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Auto Sales Are Expected to Slow After a Strong 2023

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Automakers sold more cars in 2023 than a year ago as supply chain chaos ended, but sales are now under pressure from higher interest rates.After enjoying a strong rebound in sales in 2023, the auto industry appears headed for slower growth this year as consumers struggle with elevated interest rates and high prices for new cars and light trucks.Edmunds, a market researcher, expects the industry to sell 15.7 million vehicles this year. That would amount to a modest increase from the 15.5 million sold last year, when sales jumped 12 percent.“There’s definitely pent-up demand out there, because people have been holding off purchases for a while,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds. “But given the credit situation, we don’t think the industry will see a ton of growth this year.”Since the coronavirus pandemic, automakers have struggled with shortages of critical parts that have prevented them from producing as many vehicles as consumers wanted to buy. In 2023, the shortages, especially for computer chips, finally eased, allowing production to return to more normal levels.But over the past year, the Federal Reserve has significantly raised interest rates, which has pushed up costs considerably for car buyers.For years, many people took advantage of zero-percent loans to buy vehicles, even as prices climbed. But such deals, offered by automakers to move inventory, have nearly disappeared in the wake of the Fed’s rate hikes. In the fourth quarter of 2023, new-vehicle sales with zero-percent financing accounted for just 2.3 percent of all sales, according to Edmunds.Monthly payments are at near-record highs. In the fourth quarter, the average monthly payment on new cars was $739, up from $717 in the same period a year ago.Several automakers were hoping that a rapid rise in sales of new electric vehicles would drive the industry to gains into 2024 and 2025, but those cars and trucks haven’t taken off quite as quickly as many analysts and executives had hoped.In 2023, sales of battery-powered models in the United States topped one million vehicles for the first time, and Cox Automotive, another research firm, expects sales to reach 1.5 million this year. But General Motors, Ford Motor, Volkswagen and other manufacturers had been expecting an even faster ramp-up.But consumers have balked at the high prices of many of the newest electric models. Many drivers are also reluctant to make the switch to battery power, because they are not sure they will be able to find enough places to quickly refuel. That has forced automakers to reset their plans.G.M. had once forecast it would produce 400,000 electric vehicles by the middle of 2024 but now has given up that target, and it has delayed the production of some electric models.Ford had been aiming to have enough factory capacity by the end of 2024 to make 600,000 battery-powered vehicles a year, but it recently lowered production plans for its electric F-150 Lightning and its electric sport-utility vehicle, the Mustang Mach-E.On Wednesday, G.M. said that its sales of new vehicles in the United States jumped 14 percent last year. The company sold 2.6 million cars and light trucks in 2023, up from 2.3 million in 2022, when the chip shortage limited production.G.M. sold about 76,000 electric vehicles, up from 39,000 in 2022. But most were Chevrolet Bolts, a model that the company recently stopped making. Only about 13,000 were vehicle based on newer battery technology that G.M. had been hoping would make its electric vehicles affordable to many more car buyers.Sales for G.M. in the fourth quarter were relatively weak. They climbed just 0.3 percent from the same period a year earlier and were down 7 percent compared with the third quarter of 2023. The company said the sales of several important models were limited by a strike at some of its plants by the United Automobile Workers union.Separately, Toyota Motor, the second largest seller of cars in the United States after G.M., said its 2023 sales rose 7 percent, to 2.2 million vehicles. The company’s sales in the fourth quarter were 15.4 percent higher than in the same quarter a year ago and about 5 percent higher than in the third quarter.Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Ram and Jeep vehicles, said that it sold 1.5 million cars and trucks in 2023, about 1 percent less than the year before. The company plans to introduce eight new electric vehicles this year, and it aims to have battery-powered models account for half of its North American sales by the end of the decade.Honda, Hyundai and Kia also on Wednesday reported strong U.S. sales for 2023 And on Tuesday, Tesla, which dominates the electric car business in the United States, said it sold 1.8 million cars worldwide last year, up 38 percent from 2022.Ford is expected to report its sales total on Thursday. More

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    U.A.W. Announces Drive to Organize Nonunion Plants

