General Motors posted strong financial results for its first quarter Tuesday, but says it will reassess its expectations for 2025 due to auto tariffs.

The automaker is pushing back its conference call to discuss its guidance and quarterly results until Thursday, so that it can assess potential tariff changes.

GM said that its initial full-year financial forecast doesn’t contemplate the potential impact of tariffs. In January the company announced that it anticipated 2025 adjusted earnings in a range of $11 to $12 per share.

Late Monday The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump will possibly be dialing back on automotive tariffs, with anonymous sources claiming that he’ll stop duties on foreign-made cars from piling on top of other tariffs he implemented and easing some levies on foreign parts used to make cars in the U.S.

Trump will be holding a rally in Michigan, the heart of the nation’s auto industry, on Tuesday. Michigan has been jolted by his steep trade tariffs and combative attitude toward Canada.

Trump is making an afternoon visit to Selfridge Air National Guard Base for an announcement alongside Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He’s expected to speak at a rally at Macomb Community College, north of Detroit.

Michigan was one of the battleground states Trump flipped from the Democratic column in his election. But it’s also been deeply affected by tariffs on imported cars and auto parts.

Michigan’s unemployment rate has risen for three straight months, including jumping 1.3% from March to reach 5.5%, according to state data. That’s among the highest in the nation, far exceeding the national average of 4.2%.

Industry groups have urged the White House to scrap plans for tariffs on imported auto parts, warning that doing so would raise prices on cars and could trigger “layoffs and bankruptcy.”

General Motors earned $2.78 billion, or $3.35 per share, for the three months ended March 31. A year earlier it earned $2.98 billion, or $2.56 per share.

Removing one-time charges and benefits, GM earned $2.78 per share, topping the $2.68 per share that Wall Street had expected, according to a survey by FactSet.

Revenue climbed to $44.02 billion from $43.01 billion.

GM’s stock declined more than 2% before the market opened.

DETROIT — President Donald Trump’s trade wars threaten to claim a casualty on the home front: the American auto industry.

If the president goes ahead with 25% taxes on imports from Canada and Mexico on Tuesday, he will disrupt more than $300 billion in annual U.S. automotive trade with its two neighbors, wreck supply chains that have been operating for decades and likely push up the already-forbidding price of new cars.

The tariffs pose an “existential’’ threat to North American auto production, said David Gantz, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. They will push up “the cost of everything that’s imported from Mexico or Canada that goes into a car assembled in the U.S.’’

Kelley Blue Book says Trump’s tariffs could raise the U.S. price of the average new car – already approaching $49,000 – by $3,000 or more. The price of some full-size pickup trucks could shoot up by $10,000.

The economic pain would intensify if Canada and Mexico counterpunched with tariffs on American exports.

“The economic impact of a sustained 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico would be severe, with full tit-for-tat retaliation likely to push Canada and Mexico into a recession and the U.S. to a point of stagnant growth,’’ Andrew Foran of TD Economics wrote. Foran estimates that 25% tariffs would push down auto sales by 13.6% a year in Canada and 10.6% in the United States.

Since 1965 — when the U.S. and Canada eliminated tariffs on each other’s autos and auto parts — North America has turned into an integrated auto manufacturing powerhouse. Mexico was brought into the fold by a 1994 regional trade pact and another one negotiated by Trump himself in 2020.

“The fact that you can tap relatively cheap steel and aluminum from Canada, that you can use the relatively low-cost labor in Mexico to assemble cars, and that you can leverage the high tech expertise and technology of the United States together, makes North America an incredibly competitive place to build automobiles,” said Brett House, a professor at Columbia University’s business school.

Much of the production has moved to Mexico. Ford, for example, manufactures the small Bronco Sport SUV and Maverick pickup in Sonora in northwestern Mexico. Stellantis makes the Jeep Compass and Wagoneer S at a plant in Toluca, west of Mexico City, which has been in operation since 1968. General Motors turns out GMC and Chevrolet pickups at a plant in Silao in central Mexico.

Just over half the 8 million cars and light trucks the United States imported last year came from Mexico (No. 1 at almost 3 million) and Canada (No. 4 at 1.1 million). Canada and Mexico are also the top two foreign markets for U.S.-built cars and light trucks, accounting for 53% of America’s auto exports.

By taxing Canadian and Mexican imports, most of which has been entering the U.S. duty free, Trump would be lobbing an explosive into that elaborate manufacturing network.

A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the tariff plan, said the taxes would apply each time goods cross the border from Mexico or Canada. That means the costs would pile up as auto components traveled from factories in the United States to Mexico or Canada and back again. So would the red tape: “It’s an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare to keep track of things,’’ Gantz said.

What’s more, the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico would come atop higher taxes Trump intends to impose on foreign steel and aluminum starting March 12. Trump is removing exemptions on the metals tariffs he imposed in his first term — 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum — and raising the levy on aluminum to 25%. That means U.S. importers, including auto companies, would pay 50% duties on steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico, big sources of the metals.

“You’re talking about the material costs going up every time (a part) goes into one market and comes back,’’ said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research.

