Trump’s Confidential Report On Foreign Car Threat Released By U.S., Read It In Full Here

The U.S. Commerce Department this week released a confidential report used as the basis for the Trump administration’s 2019 threat to impose tariffs of 25% on imported vehicles.

According to the Trump administration, the document justified the tariffs because some vehicles posed a national security threat. When the administration would not reveal the contents of the report to the public or to Congress, a lawsuit was launched to make the information public.

The report argued that “significant import penetration over the course of the past
three decades has severely weakened the U.S. automotive industry, as Americanowned production of automobiles and automobile parts has been reduced by
imports and the domestic manufacturing base has weakened”.

The report did not consider the Chrysler group (now owned by Stellantis) and its brands, Chrysler, RAM, Dodge and Jeep, an American company

This has resulted in a significant decline in R&D investments which “jeopardizes U.S. military leadership’s ability to fulfill America’s defense requirements,” claims the report.

Analysts told Autonews that “German automakers had the most at stake if Trump imposed trade penalties” adding that “Trump had complained since mid-2017 about the German cars’ presence on U.S. streets and tweeted threats to tax German automakers’ vehicles.”

The argument was not convincing to Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who drafted the legislation that required the report’s disclosure, per Reuters.

“A quick glance confirms what we expected: The justification for these tariffs was so entirely unfounded that even the authors were too embarrassed to let it see the light of day,” said Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who drafted the legislation that required the report’s disclosure, in a statement.

The report was initiated in 2018 by Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary under Trump, who was investigating auto tariffs under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act at the President’s behest. That was the same Section used to justify Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs.

Ross’s eventual recommendations to Trump were to negotiate new trade agreements with countries that export cars to the US, impose a 25% tariff on vehicles and auto parts, or impose a 35% tariff on SUVs and crossovers, according to Politico,

Those recommendations received a lot of resistance, though, and were never followed through on, despite Trump’s threats. Although efforts to release the document date back to 2019, Ross refused to disclose the contents of the report.

“The Commerce Department has a statutory obligation to Congress, and to the American people, to release all of their Section 232 reports,” Toomey said Tuesday. “It was wholly unacceptable that the previous administration defied federal law and refused to release this report.”

Notably, the report names only three American automakers, as it excluded Chrysler, stating that, “for the purposes of this report, American-owned automobile producers are General Motors (“GM”), Ford, and Tesla”.

You can read the entire report below.