.

She won reelection in New York’s 21st congressional district in November while campaigning as a staunch defender of Israel in its war on Gaza, including protecting Israel’s decisions to eliminate humanitarian aid from the region. At the time of her first win in 2014, Stefanik was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

She’s since made a name for herself in Trumpworld for her impassioned defenses of the real estate mogul during his first impeachment trial in 2019. The following year, she refused to certify the 2020 election results, elevating lies that Joe Biden had stolen the race.

Pulling her nomination comes as Republicans worry about their ability to hold onto their already razor-thin majority. Democrats believed that there was a chance they could have flipped Stefanik’s district after her scheduled confirmation hearing on April 2. After all, New York’s 21st congressional district is less conservative than other regions of the country where the GOP is also “anxious” about maintaining a stronghold, such as Florida’s 6th congressional district seat, which has been vacant since Mike Waltz became the administration’s bumbling national security adviser.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration has detained another international student, but this time has not provided any justification.

University of Alabama doctoral student Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian citizen, was picked up at his home on 5 a.m. Tuesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. A university spokesperson said that Doroudi was detained off campus, but ICE didn’t respond to reporters at The Guardian or The New York Times.

The university’s student newspaper, The Crimson White, reports that Doroudi was in the United States on an F-1 student visa, awarded in January 2023, and had cleared immigration checks. He reportedly received a message that his student visa was revoked six months later and then contacted University of Alabama’s office of International Student and Scholar Services.

“ISSS replied with confidence, stating that his case was not unusual or problematic and that he could remain in the U.S. legally as long as he maintained his student status,” read a message in a group chat that includes Iranian students, according to the campus newspaper. On ICE’s website, Doroudi is listed as being “in ICE Custody,” but the “Current Detention Facility” field is conspicuously left blank.

Doroudi’s detention came the same day as another international student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, was detained by ICE in a brazen arrest, captured on video, by plainclothes immigration agents wearing masks, after which she was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana. In that case, Ozturk’s arrest appears to be due to her pro-Palestinian activism, specifically her co-authoring of an op-ed in the university’s student newspaper.

Several international students have been detained by the Trump administration in the past month due to their support for Palestine, most notably Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University. All are assaults on free speech and are blatant violations of immigration law.

The White House’s attempt to minimize the Trump administration’s Signal group chat scandal isn’t convincing anyone … not even the usual cheerleader Fox News.

Fox News’s chief political analyst Brit Hume posted a straightforward rebuke on X Wednesday of the Trump administration’s sloppy handling of the crisis, in which several Cabinet members discussed sensitive military information in a Signal group chat that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. 

“There are a couple of iron rules for dealing with a scandal. One: get the facts out as fast as possible and don’t be afraid to take responsibility. Two: Once rule one is taken care of, don’t feed the story,” Hume warned. “With regard to the Signal message case, the administration is making a mess of rule two by getting bogged down in a dispute over whether the details of Yemen bombing raids were a war plan and whether those details were, or should have been, classified. All that has done is prolong the story.”

On Wednesday, after the full details of the conversation were released, the Trump administration began attacking The Atlantic over a word in its headline, pouncing on the nonexistent differences between “war plans” and “attack plans”—as if that somehow negated the fact that the secretary of defense had revealed launch times to a reporter, and the White House then readily lied about whether there was classified information in the chat.

Hume continued, criticizing the Trump administration for attacking Goldberg, “who, through no fault or action of his own, received the Signal conversation.” 

“All attacking him did was give him a reason to release further details from the Signal chat, which appeared to contradict the administration’’s claim that no ‘war plans’ were discussed. That gave the story at least another day of life,” Hume wrote. 

In an interview Monday, Hegseth called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time.”

Later Wednesday, Hume appeared on Fox News’s Special Report, where he repeated his point that attacking Goldberg was a huge mistake. “Look, I’m not a particular fan of Goldberg or his magazine, but he didn’t do anything wrong here,” Hume said. “He got that thing sent to him passively. He didn’t do anything to get it. And when he reported on it, he left out a lot of the details. So, then they attacked him and said that he wasn’t telling the truth about it, which just gave him a reason to release the details as he did this morning.”

Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy also skewered the Trump administration’s handling of the leak in an op-ed for the New York Post, a conservative tabloid that regularly pushes stories to back up Trump’s agenda. 

McCarthy wrote that the “blunder of discussing the details on a Signal group chat that is not authorized for the communication of national defense information—to say nothing of top secret intelligence—was an unconscionable security breach.

“I like Pete Hegseth. That said, it was reckless to disseminate information about imminent combat ops over a non-approved chat app,” McCarthy added. “As defense secretary, he is expected not just to comply with the rules but to enforce them in his department.”

Other steadfast defenders of Trump’s agenda in conservative media have started to defect over the administration’s outrageous national security slipup.  

Right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren urged that White House’s “word gymnastics” needed to end. “Regarding this whole signal debacle, the administration really just needs to come out and explicitly say they F’d up,” she wrote in a post on X Tuesday. 

