Trump to Japan: You’ll Take this Ford F-150 and you’ll Like it!
More evidence that Trump’s Tariffs are Bad for Business
There was an interesting piece recently penned by Eric Boehm of Reason Magazine that I want to share with you.
Entitled, Ford Paid $800 Million in Tariff Costs Over 3 Months, Despite Building Most of Its Cars in America, Boehm argues that this little factoid should “put an end to the Trump administration’s silly talking point about how there is no tariff for products built in the U.S.”
It turns out that 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum—two materials automakers require—and a 25 percent tariff on imported car parts have a dramatic impact on any American company that builds cars. Similarly, General Motors has reported that tariffs cost it more than $1 billion during the second quarter.
You’ll never get these details from the porcelain press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, but this is one of the reasons I read Reason Magazine: to get all the details bureaucrats like to keep on the DL.
Of course, even before these fakakta tariffs began, most economists agreed that they would result in miserable failure. At least for us peasants and serfs.
Boehm continued pointing out those pesky details, writing …
Ironically, the fact that Ford builds so many of its cars in the United States makes it uniquely susceptible to Trump's tariff schemes. As The Wall Street Journal reported this week, the Trump administration's recently announced (though still not finalized) deals with Japan and the European Union will apply a lower tariff rate of 15 percent on finished cars imported from those places. Meanwhile, automakers toiling in the U.S. are facing relatively higher tariffs on the raw materials and parts they need.
As a result of excessive criticism about his deal with Japan, the President announced this week that Japan would start accepting imports of Ford’s F-150. Whether or not that’s true, we still don’t know, because this guy just randomly makes shit up as he goes along.
Of course, I’m not sure it even matters. After all, Ford (NYSE: F) stopped selling cars in Japan in 2016 after it couldn’t make a profit in that market.
According to the Von Schledorn Auto Group, Japanese consumers don’t typically buy American cars for three main reasons:
American brands don’t make cars that suit Japanese tastes
American brands haven’t invested in a significant dealership presence in the country
Some Japanese consumers have a perception of American vehicles as unreliable and inefficient
It should also be noted that most of Japan’s city streets are quite narrow and cannot accommodate larger American cars. In fact, more than 30% of all cars sold in Japan last year were kei cars, which represent the smallest category of highway-legal vehicles in Japan.
The most popular kei car sold in Japan last year was the Honda N-Box.
I think they look pretty cool, but I’m quite certain if I drove one here, I might get my ass kicked.
In any event, while there is a market for pickup trucks in Japan, I’m not convinced the F-150 would be a big seller there, mostly due to its size and fuel economy. The most fuel-efficient F-150 delivers a fuel economy of between 23 t0 26 miles per gallon. The most popular pick-up truck in Japan (that’s not a kei car) is the Toyota Hilux, which clocks in between 25 to 39 miles per gallon. To be sure, fuel economy is quite important in Japan as gasoline tends to be more expensive there compared to the U.S. Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. is $3.16. In Japan, it’s $4.48.
This idea that Trump is going to bully Japan into buying F-150s is incredibly misguided. Even if Ford could get some kind of incentive to do so, the market will still dictate whether or not they’ll sell in Japan.
Trump is used to using bully tactics to get people to do what he wants. The art of the deal is simply the art of bullying. And that clearly worked for him in the private sector while he was building golf courses, office buildings, and casinos. But on the world stage, that kind of bullying will ultimately prove to be both ineffective and counterproductive.
What I’m reading …
Confusion over Tariff Stacking Hampers Japan’s Bid to Pin Down US Trade Deal: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-07/fresh-discrepancy-hampers-japan-s-bid-to-pin-down-us-trade-deal
Tariffs are bad policy- and Trump keeps making disastrous trade deals because of it: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/08/04/trump-trade-deal-japan-tariffs-cars/85476754007/
Japan presses US on auto tariff cut, seeks clarification on other levies: https://www.reuters.com/business/japan-presses-us-auto-tariff-cut-seeks-clarification-other-levies-2025-08-07/