President Trump has declared a “roaring comeback” in American auto manufacturing since imposing a 25 percent tariff on imported cars, but industry analysts say the record so far is closer to incremental gains weighed down by supplier spending that stalled for much of 2025.
General Motors, Toyota, Ford and other carmakers have announced plans to expand U.S. plants or pull production back from overseas to fill underused factories since Mr. Trump returned to the White House. “It’s a partial win,” Stephanie Brinley, an automotive analyst at Mobility Global, said of the tariff’s effect on the industry.
The bigger obstacle, analysts say, is instability in the trade measures themselves, which hang over the investment decisions that take years to pay off. The latest friction is between Washington and Ottawa, clouding the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. A top Honda executive said in August that the company was running near full capacity in North America and wanted a new plant, but might change course if the uncertainty around the trade pact drags on.
The strain shows most clearly among parts suppliers, which employ about 930,000 people in the United States. Their investment fell from more than $8 billion in the first quarter of 2025 to about $600 million over the following two quarters before recovering somewhat, according to data from the Center for Automotive Research.
“Suppliers are more exposed to tariffs,” said Tyler Harp, an industry economist at the center. “They’re not in a position to absorb them as well as automakers.” He called the pullback “a noticeable slowdown” driven by policy uncertainty, including the tariffs and Mr. Trump’s reversals of federal support for electric vehicles.
Employment tells a similar in-between story. Auto jobs fell through much of 2025 and have risen for most of 2026, reaching just under 1.8 million in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is nearly 1 percent above the level when Mr. Trump took office in January 2025 and more than 2 percent below the decade’s peak in July 2024, under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The mixed picture lands as Republican candidates head toward the November midterm elections, with the administration counting plant announcements as evidence the tariffs work and the industry’s own economists counting what the suppliers stopped spending.