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Welcome to this Weekend Drive edition of Daily Drive for the second week of September 2025.
I'm Kellan Walker, here in Detroit at Automotive News Congress.
Joining me today is tech and innovation reporter Mollye Boygan and Larry Velikwet, who covers
Toyota and Subaru for us at Automotive News.
Mollye and Larry, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Kellan.
It's great to see you in 3D.
So Mollye, let's start off with some Hyundai news.
What is the latest on the Hyundai LG immigration raid?
Yes.
So on Thursday morning, about 300 South Korean nationals flew back to Korea.
And there was also some reporting that showed that the Trump administration gave these workers
the opportunity to basically figure out their immigration status and repatriate with the
help of Hyundai and LG.
So this kind of illustrates a positive development for what had been a very tense international
incident.
And just so our audience knows, we're recording this on Thursday, September 11th.
Now Yusin Chung from Hyundai was here today.
What did he say here about it at the event?
Yes.
So Casey Crain, our publisher, asked Yusin Chung about the status of this immigration
raid and the ensuing kind of fracas with the detainment of some of the employees.
And he basically said, you know, things have taken a positive turn.
And he alluded to the company's hope that they can work on a solution to this
kind of broader visa issue.
The incident with Hyundai and LG's battery plant kind of put into stark relief this system
that a lot of companies, including automakers rely on, where they bring foreign workers
to the U.S. to do specialized tasks using visas that are not actually intended for
that purpose.
So he appeared to be saying that he hopes that this incident will create a pathway
for a more legitimate visa distribution.
Interesting stuff.
Larry, do you have any thoughts on this?
No, no.
Of course I do.
So it's all just a big way to say, hey, we're open for business, right?
If you're a foreign automaker, which is what I cover, and this happens to Hyundai, what
do you do the next time you have a plant or you have people coming back and forth
over and over again?
Right now, our entire industry relies on open borders and open market and open
relationships.
And for all of this year, between tariffs and immigration rates, we're at a point now
where you really have to question if you're going to make that investment, don't you?
If you're a foreign automaker, do you come in because you want to avoid the tariffs?
But if you bring any of your own people in, you have to make sure that the eyes
are dotted and teaser crossed, and that didn't exist before.
There were informal agreements that you let the special folks come in, and then they leave
at the end of their road.
But the whole raid, this performative immigration theater that we're in right now, this is not
the way to conduct business.
So I just have to make a counterpoint.
I do think that the Department of Homeland Security was really trumpeting that this
was the largest immigration rate in history, and they detained all these people.
And you're right that the arrangement has been this sort of handshake agreement, informal
consensus between the governments.
But it does raise an interesting question.
Automakers in general get tax breaks, get incentives, strike deals to bring facilities
here.
And the incentive for that is the assumption that these plants, these facilities are
going to employ American workers.
So I do think there's some sort of interesting question about how the industry can retain
its necessary foreign workforce, and also keep the promises that it's making to the
government and to the consumers.
That's valid, except those tax breaks are on a state level, for the most part.
States don't enforce immigration.
But what was interesting in this raid, my colleague Stephanie Brinley at S&P found out
that if she pulled the warrant, that warrant for that raid was to arrest five Hispanic
males they believed were working there illegally.
And how many Korean nationals did they arrest?
About 300.
Yeah.
So performative immigration theater.
Interesting stuff.
Speaking of foreign automakers, Larry, Toyota wrote a $9 billion check because of tariffs.
Now what happens to pricing and that money if the tariffs are ruled illegal by the Supreme
Court?
Right.
So the tariff case, in case our listeners don't know, the appeals court ruled that
the tariffs were illegal, correct?
Molly?
Yes.
Molly covers everything for us that doesn't involve wheels turning.
So I have to turn to Molly to double check these things.
But the appeals court ruled that the tariffs, the law under which the tariffs were written
does not allow this their imposition because of a lack of an emergency, correct?
Yes.
And also there's some question as to kind of the, like, jurisdictional is not the
right word, but whether the executive branch actually has the power to impose tariffs.
Or you serve the legislative branch that's in the constitution as the power to, which has
the power to regulate trade, yes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So what happens is, number one, as we've said many times, the tariffs are going to get
passed on to consumers.
But what happens if the Supreme Court says, no, these are illegal, right?
Then the federal government, theoretically, has to return that money to the companies that
paid it, right?
What happens to pricing, right?
Because if you're a consumer and I know as a Tesla owner, you've experienced buying
a Tesla and then having the price of the next model drop.
Yes.
Been down that dark road before.
Yeah.
And it has these crazy effects on residual values.
And do you then go back at your consumers who paid these tariffs that were put on your
MSRP, do you refund that money?
No, you're not going to refund that money.
You've already declared it as profits on your P&L statements.
It's going to be a mess.
It's an absolute mess if they get ruled illegal.
And if they're, you know, we're already in the mess if they're ruled legal.
But if the appellate court is upheld, it's going to just play havoc with everything over
the last six months.
You might end up with three statements.
You might have, you know, they may cut checks to back to consumers.
Who knows what they're going to do?
It's a crazy, crazy thing.
And as I noted, I don't know if you guys saw the story that there are some firms
on Wall Street that are actually arbitraging.
They're going to companies that paid these tariffs, right?
