Yeah, there are still affordable vehicles outside of the US m, but they are usually subject to massive tariffs so they aren't generally an option in the US.
If Toyota sold their Hilux work trucks they would absolutely own the market. But US manufacturers know that. So they have been tariffed to the point that Toyota doesn't even try.
And that particular tariff goes all the way back to the early 1960’s, because we (the US) were selling chicken super cheap to Europe. So then mostly France and West Germany tariffed the imported chicken. To retaliate, POTUS LBJ put a 25% tariff on all imported light trucks (and brandy, and potato starch- which were dropped eventually). Most of the auto imports tariffs were also dropped, but not the HiLux, because none of it is produced in the US.
Even with tariffs it's only $15,500. It doesn't meet safety and emissions regulation standards for current US vehicles. Most of the "amazingly cheap" cars of foreign markets exist because of less regulation.
The excessive tariffs on light trucks predate trump by quite a bit although they are a great example of why we already knew that poorly implemented tariffs do not benefit the country before he made it worse.
There are a decent handful of good things he has done but they are mostly overwhelmed by the harm of his other actions since he has done a lot of things that damage the US significantly with no obvious benefit.
Most of the good things are more of a broken clock being right twice a day situation like signing a bill that happens to have a section that reduced the mandatory minimum sentences on certain non violent crimes(the US has one of the highest per capita prison populations in the world in part because it has really high mandatory minimum prison sentences for relatively minor crimes). As far as I can tell reducing the number of non violent people who end up stuck in prison for long periods regardless of whether or not the people sentencing them actually deserve it probably wasn't actually Trump's priority but he did sign that particular bill.
162
u/Terminal_Insomnia_ 6h ago edited 6h ago
Toyota recently made a $12k pickup truck that has no bells or whistles. There's no touch screen and the windows are manual.
Y'all are getting fleeced because they refuse to make cheaper cars, and prevent them from being imported too.