I am planning to buy a new car within the next year. I was anticipating buying a car in November or December, when usually there are good deals. But given the tariff / trade war situation, would I be wise to buy earlier? Or would deals still be better in November / December? Specifically thinking of a Kia.
Thoughts?
I don’t think anyone really knows how this will play out. IIRC this tariff nonsense isn’t including SK, at least not for now.
and it depends which model you’re looking at; Kia builds a few here.
Kia are made in the United States for our market. A big three manufactured car might be riskier because under NAFTA they mostly moved to manufacturing for the entire NA market at single plants.
Where final assembly happens is only part of the picture. If there’s a lot of foreign content tarrifs can still jack up prices even if the end product is domestically assembled. Things like the metal rates going up and hitting raw materials costs seems like a cost increase likely to already putting upward pressure on final pricing. I worked in the supply chain supporting GM once upon a time and that chain crossed the Canadian border repeatedly before all coming together in a car “made” in Michigan. I also assisted with a start up of a new contract supporting Honda in Ohio. That supply chain was far more domestic just because of the plant location and keeping shipping costs down. You might check to see if you can find any reports of how much foreign content is in models you are considering.
Only the Sorento and some Optimas are built in the US. The Forte and Rio are built in Mexico; the rest are shipped from South Korea.
You should really only be concerned if you’re buying a German car, and if you’re buying one of them an extra couple thousand shouldn’t bother you. If it does those aren’t the cars for you because you’ll be dropping that in maintenance regularly.
Of course, if you’re buying an SUV like seemingly everybody does nowadays you have nothing to worry about because they’re all made here, as are most Japanese and Korean cars, who based here a long time ago to subvert import restrictions. In truth, Hondas are more American than many, if not most, cars made by the Big Three.
Even many German cars are made in the US. BMW makes more cars in its South Carolina plant than any other one.