Trump’s tariff actions have raised the hackles of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) members, nearly half of whom voted for Trump in 2024.

Trump’s victory in the 2024 election dealt a blow to UAW President Shawn Fain’s efforts to rebuild the union’s political influence. Despite an aggressive campaign to support Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, the union’s influence fell short among its members, who were divided in their political leanings. NBC exit polls reported approximately 44% of UAW members voted for Trump.

“The UAW supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy,” the union says on its website. “We do not support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy.”

“We are willing to support the Trump Administration’s use of tariffs to stop plant closures and curb the power of corporations that pit U.S. workers against workers in other countries. But so far, Trump’s anti-worker policy at home, including dissolving collective bargaining agreements and gutting the National Labor Relations Board, leaves American workers facing worsening wages and working conditions even while the administration takes aggressive tariff action,” the UAW stated.

The union asked on February 3 that the Trump Administration renegotiate “broken trade deals” among the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In his first term (2017-2021) President Trump replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the three countries with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which took effect on July 1, 2020.

“The national emergency we face is not about drugs or immigration, but about a working class that has fallen behind for generations while corporate America exploits workers abroad and consumers at home for massive Wall Street paydays. We need to stop plant closures, bring back American jobs, and stop the global race to the bottom immediately,” the UAW stated. “Any tariff action must be followed with a renegotiation of the USMCA, and a full review of the corporate trade regime that has devastated the American and global working class.”

Nor is the environmental community in favor of tariffs. The environmental nonprofit Sierra Club says, “Tariffs should be a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.”

“Donald Trump is again making the wrong move that puts even more pain on American families. The United States is demonstrating clean, billion-dollar, cutting-edge technologies to make aluminum and steel more efficiently, while some of our fiercest global competitors double down on pollution,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said this week.

“Trump’s expensive trade war will hurt American workers and consumers by driving up costs to make clean American steel, aluminum, vehicles, and energy products. Instead of demanding that Americans pay more, Trump should support the policies that will grow domestic manufacturing, reduce costs, and help working families,” Jealous said.

For decades, automakers have built cross-border supply chains linking the United States, Mexico and Canada. More than one in five of the cars and light trucks sold in the United States were built in Canada or Mexico, according to a recent report from S&P Global Mobility.

In 2023, the United States imported US$69 billion worth of cars and light trucks from Mexico, more than any other country, and $37 billion from Canada. Another $78 billion in auto parts came from Mexico and $20 billion from Canada. The engines in Ford F-series pickups and the iconic Mustang sports coupe, for instance, come from Canada.

While S&P Global Mobility noted that January auto sales began the year 2025 on positive note, January sales were expected to slow from the uptake realized in December but still sustain some of 2024’s fourth-quarter progress.

“Auto sales are expected to post a decent volume level in January,” said Chris Hopson, principal analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “An uncertain auto demand environment awaits in 2025, as the industry and consumers digest potential policy changes from the new administration, but together with the inventory draw down at the end of 2024, and weather impacts during the month, January sales should be viewed as a positive result.”

In Washington, DC, the right-leaning libertarian Cato Institute warned, “These new US import taxes, as well as retaliation against US businesses that the Canadian and Mexican governments have promised, would cause significant damage to the US, Canadian, and Mexican economies.”

Tesla’s dramatic drop in sales is part of the same story, with the addition of the extensive involvement of unelected Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk in the politics of the second Trump administration.

Until 2022, Musk predicted that Tesla’s sales would surge to 20 million units by the end of the decade. But with Tesla’s global sales shrinking 1% in 2024 to 1.79 million units and U.S. sales dropping more than 5.6%, he’s not trumpeting that now.

The California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) has released its Q4 2024 report showing that Tesla experienced its first annual drop in sales – by double digits in California, the most important EV market in the United States, while the rest of the EV market is growing.

CNCDA commented on Tesla’s performance, saying, “Things aren’t looking so golden for EV automaker Tesla in the Golden State. Tesla’s dominance in the electric vehicle market continues to falter as the brand reported its fifth consecutive quarterly registration decline. Tesla’s registrations fell 7.8 percent in Q4 2024, contributing to an overall 11.6 percent decline in 2024. The company’s market share also dropped by 7.6 points in 2024, now holding 52.5 percent of the Zero Emission Vehicle market for the year. Amongst all brands, Tesla’s share of California’s market is 11.6 percent, down from 13 percent in 2023.”

By comparison, the overall EV segment grew 7.4% during the first eight months of 2024. Pull out Tesla, and demand for other EV brands grew 12.2%. “Tesla alone has been a major factor in the overall slowdown of the U.S. EV market,”

With so many more “compelling products” to pick from brands ranging from Audi to Volvo, it’s not a surprise the competition is gaining share and building sales, Ed Kim, CEO of the research firm AutoPacific, Inc. told Headlight News. “Tesla sales have absolutely cratered this year,” Kim said.

And it’s happening in Europe too. Tesla registrations for the month plunged 63% in France, 44% in Sweden, 38% in Norway, and 42% in the Netherlands. The decline was a more modest 12% in the UK, but the EV maker fell from second on the EV sales list to seventh, according to data published by New AutoMotive, an independent transport research group based in the UK.

In Washington, DC, Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has been busy. Now named as a “special government employee” and head of the new so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk is pushing to deconstruct the federal bureaucracy, triggering questions about the scope of his authority and warnings of a constitutional crisis, or even a coup.

As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has billions of dollars in government contracts, a fact that has raised concerns about conflicts of interest woven into his cost-cutting drive.

Musk does not hold elected office and is not part of Trump’s Cabinet, whose members require confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

During the first three weeks of Trump’s second term, acting without Congressional oversight, Musk’s cadre of young techs have brought the work of the United States main foreign aid agency, USAID, to a halt, earmarked millions of government employees for redundancy, gained access to classified material and sensitive details about millions of Americans, and taken control of the payment system that manages the flow of trillions of dollars of government spending.

All these activities appear to be linked to Tesla’s declining sales.

“I was heavily considering getting a Tesla when my lease was up because I do like having an electric around-town vehicle,” said Erica S, a media expert from Scottsdale, Arizona who asked that her last name not be used. “But Musk is so crazy pants that I just can’t even consider buying one,” she told Headlight News.

Another driver posted, “Elon Musk has made buying a Tesla about him. He’s a lunatic. Hence, I’m not buying one.”

A potential Tesla customer posted on the electrek website, “Elon, there’s a small rural hardware store owner who has a bit of advice for you. He said, ‘Politics is bad for business. No matter what stance you take on any issue, you will lose at least half of your customers. I don’t want to lose any of my customers!’ Pure genius! Elon, take note. Look at what happened since you started partying with trump. Yup, politics is definitely bad for your business.”

Many other social media posts project a similar message, a new feeling amongst the driving public that could set EV adoption back.

“Our economies are inextricably linked by manufacturing and many other critical industries,” Glenn Stevens Jr., executive director of the automotive industry association MichAuto, said in a statement this week. “MichAuto and its constituents are concerned about the collateral damage that will be done to manufacturing, the impact it will have on Michiganders’ jobs, and the fact that the consumer will feel the increased cost of doing business in the prices they pay from vehicles in the showrooms to the grocery store.”

The grocery store, where Kurt Kelty is busy in the produce section counting up the carbon footprint of the blueberries he will eat for breakfast and planning a smaller carbon footprint for General Motors.