January 20, 2026 - Tariffs Hurting Vehicle Affordability

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for January 20, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

Tariffs are a tax on the consumers who buy products, no matter how much some politicians try to deny it. Tariffs aren't paid by the country exporting a product; they are paid by whoever imports the product and are generally passed along to those who ultimately buy the product. We've seen this over the past year as new vehicle affordability has continued to decline. Some manufacturers have been upfront in raising sticker prices, while others have tried to hide those increases, particularly the Detroit-based automakers, who have substantially raised the delivery charges on new vehicles. Those charges are mandatory fees, but they generally aren't included in advertised prices. Ford, GM, and Stellantis have increased delivery charges on full-size pickups and SUVs several times in the past 12 months, from $1,995 to $2,595. 

But affordability is getting hit in other ways as well. The CX-30 compact crossover is one of Mazda's most popular models, and it's also one of its most affordable, with a starting price just under $26,000, including standard all-wheel drive. The CX-30 is produced in Mexico, and despite its modest price, sales declined by more than 40% in 2025. That relatively low price means that Mazda doesn't have much margin to absorb the tariff hit, but raising the price would hurt sales. Instead, Mazda opted to reduce production of the CX-30 for the U.S. market while keeping the price relatively stable. Those customers who were able to get a CX-30 in 2025 still got a great deal on an excellent vehicle. The problem is that 40,000 fewer customers were able to get one of those vehicles than in the prior year because of trade policies. 

As a relatively smaller automaker, Mazda doesn't have the resources to build new plants in the U.S. because it doesn't have the sales volumes to fill a factory. They currently have one joint venture with Toyota that produces the more expensive CX-50, and they would probably need similar arrangements to build other products. In the meantime, it looks like Mazda will focus on higher margin models where the customers might be more willing to pay the tariffs. 

Thanks for listening.