WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's tariffs on most goods from China, even if rates remain at a stratospheric 145%, will not fundamentally change the U.S. auto supply chain's dependence on the rival nation, industry experts say.

"I'm sure you could figure out how to make a relatively low-volume car, maybe a very simple car without China," said Dan Hearsch, Americas leader of the automotive and industrial practice at consulting firm AlixPartners LLP. "But why bother? Why would you? It would not be commercially viable."

China has been an ascendant automotive powerhouse for decades, beginning with a 1994 government plan for suppliers to "reach economic scale." Since then, it has become a leading source for auto parts, raw materials, critical new battery technologies and machines that enable downstream manufacturing by the world's biggest car and truck brands.

Hearsch and others said that tariffs on China — both the 145% general rate plus the 25% duties for auto parts that Trump eased last week — will devastate small suppliers that directly source products from the United States' chief economic rival and slash some of China's U.S. auto footprint in the process. But for businesses that do stay afloat, industry experts predicted that China would continue as a major behind-the-scenes and difficult-to-tax player in the industry's global supply chain.

Experts warned of that likelihood in December and expressed similar stances in the weeks since Trump turned his repeated tariff threats into realities for the Far East.

"Somewhere in there, something has come through China," Hearsch said. "Because there are some things where it's the only place that is really industrialized to the tune of what's needed, really, throughout the world."

'Tariff engineering'

The auto industry has already spent years attempting to reduce its direct reliance on China. Hearsch said that process started about a decade ago, as manufacturing in China and freight services were getting more expensive.

"Lots of things were making more sense to make in Mexico or the Dominican Republic, places that were closer but still low-cost labor and highly productive," he recalled.

Hearsch, who previously led purchasing for Wixom-based auto supplier TREMEC Corp., said tariffs during the first Trump administration accelerated moves away from China. Then supply chain failures during the COVID-19 pandemic put those efforts "on steroids."

But those efforts have not shut China out of the U.S. auto supply chain completely, largely thanks to China's continued leadership on electric vehicle batteries and role as a key supplier of raw materials like metals and rare earth magnets and components like computer chips.

For raw materials and components, rules around "substantial transformation" — a legal process for assessing which country added the most value to a product, where it technically comes from and what its tariff rate should be — sometimes obscure China's role.

The former purchasing director gave an example: "Let's say there's some raw material from China like neodymium, for instance. If that goes to Mexico and then is assembled into a larger motor, the motor is not going to get tariffed at 145% unless Mexico enacts the same tariff."

Hearsch described businesses orienting their supply chains around import taxes as "tariff engineering," a practice that could proliferate as Trump's trade war persists.

"One way to avoid tariffs is you just don't ship things directly from China into the United States," he explained. "And unless the government can figure out a way to really understand and trace every single thing back to China, that's how the supply chains will go."

Economics research has shown that tariff engineering already grew during Trump's first term, an indication that businesses adapted to his policies by adjusting their supply chains to suppress — but not always reduce — China's role.

The "reshaping of U.S. imports away from China may not have reduced dependence on China as much as import numbers suggest," University of California San Diego economist Caroline Freund wrote in a recent journal article. She and her co-authors explained that was because countries like Mexico "that were more deeply engaged in Chinese supply chains experienced the most rapid export growth to the U.S."

Machines to build machines

China is also likely to continue roaring behind the scenes as an enabler of American automaking because of advancements in tool and die — the process of making equipment that cuts or shapes materials to become parts of larger products like engines, axles or doors.

Even when U.S. and Michigan auto brands like Ford Motor Co. or General Motors Co. produce their vehicles in North America, the machinery to facilitate that production is often made in China.

Warren Browne, an auto supplier consultant and former GM executive who spent 40 years working for the automaker, said China's rise in that area happened thanks to U.S. auto executives' eagerness to cut costs.

"We just outsourced it, as all good CEOs did during my time," he said in a phone interview.

