Economy
AM Briefing: Tariffs Sink In
On Wall Street’s wipeout, more severe weather, and hurricane season predictions
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On Wall Street’s wipeout, more severe weather, and hurricane season predictions
On once-in-a-lifetime bad weather, Trump tariffs, and Tesla’s shares
On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts
They haven’t even been announced yet, but the idea that they will has sent prices soaring.
On auto imports, special elections, and Volvo’s new CEO
The South Korean automaker just opened an EV factory in Georgia. It’ll take a lot longer for others to catch up to Trump’s latest tariffs.
The tax agency reopened its online portal to allow dealerships to register sales retroactively.
As recently as last month, some electric vehicle buyers were running into roadblocks when they tried to claim the EV tax credit on their 2024 returns. Their claims were rejected, it turned out, because the dealership where they bought their EV never registered the sale with the Internal Revenue Service.
On Wednesday, the IRS instituted a fix: It reopened the online portal for dealerships to report these sales retroactively.
The confusion all started with a major change the IRS made to the EV tax credit program last year. Previously, all dealers had to do was give the buyer a “time of sale” report that they could submit to the IRS come tax season. But as of 2024, dealerships were expected to register every EV sale that was eligible for the tax credit through this new online portal. Not only that, they had to do so within three days of the sale. The portal would not allow entries dated more than three days post-sale.
The IRS and the National Automobile Dealers Association did outreach to educate dealerships about the changes, but many were apparently still unaware of the requirements — some never even made an online account. Customers were similarly ignorant of the intricacies of the process. Many received time of sale reports and thought they were all set. But in January, when they began trying to claim the credit on their taxes for the previous year, they were surprised to receive an error message saying that their EV was not registered with the IRS. Some tried to get their dealerships to register the sale retroactively, but the IRS portal didn’t allow for it.
President Trump has vowed to kill the EV tax credit, and Congress is just now beginning to hammer out the legislation that could execute his wishes. In light of that, and given the relative chaos at the IRS caused by Elon Musk’s “efficiency” department demanding access to private taxpayer information and laying off thousands of IRS employees, it was unclear whether the Treasury Department would do anything to help these unlucky EV buyers seeking their refunds. The Treasury did not respond to multiple inquiries from Heatmap in February.
The Dealers Association also never responded to multiple inquiries from Heatmap about the issue. But in a notice to dealerships this week, first reported by NPR, the trade group said the IRS planned to roll out an update to the portal on Wednesday to allow for sales made in 2024 to be submitted.
If any of this has made you nervous about getting an EV this year, remember that you have another, safer option for claiming the tax credit. Instead of claiming it on your taxes in 2026, you can transfer it to your dealer, who can take it off the sale price of the car on the spot. Just make sure they know about the online portal!
On auto levies, NOAA’s new lawyer, and the future of FEMA
Current conditions: South Korea’s massive wildfires have doubled in size in 24 hours • Fires are also spreading in North and South Carolina, consuming nearly 18,000 acres • A year’s worth of rain could fall over the next few days along the Texas Gulf Coast.
President Trump on Wednesday announced new and “permanent” 25% tariffs on imported cars and car components. Automotive parts that are compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal will be “tariff-free,” but only until the government figures out how to apply tariffs to their non-U.S. content. The move is meant to protect and strengthen the U.S. automotive sector, but will likely make cars significantly more expensive for American consumers. Nearly half of all cars sold in the U.S. last year were imported. One analyst estimates the tariffs could hike the cost of new cars by $5,000 to $10,000.
The news sent international automaker stocks plummeting: Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Continental lost the equivalent of $4.8 billion in combined market value “as investors panicked at the prospect of more costs and complexity in an industry already struggling with a slow ramp-up of electrification and high logistics costs,” Reutersreported. The car levies are set to come into effect April 3.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has hired a new general counsel who was, until recently, pursuing legal challenges to offshore wind farms on behalf of the fishing industry, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman has learned. NOAA’s Fisheries division, also known as the National Marine Fisheries Service, regulates species protection within U.S. waters. Activists have sought to persuade the Trump administration to review the division’s previous and future approvals for offshore wind projects that interact with endangered marine life, which would be a huge win for the “wind kills whales” movement.
Enter Anne “Annie” Hawkins, NOAA’s new general counsel, who comes to the agency after serving for years as the executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, an organization founded in 2017 that has fought offshore wind projects on behalf of the fishing industry. Hawkins stepped down as RODA’s executive director last fall, shortly after Trump won the presidential election. RODA is involved in legal challenges against individual wind farms that received their permits under the Biden administration. The organization boasts that it was the first fishing trade association to sue against approvals for the Vineyard Wind project in 2022, and earlier this month petitioned the Supreme Court to undo federal approvals for Vineyard Wind. RODA has been in the legal fight against the Revolution Wind and South Fork wind projects since last year, according to its website.
Researchers at Brown University prominently listed RODA in a map released in 2023 detailing different key organizations in the American anti-offshore wind activist movement.
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The Trump administration is reportedly strategizing ways to strip the Federal Emergency Management Agency of its ability to aid in disaster recovery by October 1. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is pushing to shrink or eliminate the agency, even as climate-fueled weather disasters intensify and hurricane season looms. “Noem and other officials are looking to rebrand FEMA by putting it directly under White House control and narrowing the agency’s responsibilities to helping survivors in the immediate aftermath of disasters,” sources toldE&E News. “FEMA or its successor would give states disaster funding to address only ‘immediate needs’ and for life-saving or life-sustaining operations such as search-and-rescue missions and for providing emergency supplies such as shelter, food, and water.”
As Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported this week, the Trump administration is currently holding up more than 200 FEMA grants to states for disaster recovery, relief, and preparedness, despite a district court’s order from March 6 calling for the funds’ release.
The Department of Energy is reportedly considering cutting $4 billion in funding for hydrogen hubs approved under the Biden administration. The seven hubs are scattered across the country, and each received a slice of some $7 billion in funding as part of a push to turn hydrogen into a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Four of the seven hubs are up for funding cuts, including those in the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, California, and the Mid-Atlantic. As Reutersnoted, “the hubs that could have their funding cut would largely serve Democratic states, while the three hubs that would be kept are located in Republican states.”
Hyundai pulled back the curtain on its new Metaplant in Georgia with a grand opening on Wednesday. The $7.6 billion factory produces electric and hybrid vehicles – about one per minute – and Hyundai Motor Company CEO José Muñoz announced that the plant’s capacity will be increased from 300,000 vehicles per year to 500,000 per year. Earlier this week, Hyundai announced plans to build a $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana, part of a larger $21 billion investment by the South Korean automaker in its U.S.-based manufacturing operations as President Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and cars take effect. The plant is already producing the Ioniq 5 SUV, one of the most popular EVs in America. Hyundai’s 2024 EV sales (when combined with those of its sister brands Kia and Genesis) made it the second-largest EV brand in the U.S., behind Tesla.
Hyundai
Over the past 20 years, glacier loss from climate change has exposed more than 1,000 miles of Greenland’s coastline.