In early April the average new car price hit $50,729. This was an $820 jump in just 30 days. Meanwhile, first-quarter new car sales have slowed. A recent Automotive News (2026b) editorial claimed that “there is no doubt” rising prices have contributed to the sales decline. And in another unsigned editorial, the trade journal once again complained that President Trump’s tariffs have increased the cost of new cars (Automotive News 2026a).
Curiously, the most-recent editorial still insisted that there is “of course, little that dealers, automakers or suppliers can do when outside macroeconomic and geopolitical forces disrupt the industry as they are doing now, except to try to adapt and remain as profitable as possible” (Automotive News, 2026b).
That’s not true. In the 2024 election cycle auto manufacturers contributed almost $4.7 million to the Donald Trump presidential campaign or allied political action committees (Open Secrets, 2026a). In addition, the National Auto Dealers Association donated almost $1.76 million to Republican congressional candidates in 2023-24. This was more than twice as much as to Democratic candidates (Open Secrets, 2026b).
Automotive News (2026a) recently reminded readers that last year it “urged Congress to reclaim its constitutionally mandated role regulating trade with other nations. We noted the serious threat that tariffs pose to the industry’s immense and diverse global supply chain.” What the editorial board did not say — again — is that Congress wasn’t likely to rein in Trump’s tariffs unless the Democrats retook control after the 2026 mid-term elections.
As we have previously discussed (go here), this is not surprising. The American auto industry and media are largely wired Republican.
Autoline: Trump policies have hurt auto industry
I nevertheless found myself wondering whether the industry could change its tune when watching a recent episode of Autoline After Hours (2026). Panelists pointed to how Trump policies on tariffs, killing support for electric vehicles and waging war against Iran have hurt automakers.
“It’s frankly been a crummy year for almost everybody involved — OEMs, suppliers, even the consumers — and just an incredible year with the amount of uncertainty still out there,” noted industry consultant Michael Robinet. “How do you invest in this environment?” (Autoline, 2026).
Trump policies could have major long-term repercussions for U.S. automakers. For example, the gutting of support for EVs has resulted in write offs of $70 billion. That could make it harder for companies to come up with the capital needed to stay abreast of technological advances — particularly from the Chinese.
Also see ‘Could the auto industry experience a wake-up call akin to the 1970s oil crises?’
Ford CEO Jim Farley recently said that allowing the Chinese to enter the U.S. market could be “devastating” to American manufacturing (Bloomberg, 2026). Nevertheless, Autoline (2026) panelists seemed to think that this was increasingly likely. That was partly due to inroads they have been making in Mexico and Canada. In addition, President Trump has stated that he might “let China come in” to the U.S. if they built plants and hired Americans (Automotive News 2026a).
At what point do automakers and their allied organizations decide that supporting Democratic House and Senate candidates could be their best counterbalance to Trump policies that they believe are undercutting their future prospects?
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Autoline After Hours; 2026. “Why Low-Cost Cars Can’t Be Made in the U.S.; Anymore.” Episode AAH 785. Posted April 2.
- Automotive News; 2026a. “In our opinion: A year in, Trump’s tariffs are damaging auto industry everywhere.” Unsigned editorial. Posted April 1.
- ——; 2026b. “In our opinion: Rising prices and declining sales are an ugly mix.” Unsigned editorial. Posted April 8.
- Bloomberg; 2026. “Ford CEO Jim Farley says Chinese automakers, EVs should be kept out of U.S.” Automotive News. Posted April 13.
- Open Secrets; 2026a. “Top Industries, federal election data for Donald Trump, 2024 cycle.” Page accessed April 14.
- ——; 2026b. “Automotive PACS contributions to candidates 2023-24.” Page accessed April 14.
