Do America’s Carmakers Have a Plan For Survival?

The image most likely to be remembered from Donald Trump’s visit to a Ford plant in Detroit last month was the middle finger he showed to an auto worker heckling him over the Epstein files.

But the broader message of the US president’s trip to America’s carmaking capital was that his policies had brought the industry back from the dead. “Never before has an administration achieved such sweeping and dramatic turnarounds, as has taken place just in this very short period of time,” he said. “Eleven months [of his second term] and you’re booming.” Trump hailed his 25 per cent tariffs on cars and parts along with his rollback of emissions rules and tax incentives — introduced by his predecessor, Joe Biden, to nudge buyers into choosing electric vehicles.

“I terminated the insane electric vehicle mandate and ended the war on internal combustion engines once and for all,” he told the Detroit Economic Club, describing such Biden-era rules as “standards that make it impossible for you to build a car affordably”.

But some industry observers worry that a sugar rush of higher profits stemming from a pivot back to petrol-engined vehicles will fade as the Trump-era focus on traditional products leaves US manufacturers at a disadvantage in the face of global competition, particularly from China. “We can’t do things the way we’ve always done,” says Glenn Stevens Jr., Executive Director of the MichAuto lobby group. “The world is changing very fast around us and we better change with it.”