Conservative media personality Piers Morgan said that Trump ought to “roll some heads” over the group chat. “They *were* war plans, and it *was* (obviously) classified material. This whole Signal-gate scandal is a shockingly egregious f*ck-up that could have had catastrophic repercussions for US forces in combat on that operation,” he wrote on X Wednesday. 

Donald Trump is still publicly backing his national security adviser—but behind the scenes, the president is reportedly “mad” and “suspicious” of Mike Waltz’s contact list, which, as his allies learned Monday, includes The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The Trump administration has reiterated its confidence in Waltz, who earlier this month seemingly accidentally invited Goldberg to participate in a Signal group chat where top administration officials discussed imminent attacks on Houthi targets on Yemen.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has “the utmost confidence” in Waltz, while White House communications director Steven Cheung argued online that the Atlantic story had been blown out of proportion and wasn’t what former U.S. officials have described as “the highest level of fuckup imaginable.”

But three unidentified sources familiar with the situation told Politico that Trump was more than upset about the whole situation behind closed doors, though his frustration had been dampened by the success of the mission itself.

“The president was pissed that Waltz could be so stupid,” one person told the publication.

The report was soon followed by a damning revelation regarding Waltz’s behavior: Wired reported Wednesday evening that an account sharing the intelligence official’s name had left his Venmo profile public. In doing so, Waltz had disclosed the names of hundreds of his personal and professional associates, including government officials and lobbyists.

Waltz’s Venmo friends list also included a slew of media personalities, including Bret Baier and Brian Kilmeade of Fox News, Brianna Keilar and Kristen Holmes of CNN, a cable news producer, local news journalists, a national security reporter, documentarians, and “noted conspiracy theorist Ivan Raiklin,” per Wired.

As the week wears on and Waltz’s scandals pile up, the national security adviser’s behavior appears to suggest a pattern of haphazard thoughtlessness rather than isolated mistakes, for what should be one of America’s foremost security experts.

On Wednesday, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that several senior administration officials had their personal data—including account passwords, cell phone numbers, and email addresses—listed online.

Some of the compromised Cabinet members include Waltz, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The foreign publication was able to track down their information via commercial search engines as well as databases composed of hacked customer data.

“Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use,” reported Der Spiegel.

Through those details, reporters were further able to uncover Dropbox accounts and personal profiles on running apps that track users’ health data. Reporters were also able to locate WhatsApp and, ultimately, Signal accounts for some members of the administration.

Even the chief national security correspondent at Fox News is calling bullshit on the Trump administration’s Signalgate story.

Trump and co. are sticking to the story that the Signal chat that The Atlantic editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to did not contain any classified information, even though the messages contained precise timing about plans to bomb Yemen. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and press secretary Karoline Leavitt have been steadfast in this.

Fox’s Jennifer Griffin thinks they’re lying.

“There is a debate about whether the operational details Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared in the Signal Group Chat were ‘classified’or not. So I surveyed a range of current and former US defense officials who agreed ‘war plans’ is not the right term but what was shared may have been FAR MORE sensitive given the operational details and time stamps ahead of the operation, which could have placed US military pilots in harms way,” Griffin wrote.

“What Hegseth shared two hours ahead of the strikes were time-sensitive ‘attack orders’ or ‘operational plans’ with actual timing of the strikes and mention of F18s, MQ9 Reapers and Tomahawks. This information is typically sent through classified channels to the commanders in the field as ‘secret, no [form] message. In other words the information is ‘classified’ and should not be shared through insecure channels.”

Griffin continued. “This kind of real time operational information is more sensitive than ‘war plans,’ which makes this lapse more egregious, according to two former senior US defense officials. ‘This information was clearly classified,’ according to former senior defense official #1. The Defense Secretary can retroactively declassify information after the fact, but the fact that this was shared in real time before the strike took place makes it unlikely to have been declassified when it was being shared and seen by the journalist for The Atlantic who was inadvertently included in the Signal chat.”

It says a lot when the administration’s own media wing is starting to get tired of its gaffes.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the mega-prison in El Salvador where U.S. deportees are being held—and decided to post a propaganda video to push the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Noem visited the Terrorism Confinement Center in the country Wednesday, posting a garish video of herself speaking in front of crowded prison cells full of partially clothed, tattooed detainees on X and bragging about the administration’s policy of deporting immigrants to El Salvador, at times without even due process.

“I also want everybody to know that if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences that you could face,” Noem said. “First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

The video sparked immediate criticism on social media, with commentators remarking on everything from how dystopian it looked to the clear constitutional violations of deporting people from the United States to a foreign country without due process.

Many of the people the administration has deported are civilians accused of being hardened criminals or gang members, sometimes on the flimsy basis of being Latinos with tattoos. In one case, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker was deported to El Salvador because he had a tattoo inspired by the soccer club Real Madrid and had made hand gestures in social media posts.