Wow=Where to start. The problem is the President is mercurial, and he could decide tomorrow to let China ship in all the federalized cars they want tariff free or go to war with China. You tell me. Yes, car prices are high. However-Look what you get. I went online to do some cyphering, and found out 1 1956 Ford Mainline four door sedan cost 2270. This works out to 25558 today. We sort of decided the mid 50s full size cars were more or less the perfect size car as immediately afterward the companies went bigger (much bigger) is better. Now, let’s build a 1956 Ford today, just as it was then except for mandatory federal requirements. Assume you don’t need to develop retro technology and it’s all there, and assume say 1 million cars per year production. Could you beat the 25558 price? Probably. Would anyone buy it? I doubt it. About the only advantage is in trunk space and rear leg room. Compared to the 50s, cars last forever. Maintenance is near zero, although when needed it costs quite a bit more. Bench seats with cheap upholstery, No HVAC, no radio, your F150 handles better, tube tires that last maybe 25k miles, etc. You get what you pay for. The 2026 Ford customline with 3 on the tree is bare bones almost beyond imagining, but the real savings I think is in longevity. Broadly, the government can make the economic playing field change with the stroke of a pen. However, it takes years to turn an industry like car manufacturing around.
Relaxed environmental standards and no EV support? The car companies can live with that. 2024 regulations and subsidies? They can live with that too. Just promise them that it won’t change with the next few election cycles.
Detroit, and probably other region’s automobile industry, are very concerned about Chinese inroads into the large American car market. Recent polls show that the Democratic party has a more favorable view of China as a whole and that could work against them. On the other hand, Trump’s policies sometimes appear to be not fully thought out and can change on a whim. So it’s conceivable that he would let the Chinese in if they acquiesced on some other point.
Most of Ford’s cars are not subject to tariffs, yet I don’t see them pricing their trucks thousands less than the competition. So either the tariff’s costs are not that great or Ford is unnecessarily squeezing the consumer. I have little hope that their rumored $30k SUV will be their savior. Detroit mostly builds trucks and I like smaller sporty cars. The five cars on my list right now are all Asian.
Ford’s products are priced to maximize net income, regardless of tariffs. Ford would rather collect the tariff difference and bank it than give it back to the public with corresponding price cuts.
“Trump’s policies sometimes appear to be not fully thought out and can change on a whim.”
A bit of an understatement.
Ford is in a whole heap of trouble regardless of the ruling party in Washington.
Problem 1 in Bill Ford . Problem 2 is the CEO picks he did – Mullaley and Hackett.
By comparison Iacocca has to conquer whole continents to win the presidency.
Problem 3 is thier products – ancient trucks and SUV.Lincoln only a p-anted up Ford.Let me stop there.
Yes, please do. That’s absurd, Ford would not exist today without Alan Mullaly, who turned Boeing around and then did the same at Ford. Read the book “American Icon” to see facts and the real truth, not just opinion.
And yes the book was complementary to Mullaly, and for a very good reason. What he did was more than a pretty good job, it was damn near miraculous, by using hard won lessons he’d learned at Boeing. The problem was his successors forgot the reasons for his success and what he’d tried to teach them, and Boeing too ultimately lost out by not promoting him to the top.
I’m evaluating the book as a fellow journalist with some scholarly background. There’s a certain way one approaches the subject matter when one is being analytically independent rather than engaging in more of a p.r. exercise. This book did the latter.
To be fair, that’s pretty common for books written by journalists who intend on continuing to cover the auto industry. Preserving access to key players takes on a higher priority than writing about things that one’s subjects might consider inconvenient or even embarrassing.
For me a better model for an automotive history book is David Halberstam’s The Reckoning (1986). I thought that he did a good job of capturing the “color” of situations and treating his subjects fairly, but he did so with a more analytically independent eye.
My sense is that Halberstam had more room for analytical independence because he was a general-interest writer rather than one who specialized in the auto industry. Thus, his future access to sources didn’t depend upon whether, say, Lee Iacocca didn’t like how he was treated in the book and tried to punish Halberstam.
Mullaley coold’nt compete with Iacocca’s back fumes.
I didn’t know that Iacocca was a professional farteur. The amazing things one can learn on social media. . . .
On a more serious note, I would ask commentators to debate by presenting facts and logic rather than trading schoolyard insults.
Ford is in a whole heap of trouble regardless of the ruling party in Washington.
Problem 1 in Bill Ford . Problem 2 is the CEO picks he did – Mullaley and Hackett.
By comparison Iacocca has to conquer whole continents to win the presidency.
Ford.Let me stop there.
