Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Monday, March 24.
President Donald Trump's on-and-off-and-on-again tariff threats are an absolute nightmare for automakers who need to figure out what's coming — or not coming. As we reported last week, this kind of uncertainty can leave a company such as Ford Motor Co. wondering if it'll soon cost another $667 million a year to ship truck engines to the U.S. from Canada.
So perhaps Hyundai Chairman Euisun Chung, one of the emerging executive stars in the global auto industry, signaled an effective way to deal with tariff uncertainty by offering the White House something certain: thousands of new U.S. jobs and $21 billion in investments.
Of course, Korea-based Hyundai already has been sending messages that major new investments are coming to the U.S. You can count on Hyundai CEO Jose Muñoz to talk about U.S. expansion whenever he grants an interview or makes a public appearance.
Read more: Live updates on tariff news and impacts
It won't take long to find out if Hyundai's plans for the U.S. will yield sympathetic tariff treatment for Korea in the coming days. It will also be notable if European and Japanese automakers follow Hyundai's lead and make similar job announcements for their U.S. operations. Even more compelling would be a Chinese automaker offering to build a U.S. plant.
As for the Detroit 3, they face enormous conflicts between maintaining Canadian and Mexican operations and handling the pressure to move more jobs back to the U.S.
For now, it looks like the Trump administration might back off the most onerous tariffs that could hit the U.S. auto industry, but it can change by the minute. Stay tuned.
Also in today's report, we have this story by Pete Bigelow that addresses the ongoing crisis of highway fatalities. Why aren't the grim U.S. highway fatality statistics going down with the miraculous new safety technologies being programmed into new cars and trucks?
"We've been going in the exact wrong direction," David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said in our story today. Fatalities have increased 21 percent in the U.S. in the past 15 years, according to federal records. They crested above 40,000 in each of the past three years for which complete federal records are available, Bigelow wrote.
So what's next? Perhaps these terrible statistics will energize the adoption of self-driving vehicle technologies.
Meanwhile, another EV startup is showing signs of serious financial stress. Bollinger Motors is being sued by its founder and former CEO Robert Bollinger to repay a $10 million loan he gave the company last year. The federal lawsuit alleges the electric truck maker is insolvent, can't pay its bills and is being sued by at least two of its suppliers, Richard Truett wrote today.
Bollinger Motors CEO Bryan Chambers said no trucks are being built. "We can confirm that we have temporarily paused production. However, it is our policy not to comment on an ongoing legal issue," he told Automotive News in an email.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
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