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    The United Automobile Workers’ effort, with a long-elusive goal, follows its success in securing big raises in contracts with the Detroit automakers.The United Automobile Workers union announced Wednesday that it was undertaking an ambitious drive to organize plants owned by more than a dozen nonunion automakers, including Tesla and several foreign companies — a goal that has long eluded it.The move comes weeks after the U.A.W. won new contracts from General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis that included wage increases of 25 percent or more over four and a half years for its 146,000 members employed there.In addition to Tesla, the targets of the drive are two other electric vehicle start-ups, Lucid and Rivian, and 10 foreign-owned automakers: Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mazda and Volvo.The U.S. plants owned by those companies employ nearly 150,000 workers in 13 states, the union said.If the organizing drive gains momentum, it could become one of the largest by the U.A.W. since its infancy in the 1930s. The union’s past efforts to organize even single plants owned by the foreign automakers, concentrated in the South, came to nought. A foothold among those companies would signal a big shift in the American auto industry, where nonunion manufacturers have long had a significant cost advantage over the Detroit automakers.The union said the organizing drive had been prompted by inquiries from several thousand workers at nonunion plants.“Workers across the country, from the West to the Midwest and especially in the South, are reaching out to join our movement and to join the U.A.W.,” the union’s president, Shawn Fain, said in a video posted on Facebook. “The money is there. The time is right.”A Honda statement cited the automaker’s “competitive wages and benefits,” adding, “We do not believe an outside party would enhance the excellent employment experience of our associates.” Subaru did not comment directly on the union drive but referred to a series of wage increases and a comprehensive benefits package.At the DealBook conference sponsored by The New York Times on Wednesday, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said, “If Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.” He reiterated his opposition to unions, saying that “it’s not good to have an adversarial relationship” between groups within a company.Rivian and Volkswagen said they had no comment. The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.On Wednesday, the U.A.W. activated websites where workers can electronically sign cards that serve as an official certification of their desire to have union representation. Earlier, at a handful of plants, the U.A.W. had already received signed cards from more than 30 percent of the work force, the threshold required under federal law for the union to move forward with a vote on unionization, a person familiar with the matter said.The union is now working to send organizers to areas around these nonunion plants to collaborate with workers at those factories, this person said.After the U.A.W. reached agreements with the Detroit automakers to raise wages, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai announced that they, too, would increase workers’ pay.Toyota has told workers that it will raise hourly rates 9 percent in January. Honda will lift wages 11 percent and Hyundai 14 percent next year. Hyundai plans to increase wages 25 percent by 2028.The U.A.W. said Wednesday that it was making a concerted effort to organize a large Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky., that employs about 7,800 workers and produces the Camry sedan and RAV4 sport utility vehicle.U.A.W. members have long earned more than nonunion workers. At plants in the South, wages tend to start below $20 an hour and top out at less than $30. The top U.A.W. hourly wage, previously $32, climbed to more than $40 in the contracts the union signed with the three Detroit manufacturers.The U.A.W. has fallen short twice in the past decade — by narrow margins, in 2014 and 2019 — in unionization votes at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. The U.A.W. lost by a substantial margin at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., in 2017. Organizing efforts at other companies’ plants have petered out before coming to a vote.But after Mr. Fain became the union’s president this year, the union promised a more aggressive approach to its contract talks with the Big Three and vowed to renew efforts to widen its reach in the industry.In addition to wage gains at the Detroit companies, the U.A.W. won agreements to preserve jobs and to keep open a Stellantis plant in Illinois that had been slated to close.Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said the U.A.W.’s wage gains created a stronger case for joining the union.“It shows collective bargaining works and shows the U.A.W. was successful,” he said. “They can say: ‘We saved this plant. Look at what we got. You can have this, too.’”Past organizing drives were hurt because the U.A.W. had a tarnished image, Mr. Wheaton added: Many unionized plants had closed, its members had been required to accept wage and benefit cuts to help the Detroit manufacturers survive the 2009 financial crisis, and federal corruption investigations had implicated senior union officials.“A lot of the negative things about the union — a lot of that stuff has gone away now,” Mr. Wheaton said.Santul Nerkar More