He and other industry experts offer a few reasons for China's cost advantages: Government subsidies for businesses, "cheating" in the form of intellectual property theft, and the sheer scale of a country with 1.4 billion people and an annual vehicle production capacity estimated at 50 million units.

Meanwhile, Browne described the status of U.S. tool and die production as dire. He pointed to a congressionally directed 1994 RAND Corporation study that called out declining domestic capabilities in that field as an economic and national security risk. The report gave solutions for mitigating risks, such as federal investment in manufacturing infrastructure and local cooperative networks among machine makers and users.

Those recommendations, Browne said, have gone unheeded. "You might as well have used that for a Yule log," he said of the RAND report. "We've been asleep for two decades."

The former executive suggested that permanent 145% tariffs on China would help "move the needle" for U.S. reliance on China for tool and die, though they would bring a whole different set of problems.

For one, he predicted, the tariffs could prompt China to halt exports of manufacturing equipment to the United States and its trade partners. That would severely hamper vehicle manufacturing. Browne also said that the next-best places to source tool and die machinery are Japan and South Korea, not the United States.

"If you want to get the tooling made in Ohio, you need to have people who have the technical skills to get that done," he said. That kind of domestic labor supply, for now, remains limited.

Trump did sign an executive order on April 23 directing cabinet officials to craft a plan that will "prepare the American economy for the opportunities presented by reshoring and re-industrialization," though the details of such a plan and any funding that comes with it are unclear.

So long as domestic tool and die capacity remains limited, Hearsch of AlixPartners said he expects automakers and parts suppliers to swallow the cost of tariffs — even with import taxes above 100%. "You amortize that over the life of the program," he said.

Hearsch explained that a given piece of machinery will make hundreds of thousands of parts over its years in service, so even if the price for a $1 million piece of machinery doubles thanks to import taxes, the additional cost per part will be negligible.

Suppliers ask for relief

Still, not all suppliers will be able to absorb the costs of Trump's tariffs as they stand now, creating cascading effects throughout the auto supply chain.

Six of the country's largest auto lobbies presented a rare, unified front in writing a joint April 21 letter to Trump administration officials and pleading for tariff relief on auto parts.

"Most auto suppliers are not capitalized for an abrupt tariff-induced disruption. Many are already in distress and will face production stoppages, layoffs and bankruptcy," the letter said, though it did not mention China specifically.

Last week, Trump responded with an order that 25% tariffs on vehicles and certain auto parts will not be stacked on top of aluminum and steel tariffs and by granting automakers credit to offset 25% duties on imported auto parts that go into vehicles assembled in the United States.

"It's not just China," said Collin Shaw, a signatory of the letter and president of the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, a leading auto supplier lobbying group. "There are a lot of countries that play a role in our supply chain."

He highlighted Canada and Mexico as the most important partners for the U.S. auto industry, pointing to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement Trump signed onto during his first term.

"That was a big boost to automotive, and we appreciated that. So having the stability of North America, that's first and foremost," Shaw said in an interview.

The Specialty Equipment Market Association, a trade group for aftermarket and specialty auto parts, also sent a tariff advocacy letter on April 21. Their message was addressed to Trump himself.

"Our primary request is that American automotive parts manufacturers, including our members, be provided a transition period to re-shore their manufacturing, as well as some form of economic relief to assist in that transition,” SEMA President and CEO Mike Spagnola wrote.

He added: “That relief could include tariff exemptions for things like molds, tooling, and machinery brought back to the U.S., as well as tax incentives to offset the associated costs.”

About 95% of the trade group's 7,500 members are considered small businesses, meaning they have less than 500 employees. Spagnola noted in his letter that higher prices on raw materials have a particularly high impact on those businesses because they "do not buy at volume levels that allow them to negotiate prices like large companies can."

Karen Bailey-Chapman, SEMA's vice president of government affairs, also noted in an interview that even if domestic production for items like state-of-the-art computer chips grows over the next several years, many aftermarket suppliers will want to stick with cheaper, older-generation technology.

"They don't need the latest and greatest processor," she said. "That's still going to be likely manufactured overseas, and most likely in China."

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