Europe is to be flooded with American cars and energy after Brussels struck an eleventh-hour trade deal with Donald Trump.
Under the terms of a pact announced on Sunday, the European Union will face 15 per cent tariffs on exports to the US, staving off a full-blown trade war after months of negotiations.
Mr Trump had threatened to impose tariffs of 30 per cent on the bloc if no deal was reached by August 1.
In return, Mr Trump said, the EU has offered zero tariffs for US goods going in the opposite direction.
Think they might be safe enough on the cars. A few pick ups maybe but what else? And energy, what tariffs were there on that anyway?
As usual it is really the politics that are important. The actual trade matter is secondary.
EU has to take it with only the minimum of lube.
BMW make their motors for the USA over there anyway.
ps Energy – doesn’t the US now supply a large chunk of LNG to Europe ? Isn’t that tarifficated ?
BMW and Mercedes make all their SUVs in South Carolina and Alabama respectively. Even the ones sold in Europe.
Fun thing to do if you’re bored: go to a BMW dealership and look at a 5-series (made in Germany), an X3 (made in USA) and an iX3 (made in China). The difference in fit and finish, panel gaps, etc. is amazing.
Can’t see the Yanks selling many pick-ups to Europe and energy is energy, right?
But there is a massive EU trade surplus with the US, so there will be lot of products heading West which will be hit.
Matt,
“Fun thing to do if you’re bored: go to a BMW dealership and look at a 5-series (made in Germany), an X3 (made in USA) and an iX3 (made in China). The difference in fit and finish, panel gaps, etc. is amazing.”
I’m guessing the 5-series is really good, then China, then USA?
My general take is that anything that car makers do that isn’t “core” business (large BMW and Mercedes saloons/estates, Porsche sport cars) is just for status-seeking MILFs, so can be crap. They just want the badge and aren’t even glancing for a second at what Autocar thinks of it.
Guy Verhofstadt is pissed off so top marks to Trump.
Trump wisely doesn’t gloat when he gets a good deal but in Guy’s case it would be fun to watch him rub it in.
Why should Trump make any concession? Remember, this is retaliation – the deck has been stacked in the EU’s (and Canada and Mexico and the UK) favour for decades.
All The Donald is doing is removing a few of the marked cards.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch, could it? You know, the ignorant, stupid orange idiot actually getting one over on them? How could this possibly happen? And to get worse terms than Brexitland? This must really have put TTK on the spot, too. An embarrassment of riches.
Of course, Trump hasn’t a clue, has he?
Once again, the 50-years-out-of-date conventional wisdom of Europeans about American cars is prominently on display. You folks really believe that all US vehicles are either 1/2-ton pickups, monster SUVs or 2-ton 8-seat sedans.
As has already been pointed out, several European and most Japanese car companies build a large proportion of their production in US factories. And while the US market is certainly more diverse than other places, American consumers are pretty-much the same as consumers everywhere else, and so the US market offers a huge selection of small, energy-efficient sedans, miniature SUVs, compact pickups and people-haulers, which would be just as attractive to European customers as they are to US customers, if the price is right.
What you see on TV is not real life in the US, in this area as in so many others. If the engineering is right (different fuels, different C&U regs, different crash-test standards) there’s a whole raft of US built vehicles which would fit right in in European traffic.
llater,
llamas
Well, where I lived in the US the european stereotype fitted fine. F-150, Ram, Silverado. There were euro-style cars but mostly having their roots in Europe or Asia. We already have imports of those cars because car manufacturing is global. But big sedans? Aren’t they all gone now? I had a rented 2015 for a long trip and it was ideal. I drove from Dallas to Cinci in a day. I’d booked a hotel halfway but when I got there I was feeling fine so I carried on. 972 miles and I still felt good when I got out. I’d have that Impala in the UK, but they never sold it here. We get Mustangs, real and EV, Corvettes and Teslas. I can’t see it changing. US makers who wanted to compete in Europe have always built their cars here, and designed them to fit local taste.
@ Rhoda Klapp – well, let’s take just your example. The Chevrolet Impala, a ‘full-size’ sedan, ended production in 2020. Leaving aside the last couple of years, its last years of volume production, they built between 40, 000 and 50,000 units. In an annual market around 13,000,000 units, I think you’ll agree that this was not a prominent product.
The same is true for most other large ‘3-box’ sedans. Ford, for example, doesn’t offer any sedan models at all.
Sure, there’s any amount of F-150s and the like tootling around. Some of them ridiculously-overpriced and over-spec’ed, rather in the manner of 7-series BMWs and AMG Mercedes. But for every F-150 in the suburbs – and the suburbs in the US are a completely-different universe than Sydenham or Willesden – there’s a Mazda or a Toyota or Hyundai full of kids and shopping – just like in Tooting or Finchley.
llater,
llamas
@ Rhoda
I agree that US carmakers who want to sell any serrious number of cars in Europe build them here – why pay higher wages in the USA than at a European plant and higher transport costs for the assembled cars than for any components that you need to make in the US. I am not so sure about designed to fit local taste. Vauxhall cars were stupidly big (my 6’7″ Scripture teacher was the only person I ever remember fitting in one) until GM delegated control to Adam Opel; when Chrysler took over Rootes Group they ruined it
What you see on TV is not real life in the US,
What! The cops don’t drive around in red Gran Torinos? Say it ain’t so.
@WB
Nope. The German is indeed the best. Fit, finish, paintwork all not just spot on, but better than that somehow. An “OK, I can see why someone might pay the premium for this.” American is in the middle; could be a Hyundai or a Toyota. Hyundais and Toyotas are fine, but not at BMW prices.
The Chinese offering is laughable. Blingtastic, but obviously cheap plastics, mismatching paint and British Leyland panel gaps.
