So

there's the price of a car once it hits the lot, and then there's the cost to actually manufacture a vehicle. And Erin, you think this is an important distinction that consumers should know about.

Explain why. Well, because a lot of us in the media, especially right now, being asked, and I'm spending a lot of time talking about, hey, what do we think the impact of these tariffs are going to be? And it's just worth noting that the importer of record, which is typically the automaker, is the one that's going to be on the hook to pay that tariff when it comes over the border. And that is a cost to the automaker. Now, how that automaker then intends to spread that cost throughout their entire portfolio or vehicles or whether they end up sharing some of that cost with suppliers and with dealers, that's where it gets a little bit complicated. So when we're making estimates about how much of cost impact we could see to a vehicle, say under $30,000, you know, some of those cars individually may experience a $4,000 to $6,000 cost increase to the automaker. Whether we really see that $4,000 to $6,000 cost increase show up at the dealer lot when someone's looking for that vehicle is a different story. Every manufacturer is going to look at their entire portfolio of products that they sell and make some determinations on how they're going to spread that cost across their portfolio. So is the fact that they wouldn't want to, you know, outprice a particular model within its segment of other models, you know, its competitive set, if you will. Now,

late last month, President Trump also imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum. Jack, how might this also affect car prices? Well,

that's another big cost because cars use a lot of steel. They use a lot of aluminum. And to some extent, that has been coming from overseas. Steel is actually a very specialized product. It's not a commodity. There's a lot of special alloys that car makers need for certain parts that may not be available in the United States. So they're buying that from Europe or Japan or wherever, and we'll have to pay a tariff on that. So that will be yet another additional cost. Jennifer,

if we're talking about someone who's trying to hold onto their car for a little bit longer, can they expect for repair prices to also increase? Yes,

absolutely. That's part of what I was mentioning earlier, of course, that the parts that are needed not only to build a new vehicle, but also to repair a vehicle. Most of them, a lot of them come from other countries. And so they are going to be potentially tariffed at 25%. And so those costs are going to go up. I know that there are a lot of dealerships and repair shops that try to perhaps bring in excess inventory so that they might be able to delay the increased cost for some time. But who knows how much they were able to import in time, what their warehouse, you know, available, parts available looks like. But there's no question that this will have an impact even on repairs. Car

prices have already reached record levels. The average price for a car in the U.S. is nearly $50,000. That's an increase of 30% in the past five years, according to Kelly Blue Book. Erin, just take us into the reality of how affordable it is for the average American family to buy a new vehicle right now.