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    U.A.W. Strikes Near an End After G.M. Reaches Tentative Deal

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    Tentative accords at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis are the most generous in decades, raising costs as the industry shifts to electric vehicles.A six-week wave of strikes that hobbled the three largest U.S. automakers has resulted in tentative contract agreements that would give workers their biggest pay raises in decades while avoiding a protracted work stoppage that could have damaged the economy.On Monday, General Motors and the United Automobile Workers reached a deal that mirrored agreements the union had reached in recent days with Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent company of Ram, Jeep and Chrysler. The terms will be costly for the automakers as they undertake a switch to electric vehicles, while setting the stage for labor strife and demands for higher pay at nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota.The tentative agreements, which still require ratification by union members, also appeared to be a win for President Biden, who had risked political capital by picketing with striking workers at a G.M. facility in Michigan last month.“They have reached a historic agreement,” Mr. Biden said Monday after speaking with Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president. The deals, the president said, “reward autoworkers who gave up much to keep the industry working and going during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago.”The strike stretched longer than White House officials would have liked, but was resolved before causing significant shortages of new cars and trucks that might have frustrated voters already angry about inflation.“The near-term impact of this strike will be relatively minor,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.com, an online auto sales site. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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    Bill Ford Says U.A.W. Strike Is Helping Tesla and Toyota

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    Mr. Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor, said nonunion automakers would make gains against Michigan automakers because of strikes by the United Automobile Workers union.The monthlong strike by the United Automobile Workers and the union’s demands for substantial pay and benefits increases risk damaging the U.S. auto industry, hurting its ability to compete against nonunion foreign rivals, the executive chairman of Ford Motor said on Monday.The fight should not be seen as the U.A.W. against Ford, or its crosstown rivals, General Motors and Stellantis, said William C. Ford Jr., the great-grandson of the company’s founder Henry Ford, noting that at times U.A.W. officials have referred to the automakers as the union’s “enemy.”“It should be Ford and the U.A.W. against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and all the Chinese companies that want to enter our home market,” Mr. Ford said at the company’s Rouge plant in Dearborn, Mich.“Toyota, Honda, Tesla and the others are loving the strike, because they know the longer it goes on, the better it is for them,” the executive chairman said. “They will win, and all of us will lose.”Mr. Ford’s remarks alluded to a period several decades ago when the U.A.W. won increasingly rich contracts that were later seen by many industry experts as having hobbled the three Michigan automakers in the face of competition from Japanese and European carmakers. Ford came to the brink of collapse, and G.M. and Chrysler — now part of Stellantis — had to seek bankruptcy protection after the 2008 financial crisis.“Ford’s ability to invest in the future isn’t just a talking point,” Mr. Ford said. “It is the absolute lifeblood of our company. And if we lose it, we will lose to the competition. Many jobs will be lost.”In a statement, the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said Mr. Ford should “stop playing games” and meet the union’s demands, or “we’ll close the Rouge for him.” Mr. Fain added that the U.A.W. was not fighting the company but “corporate greed.”