Here's what happened the last time we tried to put tariffs on foreign cars . . .

Photo above - the Suzuki Carry, a kei-truck. Pretty butch with the lift kit and beach tires, eh? I'd proudly park this next to any F150 at Home Depot. The Carry gets 45 mpg, no batteries required. Costs $10,678 in Japan, but you can't buy it here.

Remember when Japan was “the enemy”? And Detroit (and the United Auto Workers) insisted on huge tariffs on cars made there? It got so bad that UAW union goons would roam the GM and Ford employee parking lots to vandalize assembly line workers' Toyotas and Hondas. Auto execs “saved” their workers’ Japanese cars . . . by forbidding them from parking in factory lots at all.

I don’t think it will get that bad this time. But Trump’s new taxes on cars made in Canada and Mexico don’t show any comprehension of US tariff history. (For that matter, Biden’s proposed 100% tariff on Chinese cars was four times as demented).

I just bought a new Honda Civic (hybrid, sport touring), on election day in November. Got a sweet deal, because the showroom was devoid of customers. Everybody was out voting for their imaginary hero, as if we were in a Marvel Cinematic Universe election.

My car was assembled in Greensburg, Indiana. A picturesque town of 13,000 people. 2,700 of them work at the Honda plant. Excluding children, retirees, and the disabled, that means that about half the working age adults in town assemble Hondas. You go, Greensburg!

There’s no import tax on my Greensburg Honda. I can’t tell if there were any 2% tariffs on the 30,000 parts involved, because their supply chain is crazy-complicated. Not just Japan, but China, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico, and Malaysia. Maybe Russia too, for all I know.

If you want to pay a 25% auto tariff today – right this moment, before the Canadian tariffs take effect – you can’t actually do it. All the Tundras, Tacomas, Titans, Frontiers and Ridgelines are assembled in the USA. If these trucks were made in their home nations, THEN you could pay that huge tax. But we are saved. Third world nations pay import duties of 25-100%, to encourage off-brand carmakers to set up assembly lines there.

The American 25% tariff would apply if I had wanted a smaller, more fuel-efficient truck NOT made in the USA. Like the Suzuki Carry, pictured above. The Carry isn’t made in the USA, isn’t for sale (legally) in the USA, and can’t be registered at the DMV because it hasn’t undergone DOT crash testing. Because Suzuki understands that if you jack up the price of this thing 25%, they won’t sell. Suzuki tried to sell Japanese home market assembled cars here, and that didn’t work out either. And Daihatsu. Mitsubishi is looking for the exit. Fiat too.

I get it – kind of – what Trump is up to with Mexico. He wants their corrupt politicians to stop giving free bus tickets to newly arrived Ecuadorians, Costa Ricans, and Venezuelans to get to the Texas border and sneak across. And Trump also wants to stop the meth and crack and heroin. I hope it works. Those cartels are violent and persistent.

I don’t understand what a 25% tariff on Canada is supposed to cause. Except confusion and retaliatory tariffs.

I’m just sayin’ . . .