Shortly after starting his second term, President Donald Trump urged the American auto industry to help realize his dream of a domestic manufacturing revival.

He began by promising untold riches from tariffs on foreign automakers.

“Congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money,” Trump told NBC News in March 2025. “If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”

Trump cast himself as a friend to American carmakers. But it didn’t take long for him to show how unpredictable that friendship could be — and how much it could threaten their bottom line.

In less than two years, three major policy decisions from the Trump administration have left the American auto industry in a worse position than it had been in 2024, struggling to keep pace with Chinese electric-vehicle makers, paying more for materials and facing weaker demand for traditional gasoline-powered vehicles.

Step 1: The attack on electric vehicles

The shift toward electric cars was already underway when President Joe Biden took office, but he helped nudge it along.

The Biden administration encouraged automakers to build EVs by imposing stricter fuel economy standards for gas-powered cars and creating a $7,500 tax credit to help consumers buy electric.

Foreign automakers were gaining ground in the U.S. market, and Detroit’s Big Three saw affordable EVs as a chance to win customers back. They bet heavily on that future, building battery factories and rolling out scores of new models. For a while, sales surged.

The transition proved harder than automakers had hoped. As Biden left office, EVs remained too expensive for many buyers, and demand was not growing fast enough to justify the industry’s ambitious plans. Still, American automakers were willing to wait. Before Trump returned to the White House, Ford, Stellantis and General Motors asked him to keep the EV mandates in place.

Trump ignored the request, pulling away the supports that had helped the market grow. His administration paused $3 billion in federal funding for a program to expand charging stations. Then, in the summer of 2025, Republicans scrapped the $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers.

The president, however, threw his support behind Tesla, the EV automaker run by billionaire Elon Musk, who served as the chief architect of the chaotic Trump-backed effort to downsize the federal government. At one point in March 2025, Trump turned the White House grounds into a makeshift showroom featuring Tesla vehicles and bought a red Model S at market price. The presidential stamp of approval though did nothing to end the 40% freefall in Tesla’s share prices through the spring.

Meanwhile, Detroit’s automakers were left scrambling to change course. They took $52 billion in losses on their short-lived push toward an electric future. Stellantis, the maker of Jeep, accounted for about half the total. Ford discontinued its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup — the same truck Biden had once taken for a spin.

“Instead of plowing billions into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money, we are pivoting,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Wall Street Journal in December.

Step 2: Impose tariffs

Next came the tariffs. Trump quickly revived the trade wars from his first term, imposing taxes on imported cars starting in March 2025.

Some auto parts qualified for an exemption under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement his first administration negotiated in 2020. But the tariffs still raised costs for American-made cars, which rely on imported parts and raw materials. Steel and aluminum — two essentials of carmaking — were hit with steep tariffs too.

Trump seemed to focus on the promised benefits while overlooking the bill his policies were handing automakers.

“They’ve come a long way. It’s amazing what tariffs will do for GM and what the [2024] election has done,” Trump said in late July, standing alongside General Motors CEO Mary Barra and other executives at a company proving ground in Michigan. “General Motors is doing fantastic … we’ve been very good to General Motors.”

GM’s own financial disclosures told a less triumphant story. The company reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that tariffs could cost it as much as $3.5 billion in 2025. GM also pulled back on its EV manufacturing plans, though it continued to offer a dozen electrified models.

Step 3: Start a war with Iran

The final link in the chain was the war with Iran. The conflict disrupted oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing Brent crude past the dreaded $100 a barrel. As gas prices climbed, more drivers began looking again at electric vehicles — the very market Detroit’s automakers had scaled back.

The shift is happening around much of the world. Ember, a clean-energy think tank, reported record EV sales this year in 49 countries, including Germany, New Zealand, Chile and Uruguay. The contrast with the United States is stark: U.S. EV sales fell about 31% in the first eight months of 2026, according to Reuters.

China, meanwhile, has made major strides in the global shift to electric vehicles. Its automakers are expanding into new markets, including Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a deal with Chinese leader Xi Jinping earlier this year to open the market to Chinese EVs.

The American auto industry wanted an ally in Trump. Instead it got tariffs that raised costs, a weakened domestic EV supply and a future outlook clouded by uncertainty.

This is a preview of MS NOW’s Project 47 Newsletter. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, get expert analysis on the administration’s latest actions and how others are pushing back sent straight to your inbox every Tuesday. Sign up now.

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Inflation has outpaced wage gains for six months and counting. Gas prices have averaged over $4 per gallon for most of the past six months. It’s unlikely consumer prices will come down anytime soon — Congress is on the sidelines, and the president shows no signs of reversing course on his tariffs and the never-ending Iran war.

Under these bleak circumstances, you would think receiving cash with no strings attached from the federal government would be something people would welcome with open arms. But President Donald Trump has achieved something remarkable: He’s made free money toxic to many Americans.

Since early September, Trump has promised to issue a $5,000 “dividend” to every American adult if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. He has repeated this pledge throughout his midterm rally blitz. Despite its eye-watering $1 trillion price tag and the fact that federal law bars election-related payouts, Trump hopes the promise will butter up frustrated voters.

“If the Republicans win, you will each have $5,000 in your pockets,” the president said at a Georgia campaign rally on Friday. He implored the audience to trust him: “I’ll do it, I always do it.”