“If Ford wants to be the all-American auto company, they can pay all-American wages and benefits,” Mr. Fain said. “Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda and others are not the enemy — they’re the U.A.W. members of the future.”Ford, G.M. and Stellantis have been negotiating new labor contracts with the U.A.W. since July. Over the past month, the union has called on workers at a few plants to go on strike. The action has idled three Ford plants, two G.M. factories and one Stellantis plant. Workers at 38 G.M. and Stellantis spare-parts warehouses are also on strike.The strategy is intended to increase pressure on the companies to meet the union’s demands for significantly higher wages, shorter working hours and expanded pensions, and to end a system that pays new hires just over half of the top U.A.W. wage of $32 an hour.The companies have offered wage increases of more than 20 percent over the next four years and certain other measures in line with the union’s demands, but the U.A.W. is pressing for greater concessions.Last week, the union called for a strike by 8,700 workers at Ford’s Kentucky truck plant in Louisville, the company’s largest.Ford executives said last week that the company had made a record offer to the union and that sweetening the deal would hurt the automaker’s ability to invest in electric vehicles and other new models and technologies.Mr. Ford, who has had a role in every round of negotiations with the U.A.W. since 1982, said the talks had reached “a crossroads” and warned that labor contracts that burdened the automakers with heavy costs could affect the U.S. economy.“The price of failure should be clear to everyone,” he said. “Let’s come together and reach an agreement, so we can take the fight to the real competition.” More

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    G.M.’s Sales Jumped 19% in the Second Quarter

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    General Motors, Toyota and other automakers sold more trucks and sport utility vehicles as supply chain problems eased and demand remained strong despite rising interest rates.Some of the country’s biggest automakers reported big sales increases for the second quarter on Wednesday, the strongest sign yet that the auto industry was bouncing back from parts shortages and overcoming the effects of higher interest rates.General Motors, the largest U.S. automaker, said it sold 691,978 vehicles from April to June, up 19 percent from a year earlier. It was the company’s highest quarterly total in more than two years.Automakers have struggled in the last two years with a shortage of computer chips that forced factory shutdowns and left dealers with few vehicles to sell. More recently, rising interest rates have made auto loans more expensive, causing some consumers to defer purchases or opt for used vehicles.“I’m not saying we are on the cusp of exciting growth here,” said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, a research firm. “But we are now at a turning point where the auto market returns to more balance. It’s the beginning of returning to normal.”The easing of chip shortages has allowed automakers to restock dealer lots, making it easier for car buyers to find the models and features they want, Mr. Smoke said. At the end of June, dealers had about 1.8 million vehicles in stock, nearly 800,000 more than at the same point in 2022, according to Cox data.Sales have also been helped by strong job creation and rising wages, Mr. Smoke said.At the same time, however, higher interest rates and higher car prices have put new-car purchases out of reach of many consumers. In the first half of the year, the average price paid for a new vehicle was a near-record $48,564. The average interest rate paid on car loans in the first six months of 2023 was 7.09 percent, up from 4.86 percent a year earlier, according to Cox. The average monthly payment in the first half was $784, up from $691.“Demand will be limited by the level of prices and rates, which are not likely to come down enough to stimulate more demand than the market can bear,” Mr. Smoke said.Cox estimated that total sales of new cars and trucks rose 11.6 percent in the first half of the year, to 7.65 million. The firm now expects full-year sales to top 15 million, which would be a rise of 8 percent.Several automakers reported solid quarterly sales on Wednesday. Toyota said its U.S. sales rose 7 percent, to 568,962 cars and light trucks. Stellantis, the company that owns Jeep, Ram, Chrysler and other brands, reported a 6 percent rise, to 434,648 vehicles.Honda, which had been severely hampered by chip shortages, said its sales rose 45 percent to 347,025 cars and trucks. Hyundai and Kia, the South Korean automakers, each sold more than 210,000 vehicles, posting gains of 14 percent and 15 percent.Electric vehicles remain the fastest-growing segment of the auto industry. Rivian, a maker of electric pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, said on Monday that it delivered 12,640 in the second quarter, a 59 percent jump from a year earlier. And on Sunday, Tesla reported an 83 percent jump in global sales in the second quarter.Cox estimated that more than 500,000 electric vehicles were sold in the United States in the first six months of the year, and that more than one million would be sold in 2023, setting