Problem 3 is thier products –
Phil, amigo… pull up a chair, but don’t sit too close to the jukebox. Hank’s been favoring that Merle Haggard record again and it’s liable to color a man’s judgment if he lingers too long.
See, over at the Lucky Lady Lounge we’ve got ourselves a quiet little code of conduct. Not written down anywhere, mind you. It just lives in the wood grain of the bar and the cracks in the floor where a thousand spilled beers went to die.
When a fella says something that ain’t quite tethered to reality, the first time through we let it drift on by like a tumbleweed. Maybe it’s the Lone Star talking. Maybe it’s the lighting. Maybe Mercury’s in retrograde and messing with his carburetor.
Second time? We clock it. Don’t say much. Just a few sideways glances, maybe a raised eyebrow from Rusty, and a note made for discussion out in the parking lot under that flickering light that’s been threatening to quit since the Reagan administration.
But the third time… well now, that’s when civic duty kicks in. Not out of spite. Not out of meanness. Out of mercy. Because nobody—and I mean nobody—ought to go through life repeating something that’s liable to get them corrected in front of the preacher or, worse yet, their own grandkids.
Now I’ve watched you trot out this Mulally take before, and I gave it the standard first-time treatment. Little chuckle. Sip of beer. Let it pass.
But here we are again, and I’d be doing you a disservice not to lean in a bit.
Alan Mulally isn’t just some footnote in Dearborn folklore. The man backed a truck full of common sense into a company that had forgotten where it parked its own keys. Mortgaged the blue oval down to the lug nuts, cleaned house on brands that had overstayed their welcome, and stitched the whole operation together under that “One Ford” banner like a rancher fixing fence before a storm rolls in.
Now, that doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Bill Ford deserves his flowers too. Takes a particular kind of backbone to look at a family legacy that big and say, “This job needs a different set of hands.” That’s not weakness. That’s a man reading the terrain correctly while everybody else is still arguing over the map. And when you’ve got a family tree with more branches than a mesquite thicket, all watching the bottom line, that decision carries some real weight.
But let’s not get sideways about who drove the truck and who handed over the keys. The turnaround itself? That’s Mulally’s brand on the gate. Clear as a cattle mark at branding time.
They didn’t hand him a ribbon-cutting. They handed him a mess.
And he turned it into one of the cleanest corporate recoveries this side of a Sunday morning confession.
Now sure, some folks like to hedge it. Say the board was motivated, the timing was right, the winds were favorable. All true in the same way it’s true that rain helps crops grow. But you still need a farmer who knows when to plant, when to cut bait, and when to bet the whole season on one good call.
That’s why he’s sitting pretty in the Automotive Hall of Fame and not just arguing about it over beers.
And I’ll say this as gently as Fort Stockton allows… sometimes an opinion ain’t built on data so much as it is on experience. Personal kind. Happens to the best of us.
Rusty didn’t have a single bad word for Tug Burleson until that unfortunate evening at the VFW dance involving a slow song, somebody else’s wife, and a level of eye contact that could peel paint. Since then, Tug could cure rust with his bare hands and Rusty still wouldn’t give him credit for inventing oxygen.
So if there’s a little of that baked into your take, well… you wouldn’t be the first man to let a personal wrinkle turn into a permanent crease.
But if you want a second opinion that ain’t filtered through barroom lighting, Bryce G. Hoffman laid it out chapter and verse in American Icon. Worth your time. Reads like a rescue mission with quarterly earnings reports instead of helicopters.
And just to close the loop with a little scoreboard check…
When the music stopped and the chairs got scarce, who was it that stayed standing without reaching for Uncle Sam’s wallet? Not General Motors, not Chrysler, or whatever name they’re answering to this week over at Stellantis.
No sir.
That would be Ford Motor Company.
And that story’s got Mulally’s fingerprints all over it.
As for the cars themselves… I’ve had more Fords in my driveway than unpaid parking tickets at the courthouse square. Tauruses, F-150s, a couple Focuses, and an Explorer right now that starts every morning like it’s got something to prove. Never asked me for anything but oil, gas, and the occasional set of tires. Never a lick of trouble.
Now maybe that’s luck.
But I’ll tell you this much… good looking and lucky don’t often ride in the same truck.
