US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was placing 25% tariffs on imports of automobiles and certain automobile parts, a move the White House claims would foster domestic manufacturing and protect America’s automobile industry.

“This will continue to spur growth,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll effectively be charging a 25% tariff.”

The tariffs for automobiles, set to take effect on April 3 at 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time, are aimed at expanding America’s auto manufacturing prowess.

New tariffs will be applied not just to foreign-made cars but also to automobile parts, which are set to take effect “no later than May 3,” according to the text of the proclamation Trump signed.

The 25% tariff will be applied to imported passenger vehicles (sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans, cargo vans) and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts (engines, transmissions, powertrain parts, and electrical components), with processes to expand tariffs on additional parts if necessary.

Importers of automobiles under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement will be given the opportunity to certify their U.S. content, the White House said, and systems will be implemented such that the 25% tariff will only apply to the value of their non-U.S. content.

USMCA-compliant automobile parts will remain tariff-free until the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, establishes a process to apply tariffs to their non-U.S. content, according to a fact sheet published by the White House on Wednesday.

“It goes into effect on April 2 and the collection of the tariffs will begin April 3,” Trump said to the reporters, adding that the tariffs would be “permanent.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform early Thursday, Trump said, “If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!”

In Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed regret at the U.S. decision to target auto exports from Europe and vowed that the bloc would protect consumers and businesses.

“Tariffs are taxes — bad for businesses, worse for consumers equally in the U.S. and the European Union,” she said in a statement, adding that the EU would assess the impact of the move, as well as other measures the US is envisaging in the next days.

In 2024, Americans bought approximately 16 million cars, SUVs, and light trucks, and 50% of these vehicles were imports (8 million).

Currently, the U.S. automobile and automobile parts industry (American-owned and foreign-owned firms) employs approximately one million U.S. workers.

Employment in automotive parts manufacturing totaled approximately 553,300 jobs in 2024, a decline of 286,000 jobs or 34% since 2000.

In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the “Trump’s tariffs will hurt, but they will not break us.”

“We will build an All-In-Canada auto manufacturing network. It will be powered by Canadian workers using Canadian steel, aluminum, and critical minerals,” he added in a post on twitter.

At a press conference, Carney called the tariffs a “direct attack” on Canadian workers.

“We will defend our workers,” he said. “We will defend our companies, we’ll defend our country, and we’ll defend it together.”