And they say, okay, well, you paid $9 billion, we'll give you $2 billion now, we'll refund
you $2 billion and we will buy your $9 billion potential windfall return if the tariffs are
ruled illegal.
So you make a choice as a CEO, do I take the $2 billion check and put a, you know,
use that as the band aid to cover this open wound?
Or do I hold out and wait for the $9 billion return that may never happen?
Interesting stuff, Molly, any more thoughts?
You know, I, another decision that I'm happy that I don't have to personally make.
Let's put it that way.
Coming up, we're here at Automotive News Congress at Hudson, Detroit, and we're
going to talk about some of the biggest takeaways so far from the show.
What's next on Weekend Drive?
On Monday, General Motors CEO, Mary Bara, joined Staley Drive for an exclusive interview with
Automotive News journalists Lindsey Van Holley and Nick Bunkley.
In this two-part interview, Bara talks about how EV headwinds are affecting GM's electrification
strategy and her conversations with President Trump and his administration about tariffs.
I also think tariffs are here to stay.
We're working on how are we aligned with what the administration is trying to accomplish
and then make sure that they have the information to help encourage that, and I think that's
the productive way to move forward, and that's what we've been doing since day one.
Don't miss this opportunity to hear directly from GM's CEO, Mary Bara, Monday and Tuesday,
September 15th and 16th, right here on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Weekend Drive.
I'm Kellan Walker with Larry Bellaquette and Molly Boygon.
So Larry, Molly, we're here at Automotive News Congress.
Molly, what have been some of your biggest takeaways so far?
It's been a really interesting show.
It's also very, this is my first Congress.
It's very fun to be here and see all of these people that I talk to and hear about and read
about all the time in person.
One of the things that I thought was really interesting during the tariff panel, Hannah
Lutz, who's one of our A&Collies who was moderating the panel, asked an audience question.
How will the tariffs and the ensuing potential price impacts impact upcoming UAW negotiations?
And that wasn't really something that I had thought about all that much because I'd been
so lost in the sauce on the ins and outs of the tariffs.
And no one knew the answer to that question, but I thought that that planted a really interesting
seed and time just keeps on ticking and we can't stop it.
And there are so many events coming up that are going to be impacted by the tariffs,
one of which is the UAW.
Yeah.
I have a labor background.
I've negotiated contracts myself.
It is an interesting position for the UAW because you have membership and leadership in the
union that were all gung-ho for this kind of protectionist regime.
And now it's cutting into their paychecks.
It's cutting into their profit checks that are basically the way they work is that
for every billion dollars, one of the Detroit three makes in profits, they get $1,000, right?
So it used to be a more complex arrangement, but it was too hard for anybody to figure out.
So they made it, they literally made it about eight years ago.
They made it this simple.
You get, they make a billion dollars, you get $1,000 at the end of the profit cycle.
So the UAW has had these wanted tariffs for a very long time.
Now they have them, and now they're having to live with them, and they're getting a really
hard lesson, and they're going to get a really, really hard lesson in January when their members'
checks are half or less of what they were this year.
It's going to be really interesting, and that is going to play within the membership.
They already had a historic contract this last time, and they went out with that
historic contract and tried to do an organizing drive in the South.
The foreign automakers in response raised all the wages up to try and keep them out,
and they did get a successful election in Chattanooga at VW, still do not have a first
contract.
So that is kind of stymied their organizing drive in the South, but I will say this
about this.
This is not my first Congress, I've been to the last 14 of them.
Oh my gosh.
This is a brand new venue for us.
We are in the building where General Motors will move.
It's headquarters later this year.
It's a Dan Gilbert building here in downtown Detroit on Redham Historic Woodward Avenue.
It's a beautiful building, absolutely beautiful building.
As someone who's gone to NADA's and to NADA conventions and Congresses and all these events
over the years, this is spectacular.
It really, really looks good.
I think this move for General Motors over to this, we're going to hear from Mary Barrow
later today in a fireside chat.
I think the move for them out of the Rensen and over here is going to be really, really
good for them.
Because I don't know if you've ever spent any time in the Rensen.
I have.
So usually when I come in town, just for the audience to know, I stay at the hotel at
the Rensen and a joke that my friends and I have, they're like, oh, you're staying in
the Robocop building because it reminds us of the police station from Robocop.
Carry on, Larry.
I was just going to say, when you don't work in the Rensen or go to the Rensen,
you get lost in the Rensen.
It is impossible to navigate.
I don't know who designed this thing.
It was a crazy building.
It's all cement.
It's all cement.
The whole thing is cement and glass and the city is going to decide what to do with
it and I hope they demolish it.
Before they demolish it, I think we need to record an episode of Weekend Drive called
Lost in the Rensen.
I'm here for that.
I'm here for all that.
We have to talk to our producer, but I think we could get that worked out.
Hello.
Hello.
All right, well, that's all for this Weekend Drive edition of Daily Drive.
Molly, Larry, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Cal.
Thank you, Cal.
I'd like to thank our executive producer, Jake Nier, for his help on today's podcast.
You're welcome.
You can get the latest news on Automotive News Congress, our 100-year centennial,
and the situation with the Hyundai LG Immigration raid at AutoNews.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
Send us an email at dailydriveatautonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
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