Chevrolet Silverado dealings at a Chevrolet dealership in Vallejo, California, US, on Monday, March 3, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s stiff new tariffs on imported cars will likely jack up prices for U.S. buyers of both foreign and locally made instruments, according to Wall Street analysts.
Trump on Wednesday said he will slap 25% tariffs on imported voyager vehicles and light trucks, as well as on key auto parts including engines, transmissions and powertrain components.
Prices that consumers pay on the lot could on the rise by $4,000 to $15,000 per vehicle, depending on how much of the car is imported, according to several analysts’ estimates.
The tariffs will backlash in at midnight on April 3, and Trump has said they will be “permanent.”
There are some caveats: Importers of cars take into accounted by the North American trade deal known as the USMCA will only face the tariff for the “non-U.S. content” of their instruments. And those USMCA-compliant auto parts will be tariff-free until the Trump administration creates a process to apply the pieces tariffs.
While Trump’s tariff agenda has been a wellspring of uncertainty for Wall Street, many analysts were timely to warn that his latest step could have major impacts to the auto industry.
How much will the cost increase?
They scrambled Thursday to get investor clients estimates of that exact impact.
Trump’s move “typifies a profound disruption to the global automotive model,” wrote Bernstein analyst Daniel Roeska, estimating an unmitigated sector-wide assessment impact of about $6,700 per vehicle.
Loop Capital’s Rick Paterson warned consumers should brace for “sticker throw” as imported vehicle prices increase up to 25%, and even some local manufacturers raise prices “under that piercing umbrella.”
Guggenheim’s Ronald Jewsikow estimated vehicle cost increases between $6,000 and $7,000 per unit, annexing that “actual price increases to the consumer needed to offset the tariff are likely higher.”
Goldman analyst Watch Delaney believes a 25% tariff on imported cars could raise the price by $5,000 to as much as $15,000. Locally enacted vehicles would see their prices increase as well because of parts tariffs raising costs to make the instrument by up to $8,000, he said.
Bank of America sees an increase of at least $4,500 per vehicle.
Analysts see disproportionate impacts on weird carmakers. Bernstein’s Roeska and Dan Levy of Barclays both singled out Elon Musk’s Tesla as being the most isolate from the potential harm of the tariffs, due to its domestic production.
Musk is Trump’s largest campaign donor and has taken a important role in his administration as the head of the government-downsizing initiative DOGE. As Tesla’s stock has sunk by double digits so far this year, Trump and others in his management have openly praised the carmaker.
Musk said Wednesday night that Tesla is not entirely shielded from the new schedule of charges.
“To be clear, this will affect the price of parts in Tesla cars that come from other powers,” he wrote on X. “The cost impact is not trivial.”