Multiple polls demonstrate that most Americans aren’t buying Trump’s $5,000 dividend promises or don’t think it’s a good idea.

The $5,000 checks are just the largest of several freebies Trump has offered. Less than 24 hours later, he also announced $500 “refund” checks to Americans who receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, saying they were overcharged for their premiums. The White House estimated the checks will reach about 1 million Americans in 30 states.

Then, in early October, the Trump administration launched another one-time payment program: $90 for about 20 million seniors receiving medical coverage through Medicare. This initiative is funded by the questionable use of a $2 billion fund for improving Medicare.

I spoke to three people who have received Trump’s last-ditch payouts. Two of them received the Medicare payment, and the other received the Obamacare one. All described a feeling of disgust at what they called receiving a “bribe” for their votes.

On Oct. 8, Cynthia Heim, a former IT worker who lives just outside of Wilmington, Delaware, spotted a strange email in her inbox. It was Trump taking credit for the Medicare payment, similar to what he did during the first pandemic stimulus checks of 2020. She immediately deleted the email and cast it into the digital ether.

“Obviously, I was thinking this is trying to bribe people. It was just a weird timing of when he decided to send this out,” Heim told me. “I could think of more things that those $2 billion could have been used for.”

Heim has felt inflation chomp into her finances like many Americans. Her pension and monthly Social Security check don’t buy as many things as they used to. She’s still paying off a mortgage, and dining out is no longer an affordable luxury to splurge on. Cheap ramen is now a staple she regularly eats alongside her adult son, who lives with her.

“I have a 401k that I’ve already dipped into twice this year,” she said. “This past year is the worst that I have felt.”

Whether the president knows it or not, Trump is copying the playbook of populist governments with awful economic track records.

But despite the pressure, Heim didn’t want to use what she felt was tainted money. Instead, she donated all of it to the Democratic National Committee.

Alison Butler, a former economics professor residing in Washington, D.C., had a similar reaction when she noticed a $90 deposit in her bank account earlier this month.

“It doesn’t feel like money I am entitled to,” she told me. “And if I’m not entitled to it, I don’t want to keep it.”

Butler, another registered Democrat, split the money into two donations. One went to an initiative that delivers books to Washington prisons, and the other went to a mental health nonprofit that connects formerly incarcerated people with therapists.

Their reactions to the payouts are not terribly surprising, given the poor reception for the original “dividend” pitch. Multiple polls demonstrate that most Americans aren’t buying Trump’s $5,000 dividend promises or don’t think it’s a good idea. An NBC News poll published on Sunday showed that nearly half of self-identified Republicans don’t expect the payment.

What if the cash at stake wasn’t $90 but $2,000? That was the case for Tim Lilienthal, a Utah-based independent consultant and leadership coach. Earlier this month, he received a letter that touted Trump’s healthcare record, along with a paper check bearing the hefty sum.

“My wife and I were so disgusted by it, we didn’t cash it for a week,” Lilienthal said. “We just let it sit on our dining room table. Because I just was like, I don’t even want it. It felt like a bribe.”

For now, Republicans are saying little about the Medicare and Obamacare checks and focusing on limiting their probable losses in the midterms.

Lilienthal, a Republican who didn’t vote for Trump in the last election, lost his ACA subsidies when the GOP-held Congress failed to extend them. When all was said and done, his household’s monthly bill shot up from $1,475 to $2,623 — a 78% increase in premium costs for a family of four. Lilienthal’s 11-year old son helped him overcome the anguish about the check and put the $2,000 into 529 college savings plans.

Whether the president knows it or not, Trump is copying the playbook of populist governments with awful economic track records. It’s a simple tactic: Pull out all the stops to win votes now and worry about the cost later.

In 2018, ex-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro dangled a reward for Venezuelans if they supported him in what was a presidential election later marred by fraud.

“You give, I give. I am thinking of giving a prize to the people of Venezuela who come out and vote,” he said at the time, linking a government handout in exchange for their vote.

In Argentina, politicians have used election-related giveaways to cobble together constituencies for decades. In Sept. 2023, then-Economic Minister Sergio Massa campaigned for the presidency and announced a financial relief package timed just before the election. The plan platita — or “pocket cash plan” — delivered a mix of subsidies, tax exemptions and $256 cash handouts to retirees, public-sector employees, self-employed workers and even professionals. Voters, though, ultimately handed control of Argentina’s government to Javier Milei, a slash-and-burn libertarian who pledged to tackle inflation no matter what.

American voters may well be inclined to reject the last-ditch handouts, too.

“As a voter, it shows desperation to me,” Butler said, calling the cash payment “dirty money” that she wanted nothing to do with. For now, Republicans are saying little about the Medicare and Obamacare checks and focusing on limiting their probable losses in the midterms.

“I hadn’t heard much on this from constituents,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, an occasional Trump critic who’s floating a 2028 presidential run, said in a text message.

“I’ve been more focused on the $5K promises and what’s going on in Ukraine at the moment,” Bacon said.

It’s hard to turn down free money, especially when prices keep scaling to new heights with little end in sight. In this case, it amounts to pocket change that falls far short in assembling a political coalition that will stem the bleeding for Republicans in the midterms — and they’re on the cusp of paying the price.

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