Taps Coogan – June 7th, 2021

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As the following two charts from Haver Analytics reveal, the imported share of the US car and light truck markets have surged since the Covid pandemic. Car imports have hit their highest market share since GM got its tax payer bailout in 2009 and light trucks imports are flirting with an all time record. Over a third of all cars are now imported along with a quarter of all light trucks, and the unit volume of light vehicle imports has hit a record high (cars plus light trucks).

For those wondering what is driving surging auto prices, the culprit is not a shortage of imported autos. Imports have hit a record during Covid.

American manufacturers’ fragile ‘just-in-time’ single-source supply chains for vital components made in far flung locations around the world, aided and abetted by nonsensical trade policies and done to save pennies on products for which labor costs are increasingly irrelevant, have so hollowed out the domestic manufacturing ecosystem that it is now apparently easier to just import an entire car than it is for Ford and GM to source the semiconductors they need to keep their American factories running.

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