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Dear consumer marketing efforts feel complicated? Experian automotive delivers data-driven marketing solutions to find new customers and keep loyal ones, drive measurable results with trusted data and expert support. Learn more at Experian.com slash automotive. Welcome to Daily Drive for Friday, September 26, 2025. I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas, today on the show. The US will impose tariffs on heavy trucks and
other products. Tesla urges President Trump not to repeal vehicle emissions rules, and JLR restarts some IT operations after its recent cyber attack. Plus, TransUnions, Sachyan Merchant talks about the implications of the Fed's recent rate cut on dealership FNI offices and the prospect of more cuts later this year.
I do believe for sure that will create more opportunity for refinance, which is great for lenders that offer that product and great for consumers that are looking to save some money on their monthly payments.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
President Donald Trump is imposing new industry-specific tariffs, including a 25% levy on heavy trucks.
Other new tariffs target things like kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, and upholstered furniture.
Trump made the announcement in social media post on Thursday evening. He says they will begin October 1.
Tesla is urging the Trump administration not to repeal vehicle emissions standards,
or the long-standing US finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health.
The EV leader says the EPA proposal, quote, would give a pass to engine and vehicle manufacturers
for all measurement, control, and reporting of GHG emissions for any highway engine and vehicle.
Earlier this week, a group representing General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, and nearly all other
automakers, acts the EPA to roll back its aggressive vehicle emissions limits that seek
to force the industry to build a rising number of electric vehicles.
And Jaguar Land Rover says it's restarting some of its operations and working to clear a backlog
of payments to suppliers as quickly as possible. The British automaker has been forced to repeatedly
extend a production shutdown after a cyber attack left its operations paralyzed and smaller
suppliers struggling. JLR said Thursday that some systems were online, including the ones that
controlled the supply of parts worldwide and the financial system that controls the wholesale of
vehicles. It also said capacity for processing invoices for suppliers had increased.
And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at autonews.com.
President Donald Trump's proclamation last week that H-1B visa applicants would pay a $100,000 fee
highlights a Goldilocks problem for the auto industry. That's according to industry groups,
lawyers, and data analysis. On our upcoming episode of the Automotive News Shift Podcast,
our own Hannah Lutz speaks with tech and innovation reporter Molly Boygon about her reporting on
the subject. Is it peace of their conversation? Molly, you've been following the H-1B visa stories
after the ice raid at the Hyundai LG Energy Battery Plant in Georgia. So now the cost of those
visas, which we're already hard to get, will be $100,000. How will this affect automakers,
suppliers, and auto tech companies? Yes. So first of all, I just have to say that whoever
decided to name the visa's H-B-1 and B-1, I would just like to talk. It's very confusing.
Did I say it right? No, no, you did it. You said it right. You said it right. But I'm just saying,
in general, it's like every, what I'm writing about this, it's, you know, it occupies a lot of
freight space. But anyway, yes, so there's a new fee that's going to be applied for applications
for the H-B-1 visa. So this is really interesting because as you said, it's very hard to get.
An analysis that I cite in the story says that only about 20% of applicants get their applications
approved. So this is a pretty significant expense. However, the auto industry hasn't really relied
on H-B-1 visas all that much. The government actually provides a database of employers that have
gotten their beneficiaries improved. And the automaker that's highest on the list is Tesla,
which has between 700 and 800 beneficiaries approved for H-B-1 visas. That's in comparison to
big tech companies like Amazon, which has far, far more than that. So it's sort of a small
itch slice of the auto industry. But for me, this issue kind of highlights how there's a bit of a,
what I call the story, a Goldilocks problem. The industry has been relying on, in some cases, H-B-1
visas, which are very hard to get and now very expensive, or B-1 visas, which are really not
intended for the kind of skilled labor that different companies have been relying on to get
their battery facilities up and running and things like that. So it is a very complex situation
already, lots of acronyms, lots of letters and numbers, and now lots of dollar signs.
Listen to shift on Sunday to hear all of the latest news about automotive technology and innovation
with new co-hosts Molly Boygon and Hannah Lutz, as well as an interview with Mike Murphy of the EV
Politics Project. Coming up, TransUnions Sachyan Merchant talks about what the Fed's interest rate
cut means for auto lending and the refinance market. That's next on Daily Drive.
Automotive news shift podcast brings you the latest on automotive technology, trends and
transformation. I'm Hannah Lutz, and I'm Molly Boygon. We're the new co-hosts of shift,
and we're excited to bring you new conversations with experts and industry insiders like this one
with Larry Dominique, president of LD Management Consultant. Do you believe the legacy OEMs are falling
into a trap? They've got to find a way to, in some ways, build new airplane while they're still in flight.
Cut shift available every Sunday wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellyn Walker. While the Fed's decision to cut its target
interest rate was welcomed by consumers and provided a tailwind for the auto market,
meaningful improvement in auto sales will likely require a combination of factors.
That's according to Sachin Merchant, Senior Vice President of Automotive at TransUnion.
Merchant spoke with automotive news senior retail editor Dan Shine about what other factors need
to improve to the auto finance market. Sachin, thanks again for joining me on the FNI Friday
edition of Daily Drive. Thanks, Dan. It's always nice to be here. I wanted to have you on and talk a
little bit about the recent rate cut. I'm always used to saying rate hike when I talk about the
Fed. So I have to kind of retrain my brain a little bit. The Fed with a modest 0.25 rate cut
last week. I think many thought systems step in the right direction but it's not the
the panacea to all that ails us in the auto loan and auto segment as far as affordability concerns
are. But this talk I guess to start off with a rate cut and what that kind of means even though
it's a smaller one, what a cut means for auto lending and that kind of auto retail space.