a record for battery-powered cars and trucks in the country.Tesla, which does not break out its sales by country, remains the largest seller of E.V.s in the U.S. market. Cox estimated that the company sold more than 161,000 electric cars in the second quarter in the United States. Ford Motor, which offers three fully electric models., reports its quarterly sales on Thursday.G.M. sold more 15,300 battery-powered cars and trucks, but nearly 14,000 were the Chevrolet Bolt, a smaller vehicle that the company will stop making at the end of the year. The company also sold 1,348 Cadillac Lyriq electric S.U.V.s and 47 GMC Hummer pickup trucks. Chevrolet will soon start delivering a new electric Silverado pickup truck, which uses the same battery technology as the Lyriq and Hummer. More

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    Auto Sales Withstand Higher Interest Rates, So Far

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    General Motors and several rivals cited robust demand in the first quarter. But affordability is a growing challenge for many buyers.Automakers have mostly overcome the supply-chain challenges that upended production early in the pandemic. Now they are trying to weather a new challenge: higher borrowing costs for their customers.General Motors and several other automakers reported on Monday that new-vehicle sales increased substantially in the first three months of the year, thanks to improved supplies of key components and firm demand from both consumers and commercial customers.But the steady interest rate increases in the last 12 months have raised questions about whether the industry can maintain its sales momentum throughout 2023.Jonathan Smoke, the chief economist at the market research firm Cox Automotive, said higher rates were already starting to put new vehicles out of the reach of buyers with lower incomes or weaker credit scores.According to Cox, “subprime” borrowers — those with weaker credit profiles — make up just under 6 percent of all new-car purchases, down from 18 percent five years ago. Car buyers paid an average interest rate of 8.95 percent last month, up from 5.66 percent in March 2022.The average monthly payment on new vehicles was $784 in February, compared with $681 a year earlier, Cox calculated.“Affordability challenges are limiting access to the vehicle market,” Mr. Smoke said. “Higher interest rates are having a huge impact.”Sticker prices have also challenged buyers. Auto prices — for new and used vehicles alike — have been a prominent driver of inflation over the last two years, although there are signs they are cooling off. The average price for a new car or light truck in February was $48,763, according to Cox — up from $46,297 a year earlier, but down from $49,468 in January.Mr. Smoke said automakers got off to a strong start in January and February, but saw credit tighten somewhat in March after the banking industry was shaken by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.G.M. said its new-vehicle sales in the United States rose 18 percent in the first three months of the year, to 603,208 cars and trucks. Sales to consumers rose 15 percent and sales to rental, corporate and government fleet customers increased 27 percent.In the last several months, G.M. has been able to keep its factories humming as a result of steadier supplies of computer chips and other critical parts. The company ended the quarter with 412,285 vehicles in dealer stocks, up slightly from what it had at the end of 2022, but nearly 140,000 more than it had a year earlier.Honda Motor reported that its U.S. sales increased 7 percent to 284,507 cars and trucks, while Nissan saw a gain of 17 percent, to 235,818. Hyundai said its U.S. sales rose 16 percent to 184,449.Toyota Motor, however, has continued to suffered from parts shortages that have left its dealers with slim inventories. Its first-quarter sales fell 9 percent to 469,558 cars and trucks. Stellantis, formed through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot SA, also reported a decline. Its sales fell 9 percent to 368,327 cars and trucks.Ford Motor is scheduled to report its latest sales figures on Tuesday.G.M. has forecast a rapid increase this year in sales of electric vehicles; so far, it is off to an uneven start. The company sold 19,700 Chevrolet Bolt compacts in the first quarter, more than three times the total a year earlier, but other models have yet to make a splash.Sales of the Cadillac Lyriq, an electric sport-utility vehicle, totaled just 968, and G.M. sold only two GMC Hummer E.V.s, down from 99 in the first quarter of 2022.G.M. started production last summer at a new plant in Ohio that is supposed to provide battery packs for the Hummer E.V., the Lyriq and several other vehicles scheduled to arrive in showrooms this year. They include electric versions of the Chevrolet Silverado pickup and the Chevy Equinox and Blazer S.U.V.s. More

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    Supply Problems Hurt Auto Sales in 2022. Now Demand Is Weakening.

