With Trump’s tariffs, Canadian auto manufacturers face a tough but familiar question: How American are their cars?

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated objective for imposing new 25-per-cent tariffs on imported automobiles is that he wants automakers to establish more factories in his country. He seems bent on making America self-sufficient at all costs, and has vowed to permanently shut down Canada’s auto manufacturing sector.

To understand the complex industry Mr. Trump seeks to disrupt, it’s worth reflecting on the foreign content in vehicles currently sold in the United States. Fortunately, automakers have to report this.

Introduced in 1992, the American Automobile Labeling Act requires car makers to affix a label to every vehicle they sell in the U.S. Among other things, this label shows the percentage (by value) of parts and components incorporated in the car that originated in the U.S. Manufacturers must also disclose any other countries in which at least one-third of equipment (again by value) originated. They must calculate these percentages prior to the start of each model year, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports some of the data annually.

The data have limitations, one being that certain models made in Canada seem to be missing. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada assembles RAV4s in Canada and exports more than 80 per cent of them to the U.S., according to spokesperson Philippe Crowe. For unclear reasons, this is not reflected in the NHTSA’s data for the 2025 model year. The NHTSA did not respond to questions from The Globe and Mail this week about its data.

The data are instructive, nonetheless. For one thing, they’re a reminder of the crucial role Canada has long played in the U.S. auto industry. Tellingly, the data make no distinction between components from the two countries, which are combined in a single column. (That’s no small inconvenience for those seeking answers about Canadian content in American cars.) Every other country is reported separately.

Important though Canada may have been historically, few vehicles assembled here appear in recent model years. The 2025 data list only the Honda Civic and CR-V, the Lexus RX 350 and variants of these vehicles – plus a dark horse, the Ford Mustang GTD, a limited-production 815-horsepower sportscar.

Among those vehicles, the maximum U.S./Canada content is 60 per cent (for front-wheel-drive CR-Vs.) At least 15 per cent of the content for Honda and Lexus models is from Japan. The engines and transmissions are either Japanese- or American-built.

For comparison, the NHTSA data show 143 models (including variants) for 2025 for which final assembly occurs in the U.S., not only from American brands such as Chevrolet, Ford and Tesla, but also Subaru, Mazda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Volvo and Hyundai.

No car is an island

Data published by the U.S. government list roughly 360

vehicles for sale from the 2025 model year. Every single one

contains some proportion of its components (by value)

originating outside North America, varying from one-fifth

to the entire vehicle. President Donald Trump argues the

decline in U.S.-manufactured vehicles “jeopardizes our

domestic industrial base and national security.”

Per cent content of select cars:

U.S./Canada

Japan

S. Korea

Mexico

Other countries

Germany

25%

55%

20%

Lexus RX 350

Final assembly: Canada, Japan

45%

55%

Honda Civic

(four door)

Final assembly: Canada

60%

15%

25%

Honda CR-V

(FW drive)

Final assembly: Canada

45%

55%

Ford F150

Final assembly: U.S.

80%

15%

5%

Kia EV6

Final assembly: U.S.

33%

19%

7%

41%

Volkswagen

Jetta GLI

(auto. trans.)

Final assembly: Mexico

Matt Mcclearn and john sopinski/the globe and mail

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

photos: manufacturers

No car is an island

Data published by the U.S. government list roughly 360

vehicles for sale from the 2025 model year. Every single one

contains some proportion of its components (by value)

originating outside North America, varying from one-fifth

to the entire vehicle. President Donald Trump argues the

decline in U.S.-manufactured vehicles “jeopardizes our

domestic industrial base and national security.”

Per cent content of select cars:

U.S./Canada

Japan

S. Korea

Mexico

Other countries

Germany

25%

55%

20%

Lexus RX 350

Final assembly: Canada, Japan

45%

55%

Honda Civic

(four door)

Final assembly: Canada

60%

15%

25%

Honda CR-V

(FW drive)

Final assembly: Canada

45%

55%

Ford F150

Final assembly: U.S.

80%

15%

5%

Kia EV6

Final assembly: U.S.

33%

19%

7%

41%

Volkswagen

Jetta GLI

(auto. trans.)

Final assembly: Mexico

Matt Mcclearn and john sopinski/the globe and mail

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

photos: manufacturers

No car is an island

Data published by the U.S. government list roughly 360 vehicles for sale from the 2025 model year. Every single one contains some proportion of its components (by value) originating outside North America, varying from one-fifth to the entire vehicle. President Donald Trump argues the decline in U.S.-manufactured vehicles “jeopardizes our domestic industrial base and national security.”