Meanwhile, El Salvador is run by autocrat Nayib Bukele, who has been accused of severe human rights violations and has thumbed his nose at U.S. court rulings. Still, the Trump administration made a deal with him to aid in mass deportations, and now El Salvador is helping administration officials make attention-seeking propaganda videos.

The Department of Health and Human Services will be firing 10,000 employees—nearly a quarter of the workforce.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is cutting employees in the disease outbreak, drug approval, and insurance departments. These firings, combined with the 10,000 employees who’ve already quit, leaves the critical public health department with just 62,000 employees. The department will also lose half of its regional offices.

“We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said.

According to the Journal, the cuts will include:

- 3,500 full-time employees from the Food and Drug Administration—or about 19% of the agency’s workforce.

- 2,400 employees from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—or about 18% of its workforce.

- 1,200 employees from the National Institutes of Health—or about 6% of its workforce

- 300 employees from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—or about 4% of its workforce.

HHS has been a target for Elon Musk and DOGE since Trump reentered the Oval Office, and has received much ire from the right for its Covid-19 policies.

This story has been updated.

Elon Musk is so desperate to get Wisconsin voters to sign his petition condemning so-called “activist” judges, he’s paying them a million dollars—but there’s reason to doubt the giveaway is even real.

Musk’s America PAC announced the first so-called “winner” of his million-dollar giveaway on Wednesday, in the latest attempt from the oligarch to interfere with the democratic process.

“Scott A. From Green Bay, WI is the first $1 Million spokesperson for signing our Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges. Stay tuned between now and April 1st for more surprise announcements from Wisconsin,” a post on X reads.

The petition asked voters to reject “the actions of activist judges who impose their own views” and demand “a judiciary that respects its role—interpreting, not legislating.”

Musk previously held a $1 million sweepstakes in several swing states, including Wisconsin, ahead of the presidential election. He invited voters to sign a petition endorsing the constitutional right to free speech and to bear arms—potentially collecting data on millions of voters.

Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk to prevent him from continuing his grift, but a judge said he failed to prove Musk was holding an illegal lottery because Krasner could provide no evidence beyond “speculation.” When Krasner petitioned the court, his bid was denied by the judge because there was only one sweepstakes remaining. Well, it seems like there will be a lot more, as Musk continues efforts to buy the nation’s courts after purchasing the presidency.

Crucially, it’s unlikely that there was any “winner” to Musk’s game. In November, America PAC lawyers revealed in court that the so-called winners were paid spokespeople for the PAC, not victors in a game of chance. It seems implausible that this time would be any different—especially when they got away with it so easily before.

Musk has been offering $100 to anyone who completes his petition in Wisconsin ahead of the state Supreme Court race on April 1. Musk has also put at least $20 million behind conservative candidate Brad Schimel.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is set to weigh questions on hot-button issues, including the use of voter drop boxes in elections, abortion access, and redrawing congressional maps. A Republican majority on the court could influence the outcome in any of these cases, which would have national repercussions. Musk is also waging his own legal battle in the state, after he sued Wisconsin for not allowing Tesla dealerships there.

The American public knew before Donald Trump that top administration officials had conducted airstrikes on Yemen via a Signal chat, and now it appears that the president has been left in the dark on other intelligence matters too.

At an Oval Office news briefing Wednesday evening, Trump casually admitted that he was not aware that several U.S. army members had gone missing during a training exercise in Lithuania.

“Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania who are missing?” a reporter asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Trump said.

Earlier that day, the U.S. Army released a statement that four soldiers had disappeared on training grounds in a swamp near Pabradė, along the border with Belarus. The soldiers were conducting “scheduled tactical training” at the time of their disappearance, according to the Army. The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle they had been using was discovered 16 feet underground a day after the soldiers went missing, reported NBC News.

But the armymen were known to be missing as early as Tuesday at 4:45 p.m., the Lithuanian military said, so why Trump was still unaware of the situation more than 24 hours later is unclear.

Search efforts are “underway,” the Army said in their statement, specifying that the operation has been a joint effort between U.S. military officials, the Lithuanian Armed Forces, Lithuanian law enforcement, the Lithuanian Fire and Rescue Department, and other groups. Helicopters operated by Lithuanian Air Forces and the State Border Guard began a search and rescue mission on Tuesday, according to the country’s military press office.

“I would like to personally thank the Lithuanian Armed Forces and first responders who quickly came to our aid in our search operations,” said Lieutenant General Charles Costanza, the V Corps commanding general. “It’s this kind of teamwork and support that exemplifies the importance of our partnership and our humanity regardless of what flags we wear on our shoulders.”

The lapse in Trump’s knowledge begs the question, however, as to just how much intel the president has been left out of within the folds of his own administration.

During another White House press briefing on Monday, Trump fumbled by admitting that he was not only not invited to his Cabinet’s Signal exchange, in which his top officials discussed when, how, and where they would bomb Houthi targets in Yemen, but that he actually had no idea it had happened.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said at the time, noting that a reporter’s question regarding the group chat was the first he had heard of it. “But I know nothing about it, you’re saying that they had what?”