Just north of the city center of Flint, Michigan, a two-story red brick building known as the One factory is a single recall of the rich history of the American automotive industry.
The factory, the place of birth of General Motors, is still a lighthouse of innovation in the city of Michigan where the number of car workers has been decreasing for decades.
US President Donald Trump’s car rates are supposed to bring these jobs, but some experts say that the samples hit Canada and Mexico make the whole North American industry less competitive as vehicles become too expensive to buy.
“Someone fell asleep at the wheel,” said Maurice Pope last Sunday at Flint Farmer’s Market.
Michiganders fear that their condition will become zero land in Trump’s World Trade War. Almost 20% of the state economy is linked to the automotive sector – and it faces tariff assaults on all fronts.
In addition to automotive prices on the nearest American neighbors, vehicles need steel and aluminum. A large part is imported from Canada, which Trump slapped with 25% of the prices.
Michigan will not escape the repercussions of universal prices of 10% of the president and 145% tariffs on Chinese imports.
The Pope does not understand the strategy that could crush the deeply integrated North American automotive market and the questions if there is even one.
“People don’t do what they have to do with regard to research and understanding of the impact,” he said.
Flint is known as the “Vehicle City”, starting with its domination of the production of carriages from the late 1800s for strollers fired by horses. This expertise and this industry have flounded a natural location for the automotive sector emerging from the early 1900s.
During the following decades, Flint and the Detroit region saw booming savings in the automotive industry. Chris Douglas, professor of economics at the University of Michigan -Flint, said in the 1960s, the three Grand – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis – controlled around 90% of the American automotive market.
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“You can get a secondary school diploma, get your diploma, get out of the school scene, walk directly in the local automotive factory and get a fairly paid job that you could work for the rest of your life,” said Douglas.
“It was a difficult job, it was a dirty job, but he paid enough to buy a house, send your children to the university, maybe buy a boat, a chalet in the north.”
For a while, General Motors employed approximately half of the flint population.
Through the international border, Canada’s automotive sector was already working in tandem with Michigan. Integration was deepened with the 1965 trade agreement between Canada and the United States
Douglas said that “the golden age” of cars had been hardly affected by the 1970s oil market shocks. As oil prices increased, gas vehicles that the United States has built was not popular.
Douglas described it as a “perfect storm” striking the three large ones: the Americans began to buy Japanese cars, which had better quality measurements and energy efficiency. In the 1980s, there were massive layoffs and plant closings.
President Ronald Reagan’s administration has negotiated voluntary export constraints with Japanese car manufacturers and has helped save American industry.
United Automobile President Shawn Fain has blamed the North American free trade agreement for having undermined the American automotive industry. Douglas said the decline occurred before the trade agreement entered into force in 1994, but there was a flow of certain jobs to Mexico. Michigan has also seen factories moving into cheaper American states such as Kentucky and Tennessee.
The continental trade pact was renegotiated under the first Trump administration and was replaced by the Canada-UX-Mexico Agreement. It included stimulation of protections in the automotive industry.
Alan Deardorff, professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, said that Trump’s prices mean that the agreement is essentially “dead”.
FAIN was favorable to automotive prices on Thursday, but expressed his concern about the “reckless and chaotic” activity on the Trump administration trade. In a video on social networks, Fain said that he had not supported the use of prices for political gains around immigration or fentanyl.
Douglas said that even if the prices bring back certain factories in the United States “the manufacture will never be the source of employment it was 50 years ago.”
Motor production has become more automated. Douglas said: “You just don’t need so many people working in a factory to produce a car now compared to 1970.”
Douglas said that if the samples against Canada and Mexico remain in place, it would become more expensive to make a vehicle in the United States
Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan consulting firm, estimated an additional $ 5,000 at USD $ 5,000 could be added to the lowest and up to USD $ 12,000 for full size. Trump’s prices have since changed quickly.
“The American consumer at some point will simply be used,” said Douglas.
Canada also buys many vehicles from the United States reprisal tasks in response to Trump automotive prices, target this sector. Deardoff said that American automotive companies should find different customers in the United States, but this also has a cost.
Thousands of people still work in the assembly of Flint, the longest assembly plant in General Motor in North America. Many in the community hope that prices could provide additional employment to the city of around 79,000. Others are worried if plants close or companies reduce the workforce, people will leave.
“I have not done enough research to see how it would affect me, if this is the case,” said Megan Heuninck, who does not work in the automotive industry.
“I’m sure there is a certain level that affects everything.”