Sure. I think Dan that it's like you said a step in the right direction, particularly coming from
consumers' mind as well as really a retailer in an OEM and a lender in terms of how to continue
to stimulate and grow the business that they're in. We've seen from an origination point of view
that there's already kind of positive uptrends over the last few quarters, especially in certain
segments like subprime and superprime. And nearly all the segments are achieving year of year
growth. So while at 25 basis point cut is modest, it's not a game changer. I think it may
instill a bit of interest as well as confidence from consumers to say, hey, what I thought might
have been something unaffordable, meaning an auto loan payment recently maybe coming a bit more
affordable. It's important though to point out that it's just one piece of the puzzle that
they interest rate. Obviously the cost of the vehicle or the amount of finances and other
piece as well as the loan term, the length of the loan. And on the one hand, lenders hopefully
will start to flow through some of that lower cost of capital for them in terms of a lower
interest rate. Lenders are also dealing with thinking through their risk management
as delinquencies go up a bit and have been going up. And so are they going to continue to have
longer term loans that, or are they trying to pull in the length of a loan term to help manage
their portfolio. These are all kind of the more complicated questions. I think that lenders are
thinking about in the auto industry, but to round out my very long answer here, I think 25
basis point cut is certainly in the right direction and they start to instill a bit of momentum
in the industry. And it also could kind of maybe spur. I think we've talked about this before and
it's already been kind of a trend. I guess you might say of refinancing your current loan that
again, this might is a little bit of a cut could even kind of be a catalyst for more of interest
in refinancing a current loan that consumer might have. Yeah, I think Dan spot on that. That's
the area that's probably there's a much more direct tie to the fed reserve activity. And so
again, the 25 basis point cut can help even prior to this cut, we took a look at the auto refinance
market earlier in the year. And we we sizes it about 18 million consumers at the time were in
the market to stand to benefit from a refinance. They could save some meaningful amount of money
on a monthly payment. And that was before the cut. So you would have to imagine that two things
have happened since we did that study early in the year one more and more people are getting auto
loans over the, I mean, the market continues to run, right? And then two, the interest rates came
down a little bit. So we do think that in a little bit of our estimation was if there were 50
basis points cut, that would add maybe another two more million people in the US that could stand to
benefit from a refi. So it won't take much more. Maybe there have been expectations or predictions
that they're the fed will continue to cut another, you know, 50 basis points or so through the end
of this year. I do believe for sure that will create more opportunity for for refinance, which is
great for lenders that offer that that product and great for consumers that are looking to save some
money on their monthly payments. Right. You're right. They said they kind of did the projection that
there could be more cuts coming. Do you think also, I mean, there's a part of this equation that
another piece of the puzzle is just, you know, what consumers are dealing with on the day-to-day
stuff, the grocery bills that are still maybe high and consumer insurance products that, you know,
their current insurance is high. All these kind of cuts, all cuts, helps all these kind of cost
maybe come down a little bit lower where they can maybe manage their budgets and say, okay, maybe I
can afford to have now a vehicle payment. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a really good example
is that insurance premium consumers have been dealing with increased insurance on their vehicle,
also on other property like their home. But just taking a look at the vehicle, I mean, we're now here
close to the fourth quarter of the year. If most consumers have had their term and their insurance
renewed, if not too date, it will happen in the next few months, right. And myself included,
I got an increased insurance premium this year on the renewal, right. And so I think this is an
aspect that maybe in the past consumers more or less assume their insurance would be the same
and it's not something they had to budget for on an annual increase. Now that refinance that could
save them $50 a month could be the exact saving they're looking for to offset say an increase of
an insurance premium, you know, $50 a month, right. So as an example, those increased costs
insurance, like you said, groceries and other just kind of day-to-day staples, that refinance could
really help them offset those increased costs. And we haven't really mentioned kind of like talking
much about tariffs. Are tariffs still an issue when it comes to potentially increasing the cost
of a vehicle? It's a great question, Danny. You know, I think it was a big question at the beginning
of the year or in the first quarter when the tariffs were announced. What we have seen to date is
that they haven't had a massive impact that ultimately at retail, what a consumer is paying for
a new vehicle. But there are a lot of mitigating levers that have been out there. We have seen in
some cases that the OEMs have stated that they they absorb the cost of those tariffs and did not
pass it on to the consumer. And other cases, what we found is that, you know, an OEM might have
adjusted their production or already had existing inventory that had landed here in the United
States so they weren't subject to the tariffs. At some point, those mitigating levers may run out
and there still could be a possibility that the impact of the tariffs come through. So it's still
to be seen what levers that a manufacturer dealer can use to mitigate what could be a cost increase.
But wide scale, it hasn't happened yet. It's still a risk out there, though, for consumers.
Yeah, for sure. South China is always great to talk about this with you. And maybe we'll see
the next time Fed meets what they do. And we'll have you on again. We can talk about how that might
change the auto lending landscape out there. But thanks for your time. Thank you, Dan.
Sachin Merchant is Senior Vice President of Automotive at TransUnion. He spoke with our own Dan
Shine. That's daily drive for today. I'm Kellen Walker. Thanks to Automotive News executive producer
Jake Near as well as our own Molly Boygon for her reporting for today's podcast. You can get
the latest news on finance and insurance, tariffs, and everything happening in the auto industry
at autonews.com. Come back over the weekend for our weekend drive edition of the show. Automotive
News reporters Larry Bella Quet and Richard Truitt joined me to talk about the week's biggest
news stories, including the latest on the cyber attacks against JLR and Stellantis.
It only takes one person to screw up on an email, right? And suddenly, you know, the wolves are in
the chicken coop. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show on the topics
we covered today. Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
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