‘No One Is Gonna Buy’ Trucks That Cost $20,000 More, Dealer Tells Fox Business

New tariffs that threaten to cripple the U.S. auto industry went into effect, and while it’s understandable that regular people would be upset about everything getting more expensive, you’d think car dealers would be on board. Wealthy owners of blue-collar businesses tend to love Trump. So Fox Business did what any far-right network would do and spoke to David Kelleher, the owner of a Ram dealership, about the tariffs. As it turns out, even he’s not a fan of Trump’s policies threatening his bottom line. Huh.

When asked about the impact of the tariffs, Kelleher called them “traumatic,” and then told a story about a customer who recently ordered a truck from his dealership. “$80,000 truck. It’s $100,000 now. So he’s not gonna buy the truck. It’s going to sit on my lot, and you know the higher interest rates we’re paying right now for floorplan, and nobody’s gonna buy the truck because it just had a $20,000 price increase.” When asked about Kelly Blue Book’s estimate that the average price of a new car would go up by about $3,000, Kelleher said he didn’t believe it. “That affects our parts that come from these countries and a whole bunch of our cars.” 

Kelleher also added, “We can’t build a $4 billion plant overnight in the United States. So I think building in the United States is great. I think enhancing the participation from the other countries on the other things, but this is pretty radical.” It isn’t entirely clear what he meant by “enhancing the participation from the other countries on the other things,” but there’s also only so much time for details when you’re doing a live interview. 

As you can imagine, that wasn’t exactly what Fox wanted to hear. Jeff Flock, the interviewer, just sounded exhausted, and when the feed cut back to Maria Bartiromo, she appeared to be flustered and stumbled over her words. After a little of her customary word salad, Bartiromo went on a rant that I’m going to guess made more sense in her head. “You know what? Let me ask you this, OK. How many Dodge Rams do you see driving around Europe, OK? How many Dodge Rams do you see driving around India? I mean, not many, I bet. Why? Because they don’t buy our cars, and that’s what President Trump is trying to change. Maybe Dodge should start building them here and selling them here.”

Now, if you want to be a stickler, the answer to her question is that Dodge hasn’t made the Ram in well over a decade, and no one is buying brand new Dodge Rams in the U.S., either. That said, the Ram 1500 is still spiritually the Dodge Ram, and it likely always will be, so we don’t need to be pedants here. The rest of what she said was already so stupid, there’s no point. Full-size pickup trucks are already a little annoying to drive in the decaying strip malls we call cities here in the U.S. Streets and parking spaces are smaller, gas costs more, and large-displacement engines get taxed at higher rates. Of course full-size pickup trucks are going to be far less popular there than in the U.S. 

Plus, both Dodge and Ram are currently owned by Stellantis, a European corporation that already sells plenty of vehicles in Europe from other brands that it owns. Why would Stellantis go to the effort of pushing vehicles that are a poor fit for a certain market when it has vehicles in its lineup that are better fits? That’s just Intro To Beginner Business, Maria.