CLEBURNE, Texas — For more than 50 years, Congressman Roger Williams, R-Cleburne, has run a family-owned car dealership.
So, he has more perspective about the 25% automobile tariffs than most lawmakers.
“I think what you’re going to see happen, needless to say, there’s going to be a cost to goods sold going up,” the Republican told us on Inside Texas Politics. “I mean, we’re going to see a little of that. And the car industry will.”
Stellantis, which produces Jeep, Ram and Chrysler, announced it is temporarily laying off 900 employees at five U.S. locations and halting production at one assembly plant in Mexico and another one in Canada.
Congressman Williams sells Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles at his dealership in Weatherford.
If the automaker charges him more as a dealer, we asked Williams if he would pass that cost along to consumers.
“We’re going to do what we have to do,” Williams said. “Every deal is different.”
Despite any short-term financial pain, Williams argued that consumers will come out winners in the long term.
He pointed to discounts already being offered by some automakers, such as extending employee pricing to the public, and the fact that he thinks used car values will jump “sizably.”
On top of that, he’s banking on the tax cut package Congressional Republicans want to pass in April, a proposal that extends some expiring tax cuts as well as new policies.
“I think between the discounts from the dealers, the discounts from the manufacturer, the tax cuts, we’re going to have an increase in used car prices, I think that very well a customer could be in a position where they actually buy a car for less with a tariff as opposed to no tariff. I think that’s where we’re heading,” Williams said.
Even though the financial website MarketWatch says the U.S. stock market has lost $9.6 trillion since Inauguration Day, and Americans watch and worry as their 401(k) retirement savings shrink as well, the Chairman of the House Small Business Committee never wavered in his confidence during our conversation that the tariffs will benefit Americans in the long run.
“This is a shock for everybody,” Williams said. “It’s exactly what President Trump ran on. He said he was going to do this. I think at the end of the day, it flattens out and we cut the trade imbalances we have with these other countries and free markets and competition exist and that converts, again, like I said, to the benefit of the consumer.”