The Port of Veracruz

If it's a performance or luxury brand they'll still sell with tariff taxes, but the average buyer type cars will definitely take a hit in sales.

It would be better to snap the economy and reset than drag it out for a decade with hyperinflation and limited growth, but what do I know.

 

Naturally the haves will always have, etc. but snapping the economy doesn’t sound like any good for the rest.

I fully expect slowed growth and higher inflation for the foreseeable future, mostly due to these recent upheavals.

For my part, I’ll be happy if my truck gets here safely from its sea-cruise, and the price hasn’t gone up, like it has at some dealerships already, as reported elsewhere on TW.

Then I can be a full-fledged member, as opposed to just a frustrated enthusiast anticipating, well, given what I read, both frustration and enthusiasm.

Great to be here.

 

Toyota will eat the tariffs short-term and hope for a change in policy direction, which may not happen. Unlike the chip shortage days, there’s nobody in line behind you who’s willing to offer your dealer $10-15k more for that same TH, so you’ll be fine. But…dealers will try to be jerks.

Bad luck for them that Toyota has already overplayed their hand on prices, illustrated by pre-tariff discounting, so price increases just don’t fit. Instead, they’ll have to further tighten their feature packaging and cost-cutting game if they hope to keep both factories in Mexico running profitably.

 

Right. They'll start with spreading the pain between them and the dealer, and hike finance costs pretty soon after encouraging people to put $0 down or whatever. The notion that somehow US plants can be retooled to produce Tacomas is a production and training shift that would take more than 2 years to accomplish, and it still wouldn't solve for much, because US workers will demand (as is their right) higher wages, which will need to be even higher to account for the inflation and price hikes for basic commodities that support our lives (e.g., fertilizer from Canada to grow our food, for instance, is an excellent example).

I am a fan of US manufacturing in a big way, but I don't see this as a "rising tide lifting all boats" sort of thing. Global economic instability is often a precursor to undesirable global-scale events.

 

Post some pictures of the truck when you get it.

 

Mine sat at the port for what seemed like forever too. The process from temp vin changing to actual vin to build to sending from factory to port was very fast, but then waiting at port took forever. This all happened last year (long before anything tariff-related was on the radar), so my guess is they wait until they can fill ship to max capacity before transporting. If your truck arrived at the port shortly after the previous shipment departed, they may have been waiting until they could completely fill the next ship. Just a guess, but glad to hear your truck is on the way and you’ll have it hopefully soon.

 

90 day pause announced, which will give both sides time to work out a deal.

 

Tariffs are based on the date that the item (truck in this case) leaves the port, not the date it arrives in the US.

 

Not so sure that's how it works.

 

Yep, it's based on the date it leaves port - my company brings 100's of containers per year from our factory in China. If it doesn't leave port before the date tariffs go into effect (even if it is already on the ship), the tariff applies.

 

The CBP website states the importer pays duties based on arrival date into the U.S.

https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summary-and-post-release-processes

#5 "... the goods arrive in the U.S."

 

Maybe Toyota will dumb down the new vehicles to reduce the price. Get rid of all the extras nobody wanted… removable speaker in the dash, safety sense, huge dash screens, etc.

 

I think you would have to nationalize Toyota before they would let go of their precious Safety Sense.

 

Yeah, my company is manic about safety. The business that we're in takes a back seat to the safety dept. Our company walls are so covered with their 'helpful hints' that we're considering a building project to build more walls to hold this crap.

 

A lot of the cost was the engineering and testing. Dumbing down the vehicle would require more engineering/testing and add more cost.

 

I prefer the larger screen.

 

Safety Sense is necessary to attain it's current safety rating. Any vehicle without it (like your 2016) automatically gets a 1-star or 0-star safety rating by today's agency standards.

 

I kinda like all the extra stuff, and I doubt removing it would reduce the price we pay by very much,
after all the executives still need their million dollar bonus every year. The only thing that would happen
with removing the extra 'stuff' would be 2 million dollar bonuses every year for the few.

Once the price of an item goes up, have you ever seen it go down?

 

^Yes. Prices go down if sales are poor. For example, Toyota cut BZ4X prices by $6k from 2024 to 2025.

 

Some of the 2025 tacoma prices were a smidge lower than 2024.