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    A global semiconductor shortage is easing, which could allow carmakers to lift production this year. But higher interest rates could keep sales low.Last year, sales of new cars and trucks fell to their lowest level in a decade because automakers could not make enough vehicles for consumers to buy. This year, sales are likely to remain soft, but for an entirely different reason — weakening demand.The Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases, which are intended to slow inflation, have made it harder and more expensive for consumers to finance automobile purchases, after prices had already risen to record highs.Analysts expect that higher rates and a slowing economy will force some U.S. shoppers to delay car purchases or steer away from showrooms altogether in 2023 even if automakers crank out more vehicles than they did last year because they can get more parts.“For over a decade, low interest rates have helped people buy the big cars that Americans like,” said Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at Edmunds, a market research firm. “Low rates from the Fed are what made those attractive offers for zero-percent financing and 72-month loans possible, but with the higher rates, it’s a pretty unfriendly market for people buying a car.”Edmunds estimates that automakers will sell 14.8 million cars and trucks in the United States this year, which would be well below the sales that automakers became accustomed to in the previous decade.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    GM Quarterly Sales Fall Amid Shortage in Computer Chips and Other Parts

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    The auto industry is facing worrying signs all across its horizon, including rising interest rates and fears of a recession.But the biggest problem still seems to be making enough cars.General Motors said Friday that its U.S. deliveries of new vehicles in the second quarter declined 15 percent from a year earlier, while Toyota Motor reported a drop of 23 percent in U.S. sales. The obstacle continues to be an inability to get enough computer chips to finish vehicles.For now, at least, consumers are still eager to buy. Manufacturers are selling practically every car or truck they make and have seen no sign that inventory is building up on dealer lots, even as new-vehicle prices have climbed to record highs.“That tells me that the vehicles are still moving, and that’s probably the No. 1 thing that I’m looking at,” Paul Jacobson, the chief financial officer of General Motors, told financial analysts at a conference last month.G.M. sold 582,401 cars and light trucks from April to June, down from 688,236 a year earlier. Toyota sold 531,105, down from 688,813. Honda said its U.S. sales fell 51 percent to 239,789 vehicles.G.M. noted that its factories were holding 95,000 vehicles manufactured without certain electric components that were in short supply because of the chip shortage.At times automakers have dropped some features from vehicles because they or their suppliers didn’t have the chips they require. Honda has shipped vehicles without advanced parking sensors, and Volkswagen has produced models that don’t have blind-spot monitors that the vehicles would normally include.G.M. plans to install the missing parts in its vehicles when they become available and then make deliveries to dealers.If those vehicles had been shipped, its second-quarter sales would probably have been nearly level with its year-ago total.“We will work with our suppliers and manufacturing and logistics teams to deliver all the units held at our plants as quickly as possible,” said Steve Carlisle, executive vice president and president, North America.Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What’s driving inflation in the United States? What can slow the rapid price gains? Here’s what to know.Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.Greedflation: Some experts say that big corporations are supercharging inflation by jacking up prices. We take a closer look at the issue. Changing Behaviors: From driving fewer miles to downgrading vacations, Americans are making changes to their spending because of inflation. Here’s how five households are coping.In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, G.M. said the backlog would affect second-quarter net income, which it projected to be $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion. A consensus of analysts’ forecasts compiled by Bloomberg had pointed to earnings of $2.4 billion.Because the company expects to ship most or all of the 95,000 partly completed vehicles by the end of the year, it reaffirmed its full-year outlook for net income of $9.6 billion to $11.2 billion.That may be why G.M.’s stock rose on Friday despite the lowered forecast. Its shares ended the day 1.3 percent higher, outpacing the overall market.But that outlook also assumes that demand will hold up as threats to the U.S. economy mount. Consumers are being squeezed by rising prices for gasoline and groceries. The average price paid for new vehicles in May was $47,148, up more than $5,000 from a year earlier, and the average monthly car payment