Per cent content of select cars:

U.S./Canada

Japan

S. Korea

Mexico

Germany

Other countries

55%

25%

20%

Lexus RX 350

Final assembly: Canada, Japan

55%

45%

Honda Civic

(four door)

Final assembly: Canada

60%

15%

25%

Honda CR-V

(FW drive)

Final assembly: Canada

45%

55%

Ford F150

Final assembly: U.S.

5%

80%

15%

Kia EV6

Final assembly: U.S.

33%

7%

19%

41%

Volkswagen

Jetta GLI

(auto. trans.)

Final assembly: Mexico

Matt Mcclearn and john sopinski/the globe and mail

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration photos: manufacturers

The data contain some surprises. The car with the highest U.S./Canada content, at 80 per cent, is Kia’s EV6, a fully electric sport utility vehicle. (Its South Korea-based manufacturer incorporates just 15 per cent of content from its home country in this model.) An American-assembled Ford F150 pickup truck, meanwhile, has only 45 per cent U.S./Canada content – highlighting the international origins of what might appear to be a quintessentially American vehicle.

The data also highlight the fact that vehicles assembled in Canada or Mexico tend to have far more U.S. content than those made further afield. For example, of 45 Mercedes-Benz and Porsche models assembled in Germany and sold in the U.S., the data suggest there is no U.S./Canada content in them whatsoever. Of 70 models assembled in Japan, four have between 25 per cent and 50 per cent U.S./Canada content; the vast majority have none.

Owing to Mr. Trump’s actions, the balance of U.S. and foreign content in vehicles sold in the United States has suddenly assumed greater importance.

The White House issued a proclamation from Mr. Trump implementing 25-per-cent tariffs on March 26. It stipulated that they might not be applied to the whole value of all vehicles. For vehicles qualifying for preferential treatment under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce might decide to apply the 25-per-cent tariff only to the vehicle’s non-U.S. content.

But there’s a big catch: If U.S. Customs and Border Protection determines that the importer’s declared value of non-U.S. content is inaccurate, a 25-per-cent tariff will apply to the whole vehicle.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s public affairs department did not answer questions from The Globe about what documentation it expects from importers, how it will verify importers’ claims, or what recourse importers will have in case of disputes.

Greig Mordue, an engineering professor at McMaster University, said questions of national content bedeviled automakers and government officials even when the stakes were far lower.

“There are people, generally within the finance department, who have expertise in documenting regional content,” he explained.

“Because if it’s 75 per cent North American content, it goes into the U.S. free of the U.S. [most favoured nation] rate on completed vehicles, which is only 2.5 per cent. But the question is, how do you define the 2.5 per cent? Is it on that car model? Is it on that particular car? Is it on that model year? Is it on that model year with this type of option package? Or is it on this calendar year? There’s some ambiguity there.”

Prof. Mordue added that despite efforts to document supply chains, occasionally auto assembly plants have been caught off-guard when a minor supplier suffered a natural disaster or other mishap, forcing them to shut down temporarily.

“Theoretically, the assemblers have good visibility of the supply chain, of all of their suppliers. But in reality, they don’t.”

Mr. Trump’s proclamation asserted that free-trade agreements, including the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, “have not yielded sufficient positive outcomes” and claimed that imported automobiles and parts posed “a threat to national security.”

In 2018, in a report examining proposed changes to the North American free-trade agreement during Mr. Trump’s first term, the Center for Automotive Research noted that Americans demanded several million more light vehicles than domestic producers could make. “The U.S. cannot self-supply,” it concluded. At the time, Canada and Mexico each manufactured 11 per cent of all U.S. vehicles.

“NAFTA makes North American vehicle production internationally competitive,” the report added.

“Low- and high-wage jobs are distributed to optimal regional locations based on cost, capability and proximity to critical assets.”

Prof. Mordue predicted tariffs, coupled with a lack of R&D directed to electric vehicles, will ultimately harm the U.S. auto industry.

“The U.S. market is about 16 million vehicles – it’s big, but it’s not the world,” he said.

“The world market for vehicles is about 95 million. What the U.S. industry has done, and what the U.S. administration is perpetuating, is putting a wall up around the U.S. industry. And that will not serve the U.S. industry well over the longer term.”