Which makes me a little suspicious of myself every time I turn the key and it fires right up.
I would agree that Mulally did a pretty good job of turning Ford around. I would also agree that Bryce Hoffman’s book provides useful background. However, I have argued that the book tilted toward being a puff piece (go here).
I think it’s disingenuous to call the book a puff piece or a PR exercise. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times certainly gave it more respect than that, as did most automotive historians at the time of its release.
Now don’t get me wrong. Bryce Hoffman didn’t scribble that thing on a napkin at the Dairy Twin between onion rings. The man got access most folks would trade their Sunday truck for. Boardrooms, back halls, whispered conversations that usually stay buried under expense reports and polite nods. It reads smoothly, moves quickly, and if you didn’t know better, you’d swear you were watching a company get hauled out of a canyon by its belt loops.
But here’s where the dust starts to settle a little differently.
When you spend that much time inside the walls, you start seeing the place the way the people inside want it seen. Not dishonest, necessarily… just framed like a showroom car with the hood closed and the lighting just right. You get the decisions, the drama, the personalities… but you don’t always get the grease under the fingernails. You don’t hear the line worker muttering or the dealer staring at a lot full of something that isn’t moving.
That’s not a knock. That’s just the nature of being invited in through the front door instead of climbing in through a window.
As for Alan Mulally, he walked into a house already on fire. Not a small kitchen fire either—I’m talking curtains, carpet, and the family photo albums going up together. He brought structure where there was chaos, got people talking who would rather chew glass than agree, and, most importantly, he bought time. In that moment, time was the only currency that mattered. That was well documented in the book, in ways I suspect not everyone associated with Ford was thrilled to see in print.
But here’s the piece people around here won’t let you skip over.
Saving the company on paper and building cars people line up to buy are cousins, not twins.
You can steady the ship, patch the hull, and keep it from sinking… and still be sailing something people don’t exactly dream about owning. That tension—the gap between survival and desirability—is part of the story whether it makes the hardcover or not. Ignoring it is like telling the story of a rodeo and leaving out the part where the bull throws you.
Let’s talk about the point you made when you reviewed the book back in 2013, calling it a puff piece because it never mentioned that the last-generation Taurus didn’t match the sales of the first, or that Mulally called it “a jaw-dropping new flagship that trumpeted Ford’s reemergence as a leader in automotive styling” (p. 334).
The man was trying to sell cars. It wouldn’t make sense for him to describe the new Taurus as a warmed-over, Passat-looking sedan for the masses. I’ll forgive him a little hyperbole.
The future of Ford was tied to issues far bigger and more complex than how that new Taurus was received. Its sales numbers didn’t determine the company’s survival, which is what the book set out to examine.
The things that were important? Mulally checked off every one of those boxes—more thoroughly than anyone before him, and certainly more than anyone who has followed.
And that brings us to the real barroom argument, the kind that’ll have Rusty leaning in and Rex adjusting his glasses just a touch.
Alan Mulally versus Lee Iacocca.
Now there’s a conversation worth a full pot of Lucinda’s coffee.
One man went hat in hand to Washington and came back with the kind of lifeline that makes headlines and enemies in equal measure. The other walked into a family-controlled kingdom and convinced people who didn’t have to listen… to listen. Different battles, different terrain, same kind of odds that make reasonable people find another line of work.
Both of them did something rare: they changed the direction of something too big to turn easily.
But here’s the quiet line that doesn’t need shouting.
Ford is still here, still swinging, still figuring itself out in public. Chrysler… well, Chrysler’s story kept going, just not under the same roof or the same name on the mailbox. And its future remains an open question. Did Iacocca save the company, or postpone its demise?
So yes, admire the book. Respect the access. Tip your hat to the storytelling.
And if the Mulally versus Iacocca idea doesn’t do anything for you, I may write a piece for the CaptainMyCaptain.blog that explores it myself. I have a little more flexibility with the facts than you do.
But I’ll give you credit for the inspiration.
I grant you that my review of the book was brief, but I did give a specific example of the author giving the corporate spin on the Taurus rather than an honest assessment of the car — which should have included that it wasn’t all that successful. It’s too bad that Hoffman didn’t do a better job of discussing the revived Taurus because it would have made for a useful case study.
