The threat of tariffs has triggered something of a gold rush on America's auto lots. Automakers are offering big discounts and some buyers are racing to shop before prices rise. But it's a boom driven by anxiety that also contains some warning signs for the economy — and for budget-minded shoppers in particular.
Kyra Nay, a children's librarian in Ohio, was planning to buy a bigger car for her growing family — but not until next year. Then tariff announcements out of the White House sent her scrambling to move faster.
"With the tariffs and so much of the uncertainty about that, we just decided that we couldn't wait any longer," she says. She and her husband ran out to buy a Honda CR-V in late March, and they weren't the only ones racing to lock in pre-tariff prices. "The dealership was packed," Nay says.
The car data group Cox Automotive had expected a sleepy March; instead, the spike in sales after Trump's March 26 announcement of auto-specific tariffs drove the hottest new car sales in four years.
Economists at Cox Automotive now predict the rush might last a couple of months. But eventually, tariff-driven price increases would cause sales to slow. You can see signs of that potential slowdown in choices made by drivers like Jennifer Jarvis, a pharmacist in Michigan. She, too, has been thinking of buying a new family SUV. But she and her husband changed their minds. Instead of racing to a dealership, they replaced the transmission in their old minivan, hoping to squeeze another 100,000 miles out of it.
"The idea of trying to buy a car in this market and the tariffs and everything," she says. "I mean, we're going to be driving this probably until it needs either another transmission or it falls off the road."
Other shoppers told NPR they're delaying plans to buy a vehicle because they're worried about their jobs being at risk, or they are trying to build savings in case of a recession.
Some shoppers are hurrying up, others are stepping back. Meanwhile, the tariffs themselves keep changing. Yesterday President Trump put a 90-day pause on many of his newly announced tariffs, but the ones most important to the auto industry remain. That includes a 25% tariff on imported cars that kicked in last week, plans to impose tariffs on car parts, and 25% tariffs on the steel and aluminum that go into vehicles.
Add it all up and this is just a weird time for the auto market. But weird times are not new to the auto industry, says Scott Kunes, the COO of the Wisconsin-based Kunes Auto and RV Group.
"It kind of feels like we're back in that early 2020 era when COVID was just starting to hit and nobody quite knew what was happening," he says.
For now, demand is up and there are good deals to be had on new cars. Manufacturers are offering significant incentives and the much-discussed tariff price hikes, for the most part, haven't materialized yet.
"All the vehicles that are currently on the ground or in port are not affected by tariffs," Kunes says, pointing out that dealers like to keep about two to three months' worth of vehicles on their lots — a built-in buffer.
Yet in the long run, if tariffs stick, analysts say that car prices would likely go up by thousands of dollars. The exact amount would vary based on manufacturer and model.
Kunes is optimistic about his own business; he says that both dealers and automakers are resilient and can adapt to whatever happens. But some buyers, especially those on a budget, will have a harder time, he says.
"I think one thing that nobody's really thinking about or talking about is the used car market," he says. Kunes sells both new and used cars, and notes that tariffs on new cars will increase demand for used cars, while tariffs on parts will push up the cost to repair them. So tariffs, indirectly, will drive up used car prices.
In fact, they already have. According to the latest report by iSeeCars, used car prices had been stable for the last six months but started rising in March. Prices for popular used cars could rise by $890 to $5,169 if the post-tariff market resembles the early COVID market, the used car listing site predicts.
That's on top of already-steep prices that are still showing the effects of the COVID-era supply chain disruptions that crimped new car supply several years ago. Today, Kunes says it's hard to find a "good, reliable" used vehicle that's still under warranty for less than $25,000. And the lowest-cost cars that used to run around $5,000 are now more like $8,000 to 10,000, he says.
Connecticut car shopper Angelica DeLeon is facing that daunting used vehicle market now. When she was unemployed during the COVID pandemic, her car was repossessed. Since then, she's been relying on Ubers and her family and friends to get around.
"That's really been a struggle," she says, pointing out that public transit is spotty where she lives.
She's been saving money for two years to buy a vehicle, and a few months ago she got a full-time admin job. Now she's prepared to buy a reliable car in the $10,000 range — if she can find one.
"Recently I'm looking at the prices, and I notice that they shot up," she says. She's been searching for used Subarus and finding options over her budget with "like 135,000 miles, 165,000 miles," she says. That's too much wear and tear for her to trust.
What, she asks, are you supposed to do "when you're making the minimum and you do need a car?"
That question was already a pressing one for people across the country. And the tariff chaos is only making it worse.
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