The first two weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term saw the release of a slew of executive orders, some of which impact the collision repair industry.
Among other things, the executive orders removed the former Biden administration’s “electric vehicle (EV) mandate,” and directed the Commerce Department to consider expansion of a prohibition of transactions involving certain components of connected vehicle systems.
Trump on Feb. 1 also imposed 25% tariffs on Canada, and additional 10% tariffs on China, set to take effect Feb. 4. Trump originally announced 25% tariffs on Mexico as well, before reaching an agreement with Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum to curb immigration and illegal drug and firearm flows to the U.S. As of Feb. 3, tariffs against Mexico had been delayed for one month.
“We don't know yet where the new path may take us,” Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA) Senior Vice President for Government Affairs Ana Meuwissen said. “Companies are just right now trying to navigate that uncertainty there. Also, many of our companies…are global in nature.”
Though overall impacts of the recent executive orders remain to be seen, reactions have varied across the aftermarket, from warnings of potential tariff impacts to praise for the lifting of the EV mandate.
The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) in a Jan. 20 statement applauded the reversal of the EV mandate.
SEMA Senior Vice President of Public and Government Affairs Karen Bailey-Chapman said her organization’s members have responded largely positively to the removal of the EV mandate. About one-third of the organization’s 7,000 members are internal combustion engine-dependent, she said.
Issued Jan. 20, Trump's “Unleashing American Energy" executive order calls for removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access and ensuring a level regulatory playing field for consumer choice by terminating state emissions waivers that “limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles” and by eliminating “unfair subsidies” for EVs.
According to its statement, SEMA is calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to send Clean Air Act waivers for California to Congress to begin the Congressional Review Act oversight process. Waivers issued by the EPA during the Biden administration have allowed California to enact emission standards for new motor vehicles, independent of the federal process.
Currently, California has a regulation requiring all new car sales to be zero-emission by 2035, which could be overturned through the Congressional review process.
“If and when the EPA does that, it starts a 60-day clock with Congress to decide if they want to review it and what they want to say about it, and then, their outcome is the outcome,” Bailey-Chapman said. “It then will give and provide the opportunity for legislative language to, quite frankly, hopefully put the issue to rest for a very long time.”
In addition to the Congressional Review Act process, the Trump administration could roll back EV regulations through federal agency policy as well, she said.
The “America First Trade Policy” executive order directs the departments of Commerce and Homeland Security to suggest appropriate “trade and national security measures” on Canada, Mexico and China to resolve the emergency of “unlawful migration and fentanyl flows.”
That order also directs the government to “make recommendations regarding the United States’ participation” in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, in advance of a July 2026 review that will evaluate the agreement’s impact on U.S. workers, service providers and other stakeholders.
“We're watching, particularly this weekend, what they do and what we think will be the impact on [our] shops,” Automotive Service Association (ASA) head lobbyist Bob Redding said Jan. 31, a day before Trump announced the national security tariffs to enter into force on Feb. 4.
ASA is paying particular attention to original equipment manufacturer parts made in foreign countries. The tariffs cover all goods imported for consumption from China and Canada, except for Canadian energy.
During COVID-19, “the wait times on collision repair were extreme for some, and we don't want to go back to that,” Redding said. “It's just a matter of, what does that [tariff policy] impact from our perspective?”
Bailey-Chapman emphasized that Trump uses tariffs largely for negotiating leverage, and in the past has stated an intent to bring jobs back to the U.S.
“We tend to take a very rational approach to see how far he'll push any of these foreign policy and commerce-related activities,” she said.
The administration has the authority to impose tariffs if it wishes, but in cases such as Colombia, for example, the U.S. government used a tariff threat simply as a negotiating tactic that prompted Colombia to quickly accept deportees back into the country, Bailey-Chapman noted.
“There's usually a pretty quick reaction on the foreign countries’ part to respond in that negotiation,” she said. “We tend to take a bit of a keep-calm approach until it really starts to heat up, until there really is an issue.”
Another part of the America First Trade Policy Executive Order directs the Commerce Department to review potential expanded applicability for a Jan. 16 final rule, issued in the final days of the Biden administration, that bans certain transactions involving Vehicle Connectivity Systems (VCS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) sourced from Russia and China.
Both Meuwissen and Bailey-Chapman reported their groups’ membership bases have expressed few, if any, concerns about supply chain impacts from that final rule.
But Bailey-Chapman said the aftermarket industry should still track any forthcoming regulations covering VCS and ADS systems from Russia and/or China.
Both MEMA and SEMA supported the removal of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) from an earlier version of the rule. In public comments on the earlier proposed rule, MEMA recommended the Commerce Department focus the prohibition on actual points of connectivity in vehicles where the level of risk may be more tangible than the entire infrastructure of a vehicle.
“Specifically, MEMA notes that if a vehicle is equipped with a device that has the capability of data transmission, such as a wireless modem (3G/4G/5G), Wi-Fi, or a physical port that has access to the vehicle’s local area network (LAN), then there is potential for the data collected by sensors on the vehicle to be transmitted off the vehicle to another source,” MEMA wrote.
Several other technologies are “basic” and don’t enable access to consumer and/or private data, the group wrote, and should therefore be excluded from the final rule.
SEMA applauded the Commerce Department from narrowing the proposed rule’s original scope, agreeing with the agency’s decision to ultimately exclude ADAS, battery management systems, and vehicle operating systems, unless they have VCS components that fall under the rule’s definition of VCS hardware.
While the final rule excluded these components, Trump’s trade-related executive order directs the Commerce Department to review whether controls on connected vehicles should cover additional connected products.
“We followed it very closely,” Meuwissen said of the rulemaking process. Broadly, MEMA is “waiting to see what the next steps will be once [Commerce Secretary nominee Howard] Lutnickis in place at the Commerce Department and has his team there determining their priorities going forward.”
Brian Bradley