TOGETHER WITH:
Howdy, Fam!
Here's the thing about a global supply chain: two neighbors can't get along, and somehow it's the grocery store across town that ends up wrecked.
The U.S. and Canada are the ones fighting.
Toyota and Honda, two Japanese companies with no seat at that table, are the ones staring at the receipt. That's the auto industry in 2026 for you.
Also in today's email:
What if Tier 2 advertising bought an ice cream truck instead?
Unifor and GM workers ratified a three-year deal worth more than $1 billion in Canadian investment
Stellantis dealers are sitting on a service opportunity Carvana just handed them
Nissan and Honda are rebuilding their relationship, no corporate marriage required
Keep Pushing Back,
—Chris with Paul, Kyle & Kristi
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Toyota and Honda May Get Stuck With the Bill for Trump's Canada Tariffs
Trump's proposed 50% tariff targets Canada. The automakers most exposed to it are Japanese, not American.
Toyota and Honda build more than three-quarters of all vehicles made in Canada. Canadian-built cars made up nearly a quarter of Honda's U.S. sales last year and 17% of Toyota's, the highest exposure of any automaker, per Barclays. If tariffs hit January 1 as proposed, analysts say both could be forced to shutter Canadian production lines.
If you really wanted to destroy the Canadian auto industry, you could with these tariffs.
Toyota exports the RAV4 from Canada, Honda the CR-V, both among America's best-selling SUVs. Toyota already absorbed $8.8 billion in tariff costs last year and is doubling down on U.S. production instead. Honda says it may not build its planned eighth North American plant at all without a USMCA extension.
The timing compounds an existing squeeze: both companies are also fighting cheap Chinese EV competition abroad, in markets where China still can't touch them at home.
It's your data. Use it anywhere you want.
If data ownership, freedom, and coordination are what you're looking for, here's the solution: Foureyes Connect.
It lets you put your unified customer and inventory data to work anywhere you need it -- any tool, system, and partner you want. And never locks it in.
It also centralizes your customer opt-outs across the vendors talking to your customers.
Most can't do either.
Foureyes Connect is a different kind of data platform that does both for dealers.
What If Tier 2 Advertising Bought an Ice Cream Truck Instead?
Tier 2 co-op advertising was built for a world with a finite number of billboards and TV slots. That world is gone, and on a special release of The Pushback, we asked why the spending still looks the same.
Our take: most Tier 2 spend still funds broad-reach media that just duplicates what Tier 1 is already doing. It builds the manufacturer's brand, not any individual store's.
Reallocate those dollars. Put them on your brand, instead of yelling at people through a commercial nobody's paying attention to.
We pitched three alternatives: adopting a local youth organization, turning sponsor logos into real SEO assets, and a branded ice cream truck at every Little League field in town.
Unifor and GM Workers Ratified a Three-Year Deal Worth More Than $1 Billion
The tentative agreement from last week is now official.
Unionized GM workers across Ontario voted overwhelmingly to ratify new three-year contracts, raising full-rate production wages to $50.20 an hour and confirming more than $1 billion in Canadian facility investment, including a new heavy-duty Sierra line in Oshawa and a next-gen transmission plant in St. Catharines.
The deal lands as Canada's auto sector braces for Trump's proposed tariff hike.
Stellantis Dealers Are Sitting on a Service Opportunity Carvana Just Handed Them
Carvana's expansion into new-car sales at seven Stellantis stores is putting more Jeeps and Rams on the road in markets far from where they were sold. The opportunity nobody's fully claimed yet: those buyers still need an oil change from somewhere, and right now almost nobody's fighting to be that somewhere.
Nissan and Honda Are Rebuilding Their Relationship. This Time, No Corporate Marriage.
Two years after their merger collapsed over who would be in charge, Nissan and Honda signed a joint agreement to standardize the electronic control units, vehicle architecture, and software running their next-generation vehicles, arriving in fiscal 2029.
Neither company needed to own the other to solve the problem actually facing them both.
More with Kyle and Steve Greenfield in yesterday’s show:
🚘 Car Stuff
Nissan Titan headlight glare tested 615% over IIHS limits, worst in a 257-model study, though still fully street-legal. Full-size pickups dominated the worst offenders list.
New-vehicle APRs rose across nearly every credit tier in August, per Cox Automotive, while used-vehicle rates held flat as Fed rate-hike odds jumped past 60%.
JD Power finds owners barely use passenger screens. 35% of owners with one never turned it on, while smart ignition and climate control scored highest for quiet reliability.
VW's design chief wants friendlier-looking cars. Andreas Mindt calls aggressive front-end styling "nonsense," pointing to the new ID. Polo and ID.3 Neo as a softer direction.
💰 Not Car Stuff
Robots broke Usain Bolt's 100m record at Beijing's Humanoid Robot Games, but several caught fire trying to stop. Only 3 of 12 teams finished a full firefighting challenge.
The FTC sued Amazon, alleging it secretly manipulated ad auction prices to overcharge advertisers by more than $20 billion over seven years.
A 40,000-pound truckload of Pabst Blue Ribbon vanished from a California distribution center. The brand is offering a reward for its "no questions asked" return.
1878: Emma M. Nutt became the first female telephone operator in the United States, working for the Telephone Despatch Company of Boston.
1972: American Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become the World Chess Champion.
1979: Pioneer 11 became the first spacecraft to fly by Saturn, capturing early close-up images of the planet and its rings.
Thanks for reading, Friend! Ready or not, it’s Tuesday!