The higher costs would take a toll. A decade ago, Prasad said, the lowest-earning 20% of American consumers couldn’t afford a new car. Already, he said, “the bottom 40% of the population is not able to afford a new vehicle.”

Ford CEO Jim Farley has complained that “so far what we’re seeing is a lot of cost and a lot of chaos.’’

General Motors CEO Mary Barra said last month at the Wolfe Research auto industry conference that GM has been “doing scenario planning and look at what at the different things we can change, we can move, we can respond.’’ She expressed confidence that company can find ways to “mitigate” the effect of the tariffs. Stellantis chairman John Elkann recently said he thinks the administration’s policies will boost American jobs and manufacturing.

Trump’s trade war comes at an awkward time for automakers. They’re trying to shift from gasoline-powered to electric vehicles, using revenue generated from selling conventional cars to finance EV investments, Prasad said, so the tariffs could hurt sales and limit the money available for the EV transition.

Trump insists that the hefty hit to imports from Canada and Mexico aren’t about trade; they’re about slowing the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl across U.S. borders.

“We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled,” Trump wrote Thursday in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

Canada wouldn’t seem to be an especially important source of fentanyl: U.S. customs agents seized just 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border last year, versus the 21,100 pounds at Mexico’s.

Many analysts suspect that Trump has another goal: The 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement he negotiated in his first term comes up for renewal next year.

Although the president characterized the USMCA as a victory and a big improvement over the 1994 pact it replaced, it failed to reduce America’s trade deficits with Canada and Mexico. In fact, they’ve gotten bigger. (In Canada’s case, that’s largely because of surging energy exports that the American Midwest and Northeast rely on.)

So he is likely to seek revisions meant to ensure that more production — specifically auto production — is done in the United States, not just North America. The tariffs could give him leverage to pressure Canada and Mexico into accepting the USMCA changes he wants.

In the meantime, writes TD Economics’ Foran, “the North American auto industry should still prepare itself for a prolonged period of elevated trade uncertainty and potential trade disruptions.’’

____

Wiseman reported from Washington.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Elon Musk called Thursday to “delete entire agencies” from the United States’ federal government as part of his push under President Donald Trump to radically cut spending and restructure its priorities.

Musk offered a wide-ranging survey via a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, of what he described as the priorities of the Trump administration interspersed with multiple references to “thermonuclear warfare” and the possible dangers of artificial intelligence.

“We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people — democracy,” Musk said, wearing a black T-shirt that read: “Tech Support.” He also joked that he was the “White House’s tech support,” borrowing from his profile on the social platform X, which he owns.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

While Musk has spoken to the summit in the past, his appearance Thursday comes as he has consolidated control over large swaths of the government with Trump’s blessing since assuming leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency. That’s included sidelining career officials, gaining access to sensitive databases and inviting a constitutional clash over the limits of presidential authority.

Musk’s new role imbued his comments with more weight beyond being the world’s wealthiest person through his investments in SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla.

His remarks also offered a more-isolationist view of American power in the Middle East, where the U.S. has fought wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“A lot of attention has been on USAID for example,” Musk said, referring to Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “There’s like the National Endowment for Democracy. But I’m like, ‘Okay, well, how much democracy have they achieved lately?’”

He added that the U.S. under Trump is “less interested in interfering with the affairs of other countries.”

There are “times the United States has been kind of pushy in international affairs, which may resonate with some members of the audience,” Musk said, speaking to the crowd in the UAE, an autocratically ruled nation of seven sheikhdoms.

“Basically, America should mind its own business, rather than push for regime change all over the place,” he said.

He also noted the Trump administration’s focus on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion work, at one point linking it to AI.

“If hypothetically, AI is designed for DEI, you know, diversity at all costs, it could decide that there’s too many men in power and execute them,” Musk said.

On AI, Musk said he believed X’s newly updated AI chatbot, Grok 3, would be ready in about two weeks, calling it at one point “kind of scary.” He criticized Sam Altman’s management of OpenAI, which Musk just led a $97.4 billion takeover bid for, describing it as akin to a nonprofit aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest becoming a “lumber company that chops down the trees.”

Musk also announced plans for a “Dubai Loop” project in line with his work in the Boring Company — which is digging tunnels in Las Vegas to speed transit. However, he and the Emirati government official speaking with him offered no immediate details of the plan.

“It’s going to be like a wormhole,” Musk promised. “You just wormhole from one part of the city — boom — and you’re out in another part of the city.”

Tesla is recalling almost 700,000 vehicles because of an issue with the warning light on the tire pressure monitoring system.

According to a letter Thursday from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the recall includes certain 2024 Cybertruck, 2017-2025 Model 3, and 2020-2025 Model Y vehicles.

The issue is that the tire pressure monitoring system warning light on the vehicles may not remain illuminated between drive cycles, failing to warn the driver of low tire pressure. Driving with improperly inflated tires can increase the risk of a crash.

The Elon Musk-led automaker said it’s providing a free software update to fix the problem.

Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed on Feb.15, 2025. Tesla customer service can be reached at 1-877-798-3752 for more information. Individuals may also call the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or visit their website at www.nhtsa.gov.