| Hi, it’s Hannah Elliott, your Pursuits cars columnist. Are you tired yet of hearing about auto tariffs? Confusion and chaos have reigned since President Trump signed a proclamation on March 26 to implement a 25% tariff on autos and parts imported to the US. Almost every day has brought new carve-outs, or possible extensions and exemptions, and other adjustments to the original decree. Describing the situation as “fluid” is an understatement. Manufacturers reacted just hours after the order took effect on April 3. Stellantis NV halted some production in Canada and Mexico; Ford Motor Co. started slashing prices; General Motors Co. said it would boost US truck output. Volkswagen AG told dealers it will tack on import fees to what it ships to the US; Toyota Motor Corp. cut overtime at a factory in Mexico. On the luxury side, Audi, Lotus and Jaguar Land Rover paused shipments to the US. Porsche AG preemptively increased inventory. Ferrari NV said it’ll raise prices 10%; Mercedes-Benz Group AG said it’s considering withdrawing some of its entry-level vehicles from the American market altogether. Renault hit pause on debuting a new line of Alpine-branded cars that had been intended for the US.  Chinese-made cars, including Volvos, at the port in Nanjing on April 16 as they wait to be exported. Photographer: STR/AFP/Getty Images/AFP Tariffs threaten the highly calibrated business models of foreign and domestic automakers alike; they wreak havoc with the careful planning required—often over the course of four to seven years—to bring a new vehicle to market. They’re scary; the whiplash between what’s threatened and what may or may not be enforced has created deep uncertainty and anxiety. “We just need to know what the target is—and right now it keeps moving,” one spokesperson from an American brand told me earlier this month. The fatigue was palpable. Analysts are saying that at this point automakers don’t have much leeway to do anything other than take the financial hit. “Don’t expect automotive brands to pass on tariff costs to consumers,” Thomas King, president of the data & analytics division and chief product officer for J.D. Power, said at the Automotive Forum in New York City this week. Tariffs also fundamentally challenge our presuppositions about what it means to be “made in America.” Consider that hundreds of thousands of vehicles from BMW and Mercedes-Benz have been made at plants in the American South. The BMW X3 and Mercedes-Maybach GLS are, quite literally, made in America. “We're an American company too, older than most American companies actually,” Mercedes-Benz Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ola Kallenius said last month when I joined him in Rome for an early drive in the Mercedes-Benz CLA electric sedan. “We have been in the United States for more than 120 years. We employ more than 11,000 people in the US. If we take our suppliers and our dealers and every partner that we have, that number probably goes north of 150,000 people. So we feel American, we're part of the fabric.” Mercedes runs two production operations in the US, one in Alabama and one in South Carolina. “The whole agenda around let's make the United States a manufacturing powerhouse?” Kallenius says. “Mercedes-Benz is at the center of that.”  A Mercedes-Benz CLA on display in Berlin on March 18. Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg On the other hand, roughly 20% of vehicles sold under the Ford brand aren’t made domestically at all. Tesla, a homegrown brand with factories in California and Texas, says it uses foreign parts in as many as 40% of its vehicles and makes many of its cars in its Gigafactory in Shanghai. There may be some relief in sight. After a massive lobbying blitz that saw auto executives including Kallenius, BMW CEO Oliver Zipse and Volkswagen’s North America CEO Kjell Gruner on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration is considering whether to reduce certain tariffs that would decimate profits and jobs. It could spare automobiles and parts already subject to tariffs from facing additional duties from levies on steel and aluminum imports, or it may fully exempt auto parts that comply with the US-Mexico-Canada trade pact. Auto parts in general, and components bought from China in particular, could also be spared from some tariffs, according to some people close to the matter. A reprieve can’t come soon enough. To hear auto executives tell it, something’s got to give. “Obviously now in the moment there is this significant change,” says Massimiliano Trantini, president and CEO of Lotus Americas. “When the tariff goes too high, [there is a] certain level when the business case is not sustainable anymore.” Here’s some of our recent coverage of the issue: | 