was over $700, more than $100 higher than a year earlier, according to data from Cox Automotive, a market researcher. Since new models are in short supply, consumers are often paying $3,000 or more above sticker prices.And last month, the Federal Reserve increased its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a point, in a bid to slow the economy and tamp down inflation, and has indicated that further increases may be necessary. Higher interest rates make home and auto loans more expensive, and the Fed’s move has already resulted in a slight slowdown in housing.Some economists believe the risk of a recession is moderated by the increased savings that most consumers have built up since the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020. Eighty percent of consumers have more money in their checking accounts now than two years ago, Jonathan Smoke, the chief economist of Cox Automotive, told reporters this week on a conference call.“These consumers are able to withstand inflation because they’ve got quite a bit of cushion and their wage growth is strong enough to deal with pricing increases,” he said.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    How The Trucker Protests Are Snarling the Auto Industry

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    Blockades of U.S.-Canada border crossings could hurt the auto industry, factory workers and the economy, which are still recovering from pandemic disruptions.After two years of the pandemic, semiconductor shortages and supply chain chaos, it seemed as if nothing else could go wrong for the auto industry and the millions of people it employs. But then came thousands of truckers who, angry about vaccine mandates, have been blocking major border crossings between Canada and the United States.With Canadian officials baffled about what to do, the main routes that handle the steel, aluminum and other parts that keep car factories running on both sides of the border were essentially shut down Wednesday and Thursday.Ford Motor, General Motors, Honda and Toyota have curtailed production at several factories in Michigan and Ontario, threatening paychecks and offering a fresh reminder of the fragility of global supply chains and of the deep interdependence of the U.S. and Canadian economies, which exchange $140 million in vehicles and parts every day.No one knows how this is going to end. The protests are expected to swell in the coming days and could spread, including to the United States. Canada’s transport minister has called the bridge blockades illegal. Marco Mendicino, Canada’s minister of public safety, said on Thursday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national force, was sending additional officers to the Canadian capital, Ottawa, and to Windsor, Ontario. The mayor of Windsor has threatened to remove the protesters. But those statements have seemed to have little impact. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan pleaded with Canadian officials to quickly reopen traffic.“They must take all necessary and appropriate steps to immediately and safely reopen traffic so we can continue growing our economy,” Ms. Whitmer said in a statement on Thursday.The chaos is already starting to take an economic toll. The pain is likely to be most acute for smaller auto parts suppliers, for independent truckers and for workers who get paid based on their production. Many of these groups, unlike large automakers like G.M., Ford and Toyota, lack the clout to raise prices of their goods and services. Companies and workers in Canada are more likely to suffer because they are more dependent on the United States.The longer crossings between the countries remain blocked, the more severe the damage, not only to the auto industry but also to the communities that depend on manufacturing salaries. Workers at smaller firms typically receive no compensation for lost hours, said Dino Chiodo, the director of auto at the giant Canadian union Unifor. Workers who have been sent home early because of parts shortages will spend less at stores and restaurants.“People say, ‘I have $200 less this week, what do I do?’” Mr. Chiodo said. “It affects the Canadian and U.S. economy as a whole.”Auto factories and suppliers in the United States generally keep at least two weeks of raw materials on hand, said Carla Bailo, the president of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. If the bridges remain blocked for longer than that, she said, “then you’re looking at layoffs.”The blockades came after a demonstration in Ottawa that started nearly two weeks ago. The protests began over a mandate that truck drivers coming from the United States be vaccinated against the coronavirus and have grown to include various pandemic restrictions. Some have demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resign. The truckers have been joined by various groups, including some displaying Nazi symbols and damaging public monuments. Police in Ottawa said on Thursday that the protesters and their supporters, including some in the United States, had almost overwhelmed the city’s 911 system with calls.The crossing that has the auto industry and government officials most concerned is