President Trump has said that “tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented.” For someone who once called himself a “tariff man,” tariffs are the solutions to many economic problems.
He has argued that imposing tariffs would protect American factories, spur manufacturing, create new jobs and bend uncooperative governments to his will. Since his inauguration, while imposing and then suspending and then imposing tariffs again, Mr. Trump has upended the global trading system.
But over that time Mr. Trump has also begun conceding that tariffs could cause financial discomfort for Americans. That possibility came up in stark terms in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” from Saturday, when Mr. Trump said that he “couldn’t care less” about the prospect of higher car prices.
The president repeated the sentiment twice when asked about the 25 percent tariffs on imported cars and auto parts that he has promised will go into effect on Thursday. He told the NBC News host Kristen Welker that the tariffs were permanent, and that he would encourage auto companies and their suppliers to move to the United States.
In one exchange, Ms. Welker asked Mr. Trump if he was at all concerned with the effect of tariffs on car prices, which experts have said could go up by thousands of dollars. “No, I couldn’t care less,” he said, “because if the prices on foreign cars go up, they’re going to buy American cars.”
After the interview, an aide to the president told NBC that Mr. Trump was referring to the increase in foreign car prices.
While the White House sought to emphasize foreign-made vehicles, the tariffs will affect American companies like Ford Motor and General Motors, which build many of their vehicles in Canada and Mexico. Nearly half of the vehicles sold in the United States are imported, according to S&P Global Mobility data, and almost 60 percent of auto parts in cars assembled in the country.
A study by the Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, forecast that tariffs would cause vehicle prices to increase by an average of 13.5 percent — an additional $6,400 to the price of an average new 2024 car.
On Sunday, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said that the tariffs were indeed a “motivator” for carmakers to bring jobs back to the United States. But, he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” they were not an “end-all solution” to help American auto workers. If jobs are being brought back to the United States, Mr. Fain said, they need to be “good paying union jobs that set standards.”
Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to Mr. Trump, defended the tariffs and said they would raise about $100 billion, which would translate to tax credits for people who buy American cars. He, too, told Americans not to worry about the effects of the tariffs.
Instead, he said on Sunday, they should “trust in Trump.”