Us Auto Industry Could Be Collateral Damage In Trump's Trade Wars

President Donald Trump's trade wars threaten to claim a casualty on the home front: the American auto industry.

If the president goes ahead with 25 taxes on imports from Canada and Mexico on Tuesday , he will disrupt more than 300 billion in annual U.S. automotive trade with its two neighbors, wreck supply chains that have been operating for decades and likely push up the already-forbidding price of new cars.

The tariffs pose an "existential'' threat to North American auto production, said David Gantz, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. They will push up "the cost of everything that's imported from Mexico or Canada that goes into a car assembled in the U.S.''

Kelley Blue Book says Trump's tariffs could raise the U.S. price of the average new car - already approaching 49,000 - by 3,000 or more. The price of some full-size pickup trucks could shoot up by 10,000.

The economic pain would intensify if Canada and Mexico counterpunched with tariffs on American exports.