the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor and Detroit. It carries roughly a quarter of the trade between the two countries, which has been relatively unrestricted for decades. While food and other products are also affected, about a third of the cargo that uses the bridge is related to the auto industry, Ms. Bailo said.The blockade has been felt as far south as Kentucky, where production has been disrupted at a Toyota factory, the company said on Thursday. The shutdown at the border also will prevent manufacturing at Toyota’s three Canadian plants for the rest of the week, a spokesman for the automaker, Scott Vazin, said.Demonstrators blocking access to the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. The bridge accounts for roughly a quarter of the trade between the United States and Canada.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressG.M. said it had canceled two shifts on Wednesday and Thursday at a factory in Lansing, Mich., that makes Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse sport utility vehicles. The company also sent workers from the first shift at a plant in Flint, Mich., home early. Ford said Thursday that plants in Windsor and Oakville, also in Ontario, were running at reduced capacity.Shortages of semiconductors and other components have not been all bad for giant automakers, creating scarcity that has driven up prices of cars in the last year. Ford and G.M. both reported healthy profits for 2021. And the economic damage will not be severe if the bridge and other crossings reopen soon, industry experts said.But the last two years have shown that, because supply chains are so complex, problems at obscure parts makers can have far-reaching and unpredictable impact. Last year, Ford had to shut down plants for weeks at a time in part because of a fire at a chip factory in Japan.“If it stretches on for weeks it could be catastrophic,” said Peter Nagle, an analyst who covers the car industry at IHS Markit, a research firm.Mr. Nagle said the bridge blockade was worse than the semiconductor shortage for carmakers. They “were already running pretty tight because of other supply chain shortages,” he said. “This is just bad news on top of bad news.”The auto industry operates relatively seamlessly across Canada, the United States and Mexico. Some parts can travel back and forth across borders multiple times as raw materials are processed and are turned into components and, eventually, vehicles.An engine block, for example, might be cast in Canada, sent to Michigan to be machined for pistons, then sent back to Canada for assembly into a finished motor. The blockades have stranded some truckers on the wrong side of the border, creating a chain reaction of missed deliveries.The slowdown in Canadian trade will disproportionately affect New York, Michigan and Ohio, said Arthur Wheaton, the director of labor studies at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. At the same time, he added, the protests were “certainly raising concerns for all U.S. manufacturers.”“There is already a shortage of truck drivers in North America, so protests keeping truckers off their routes exacerbates problems for an already fragile supply chain,” Mr. Wheaton said.Carmakers had hoped that shortages of computer chips and other components would ease this year, allowing them to concentrate on the long-term: the transition to electric vehicles.A larger fear for many elected officials and business executives is that the scene at the Ambassador Bridge could inspire other protests. The Department of Homeland Security warned in an internal memo that a convoy of protesting truckers was planning to travel from California to Washington, D.C., potentially disrupting the Super Bowl and President Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1.“While there are currently no indications of planned violence,” the memo, which was dated Tuesday, said, “if hundreds of trucks converge in a major metropolitan city, the potential exists to severely disrupt transportation, federal government operations, commercial facilities and emergency services through gridlock and potential counter protests.”Mr. Chiodo, the Canadian union leader, said that “the people who are demonstrating are doing it for the wrong reasons. They want to get back to the way things were before the pandemic, and in reality they are shutting things down.”The scene in Ottawa remained a raucous party Thursday, with hundreds of people on the street, many wearing Canadian flags like capes. The song “Life Is a Highway,” by the Canadian musician Tom Cochrane, pumped from loudspeakers set up on the back of an empty trailer that had been converted into a stage.But there was a thinning out of protesters — with some empty spaces where trucks had been the day before.Johnny Neufeld, 39, a long-haul trucker from Windsor, Ontario, said the vaccine mandate would spell the end of his job transporting molds into the United States since he had chosen not to be inoculated out of fear the shots had been developed too quickly. He got his first ticket from the police Thursday morning, a fine of 130 Canadian dollars (about $100) for being in a no-stopping zone.“This is a souvenir,” he said.Dan Bilefsky More