I was mooching around while waiting for a service and asked one of the sales guys why they had an X3 parked next to an iX3 in the showroom given it made the iX3 look so bad. After checking nobody was around he explained that the people who actually look at the cars are private buyers who won’t want the iX3, and it makes the petrol X3 look a lot better as a comparison. The iX3 buyers are fleets who wouldn’t look at the regular X3 anyway.
BMWs: do I remember rightly that those are rear-wheel driven cars that do rather badly on snow? Or was that long go?
Dearieme, a car good on snow? That’ll be my old Renault 4 van. A veritable mountain goat.
dearieme,
Yes, they are rear wheel drive.
On the suggestion of a friend I test drove a BMW 7 twenty years ago and wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t that it was rear wheel drive, I’d had an old Triumph 2500 PSI for a long time, it just felt too solid and sluggish. I also drove an Audi 8, that was like riding on a rock although the unhelpful salesman* reckoned it could be changed.
The thing is I’d been driving a Passat for about 10 years and before that my wife had various Golfs and I quite licked them, hence trying out German.
In the end I settled for the old style Jaguar XJ6 but it was one of the newer ones with an aluminium body. What I really liked was for the test drive they just threw the keys at me and said to come back when I was ready. The other 2 companies limited me to a 5 mile test route with the salesman breathing down my neck.
*He didn’t even show for the first test drive I booked and I had to go back a week later
Seems to me, and I only get my info from the net, that the US car market is in a state of fluct. And it is no better here. The US had a massive price inflation back in covid times, a seller’s market. They seem to have pushed into higher prices, more stuff, bigger vehicles. That is all the domestic manufacturers and Stellantis whatever that is. And then there’s pushing EVs where they are not wanted. Bigger and fatter SUVs, no sedans or hatchbacks. It’s hard to see that US industry making inroads into Europe. Car companies everywhere are in big financial trouble and it’s because people don’t want to buy the cars they make at the prices they charge. Something’s gotta give.
Just a point of detail. Foreign makers who have US assembly plants still have to pay tariffs on imported parts, so it is that proportion of cost which determines whether it is really a US car or not.
Bloke in North Dorset said:
“I test drove a BMW 7 twenty years ago and wasn’t impressed … it just felt too solid and sluggish.”
What engine was it? I drive a 20 year old BMW estate and it’s definitely not sluggish, but it’s got the 6-cylinder engine; think the 4-cylinder ones are only sold to people who want the badge.
Richard,
I can’t remember, but its was in the same price range as the Jag so probably not top end, but not the smallest engine either. I was looking for a decent car in that class and not for a badge.
“Fluct.”
Accurate description, rhoda.
‘Europe is to be flooded with American cars and energy after Brussels struck an eleventh-hour trade deal with Donald Trump.’
If Trump negotiated it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the trade deal actually said ‘flooded.’
I had a Impala as a hire car once.
It was like driving a shoe box on wheels. The handling was shocking and of course it had the automatic changer on a stick on the steering wheel .
I felt like I was in some 1970s cop show. I was expecting Angie Dickinson to hold me at gunpoint and commandeer the car.
I once had a 60s Impala. That was a – hopelessly stupid, grossly uneconomic etc etc – total glory.
Angie in her prime could hold me at gunpoint any time. The Ipala was a 2015 and handling was adequate. My first US hire car in 1977 was a Pinto. That really was crap.
Ottokring wrote (of a pre-2013 Chevrolet Impala)
“It was like driving a shoe box on wheels. The handling was shocking and of course it had the automatic changer on a stick on the steering wheel .”
Well – with respect – horses, for courses. Complaining about the handling of a Chevrolet Impala – a full-size, budget-luxury sedan – is rather like complaining that a Chevrolet Corvette is short on luggage space, or a Chevrolet Cavalier doesn’t have seating for 5 adults.
For what it is, the handling was perfectly adequate. And if you were planning a longer freeway journey – as Rhoda Klapp describes – a mid-market 2000’s full-size sedan was about-as-close to perfect as you could wish for. A big, reliable, slow-revving, low-stressed V8 of about 175 hp gave more-than adequate power. A lock-up transmission with overdrive gave long-legged quiet cruising with decent fuel economy. Ample room for 5 adults or about 14 children with all their impedimenta. Scorching heater or chilling air-conditioning, as required, cruise, power steering, power brakes, a feather-bed ride, these were awesome mile-eaters at modest cost. Handling? You’re not doing a stage of the RAC Rally, you’re running down the freeway. Horses, for courses.
Jimmers wrote:
“What! The cops don’t drive around in red Gran Torinos? Say it ain’t so.”
Sadly – hardly ever. I understand David Solberg is a UK citizen now. How times change.
llater,
llamas
@ Norman
Lada. When you can identify the road because it resembles a thousand kilometre rut through the snow you need a car that can cope with snow. So some engineer who wasn’t interested enough in politics to get sent to a gulag designed one that could cope with the snow, and another improved it and another. Nobody cared that they made a Ford Prefect look like a luxury sports car but they did care that they worked in a Russioan, or Siberian, winter.
Pal of mine drove Ladas in rallies. They were really good. Tough little things.
I was with him once and his Lada lost 3rd gear. ” Don’t worry, I have another three to choose from.”
ps He’s a card carrying communist.
@ Ottokring
In 1991 most of the cars sold in Czechoslovakia were Ladas. I asked why? There is (was at the time) a three-year queue for Skodas. Vaclav Klaus unintentionally bankrupted Skoda when he abolished price controls because Skoda had accepted orders for three years production at the old fixed price and a lot of its costs nearly doubled when component prices reflected realistic costs.
Oh, no! That genius drives such a hard bargain! We’re forced to suffer from … cheap energy. How will we cope with such hardship!