The tendency of book writers to tiptoe around sensitive topics may not be grounded only in wanting protect their future access. My sense is that a lot of auto history readers prefer tales of heroes and villains over the more nuanced analysis of a scholarly treatment. Thus, it is not surprising that scholarly histories don’t tend to be nearly as popular as breezy narratives like Hoffman’s.
Although Indie Auto has a certain amount of 10-year-old silliness, I do try to tilt more toward scholarly nuance. The goal is to “add to knowledge” rather than repeat “well-worn tales repackaged with little if any critical analysis and a reexamination of the evidence,” to quote historian John Heitmann (go here for further discussion).
>> Chrysler’s story kept going, just not under the same roof or the same name on the mailbox. And its future remains an open question. Did Iacocca save the company, or postpone its demise?
Chrysler has been on the edge of failure since the Fifties. What Iacocca did was not inconsiderable. He was more beneficial than any CEO since K. T. Keller or since. That’s not to say that I liked him or am especially fond of the company or it’s products. I value Chrysler’s place as a balance against Ford and GM and their need to innovate in order to stay competitive. But like AMC, they’ve reached the “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” stage and have probably outlived their usefulness.
I also respect what Mulally did for Ford. I feel he was better than those who have succeeded him. I had great hopes for Mark Fields and was disappointed. They could do worse than Farley but I’m not a fan. And while I’m at it, Mary Barra has performed at a level far above what I had anticipated and is probably better than any GM CEO appointed in my lifetime. This opinion despite the fact that GM doesn’t make a single car I would want.
Which leads to a similar, but slightly different, topic. General Motors made about $2.7 billion in profits last year. Mary Barra received right at $29 million in compensation. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company lost $8 billion, and Jim Farley still managed a record-high $28 million in total compensation.
Farley’s pay package was his highest ever, based on meeting certain performance metrics, including quality. I’m not entirely sure how setting a new record for recalls while losing $8 billion checks those boxes, but I suppose somebody found a way to square that circle.
In each case, total compensation came out to roughly 295 times that of the “average” employee. In Japan, where product quality and profits routinely outpace most domestic brands, the average CEO earns closer to 50 times the “average” worker. Makes you wonder if they’re using a different yardstick over there—or just holding it level.
Circling back to the original topic regarding the politics of tariffs, as of September 7, 2025, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced his resignation following mounting pressure from his party. The decision came after significant election losses that cost the ruling coalition its majority in both houses of parliament, driven largely by voter frustration over rising living costs.
Meanwhile, over here, we tend to treat those kinds of outcomes less like a verdict and more like a scheduling inconvenience. Or we try to pin it on whoever came before, or simply declare it all the work of “fake news.” Different cultures, different expectations. One side seems quicker to hand back the keys when the car starts pulling hard to the right. The other keeps both hands on the wheel, insists it’s tracking straight, and blames the road.
My 2009 F150 (147,000 miles) with the much maligned 5.4 engine has been a very reliable truck. I bought it new in the fall of 09 at a substantial discount. I’ve never had to add oil between changes, so far no unusual noises. I’ve never abused it, was good about oil changes and fixed the few small things that went wrong quickly. I was proud to have bought a Ford during the era when all the other manufacturers were begging for bailouts.
What I don’t like about new cars is the garbage technology forced by the government for absolutely nominal fuel savings such as cylinder deactivation and stop/start. Any fuel savings will be more than negated by high repair costs later. I’m keeping my pristine 42,000 mile 2016 Highlander as long as I can!
My mantra when vehicle shopping is no turbos with tiny engines pulling 4,000 pound CUVs, no wet belts and no CVTs. That means -all- of the new 2026 vehicles I can afford have something I don’t want that IMO adversely affects long-term reliability, my default is now the low mile used market without those things. That sucks for the manufacturers who want to sell me a vehicle, but they did it to me.
My ! My My ! Who knew that my little opinion of Mullaley would morph into something out of the ”Little Shop of Horrors”.
My opinion stands – for what it’s worth.
Since you keep repeating it I assume you’re one of those people who always has to have the last word. You don’t really care what other people have to say. But no one paid for your opinion. I hope other people keep posting though. I learned a lot from them.