U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian automobiles will likely be felt throughout the entire industry, including used car sales and auto parts distributors.
Dan McKim, regional vice president of NAPA Atlantic Canada, doesn’t think the tariffs will be good for his or any other business in the industry.
“It’s going to affect the car dealerships significantly. We do a lot of business and have great partnerships with the car dealerships. It’s going to cause some problems,” said McKim.
Auto Trader, Canada’s online automobile marketplace, recently conducted a survey asking consumers about tariffs.
Nearly half of those surveyed said the tariffs will have an impact on their vehicle purchasing decisions.
Auto Trader Insights and Intelligence vice president Baris Akyurek said they’ve seen quite a bit of activity on the Canadian marketplace since the beginning of March.
“Inquiries sent to dealerships are substantially higher. Organic traffic increased substantially. Third-party data suggests there’s more and more used car searches. When we look at the transactional data, meaning used car sales, they’re also up by quite a bit,” said Akyurek.
Akyurek said used car prices have gone up a miniscule amount so far this year, but that’s against recent trends.
McKim said only around one per cent of the products at the NAPA distribution centre in Moncton are affected at this point – things like hand tools and cleaning products – so he isn’t sure what will come of Trump’s tariffs.
“If I had a crystal ball, I could tell you exactly what’s going to happen, but we really don’t know. We don’t know it’s going to affect the parts business,” said McKim.
McKim said NAPA is in a wait and see pattern to determine how it will impact the company, but he’s not expecting layoffs.
