Jerry Reynolds - The Car Pro Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Seven, twenty three is our time, heuring Houston's waring news.
I was made in America, Jerry Reynolds, was made in America?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Your car?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
That might be. It's kind of a hard to say,
isn't it. Jerry Reynolds joins us. Right now the President
announcing of twenty five percent tariffs in all cars not
made in the United States. But concerning the fact that
that tariff would also be on automobile parts, it's not
assembled in the United States. So how do we define
what an American made car is?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
These days? Boy, it's getting tougher and tougher. Good morning. Yeah,
it's going to be tough even for the car companies who,
you know, build majority of their cars in the United States.
You know, you look at the percentages of American cars
that are made inside America, and you've got Ford up

(00:48):
there at eighty percent, Tesla and Rivian to electric car
companies there are one hundred percent, but they're sourcing eighty
percent of their parts outside the United States. So nobody's
going to get left out of this thing if it
actually happens on Wednesday when it's scheduled to and I

(01:10):
say it tentatively because watching this President. As we've gone along,
he loves the bluff and he loves to win, but
he will compromise. And it wouldn't surprise me by Wednesday
morning to see some many of the car companies make
commitments to build cars in the United States. And if

(01:31):
they do that, they may get a pass on it.
But I don't think everybody will. Some of the car companies,
guys are men. They're in real trouble. I mean, you
look at Mazda, they're only building twenty percent of their vehicles, Jaguar, Land,
Rover to luxury brands, they build nothing in the United States.
So it's this time it's different. It's not like the

(01:57):
microchip shortage we dealt with a few years ago. Go
all car companies were in the same boat. They're not
this time. It's all across the board. Some gonna get
hurt worse than others.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, well, it's.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Going to be a real tough thing to watch in
the next few, next few weeks and months.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, clearly President Trump is trying to get commitments from
all of these probably all of these manufacturers to set
up plants and building the United States. I mean, he's
already told them, Well, if you're building it here, you
don't have to worry about it. So he's expecting to
hear from a lot of these companies that they're going
to be building, either building more of their vehicles here
or perhaps all their vehicles there. He's looking to create jobs.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, he is. And you know, I think it's important
that people understand cars are not gonna go up twenty
five percent. I don't think there'll be any cases of that.
These car companies are going to have to find ways
to absorb the majority of the taxes of the tariff,
and you know, I think some of them will be

(02:54):
able to completely absorb it.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
All.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
You got to remember how much car prices have gone
up the last three years, and that left the car
companies a lot of room. Now. The downside is they're
gonna start cutting other things so they can't absorb those tariffs.
You're probably talking about incentives. A lot of the incentives
that are there today are going to go away, so

(03:18):
we won't feel the effects of it for sixty days
or so, because the cars on the ground right now
are you know, they're exempt. But after that it's gonna
get dicey. So my advice has been all week and
long when I was there on KTRH with you guys Saturday.
If you're going to buy a car, if you think
you're gonna buy a car in the next ninety days,

(03:40):
pull that ahead and do something now.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Do it now? Well, you could afford it or maybe
afford it. Get better, No, it's not. But what is
the average price of a vehicle up to these days?
We we hit the fifty thousand threshold for an average price.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
We hit the fifty thousand a couple of years ago
and real least backed off where at about forty eight thousand.
The only difference is incentives. That's forty eight thousand is
the average transaction price today. And that's kind of all across.
That's every brand, luxury brands, and then the lesser brands
also all averaged. So you know it's that number's going

(04:19):
to eclipse fifty thousand again, there's no question about it
if those tariffs come.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
All right, Jerry, good to talk to you. Thanks man,
appreciate you. Here the weekends here on KTRH, it's Jerry Reynolds,
the car pro