Automakers call on US to forgo car tariffs

Bloomberg

BMW AG and Hyundai Motor Co urged the US not to impose tariffs on auto imports, joining General Motors Co in pressing their case to the Commerce Department even as a top aide to President Donald Trump dismissed the concerns as “smoke and mirrors.”
“It seems that the threat to impose these sanctions is designed to achieve certain goals,” the newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported, citing a copy of BMW’s letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The Munich-based luxury automaker said its investment of almost $9 billion in the Spartanburg, South Carolina, BMW plant, supports more than 120,000 US jobs.
Hyundai said the duties would be “devastating” to the Seoul-based automaker and jeopardise its plans to expand manufacturing in the US. In comments to the Commerce Department, it also said weakening South Korea’s Hyundai would ultimately hurt Trump’s effort to halt North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro earlier addressed the stern warning by GM to the Trump administration that it could shrink US operations and cut jobs if tariffs are broadly applied
to imported vehicles and auto parts.
“Increased import tariffs could lead to a smaller GM, a reduced presence at home and risk less — not more — US jobs,” the nation’s largest automaker said in comments submitted to the Commerce Department. That such a blunt statement came from GM — a company run by a CEO, Mary Barra, whose normal tack is to avoid the political fray and let trade groups address the president’s policies — was surprising to industry observers.
And it underscored how high she, and many industrial leaders, believe the stakes are as the president sinks the US into tit-for-tat trade squabbles across the globe.