U.S. President Donald Trump formally launched tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China over the weekend, a decision that is widely expected to have sweeping implications for Tesla, other automakers, and a broad range of other industries.
The Trump administration announced the news on Saturday, effectively establishing a 25-percent tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports as well as a 10-percent tariff on products from China. The tariffs will go into effect on Tuesday, and they have already caused ripple effects and a larger trade war with some of the companies.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke on the phone over the weekend, and while Sheinbaum hasn’t yet formalized or disclosed plans for counter-tariffs, Trudeau announced some on Saturday evening, according to Reuters. In the announcement, the Prime Minister said that Canada with also establish a 25-percent tariff on $155 billion worth of products from the U.S.
Trudeau has said that the government will release an updated list of products and tariff details, though the initial list included products such as certain appliances, beer, wine, lumber and other goods. He also says that the government plans to start with $30 billion on Tuesday, as followed by the additional $125 billion later this month.
The Trump administration says the tariffs are aimed at “addressing an emergency situation” related to the import of illegal drugs including fentanyl, along with pointing the blame at illegal immigrants.
“President Trump is taking bold action to hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country,” the White House writes on its fact sheet dedicated to the order.
You can see the full fact sheet from the White House here, or check out the full executive order here.
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On Sunday, Trump also followed up with a post on his Truth Social account in response to criticism:
The USA has major deficits with Canada, Mexico, and China (and almost all countries!), owes 36 Trillion Dollars, and we’re not going to be the “Stupid Country” any longer. MAKE YOUR PRODUCT IN THE USA AND THERE ARE NO TARIFFS! Why should the United States lose TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN SUBSIDIZING OTHER COUNTRIES, and why should these other countries pay a small fraction of the cost of what USA citizens pay for Drugs and Pharmaceuticals, as an example? THIS WILL BE THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA! WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.
Following a repost of Trump’s words on X, community notes pointed to a TD Economics saying that the U.S. has had a trade surplus with Canada for the last sixteen years straight when not including the energy sector, or oil, natural gas and electricity.
Multiple others have weighed in on how the tariffs could affect the industry at large, highlighting the potential for price increases for the consumer, potential layoffs, and some even saying that it will shut the auto industry down altogether.
In a report from Bloomberg on Sunday, Flavio Volpe, the President of the Canada Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, said that he doesn’t think the country’s auto parts makers will be able to remain profitable with the tariffs in place.
“The auto sector is going to shut down within a week,” Volpe said. “At 25 percent, absolutely nobody in our business is profitable by a long shot.”
Others have warned of even more immediate effects, especially for Canadian and Mexican cities and states whose communities rely heavily on automotive manufacturing. One such city includes Windsor, Ontario, where John D’Agnolo, the union president of a local Ford factory there, says substantial numbers of layoffs could be imminent.
“We’re talking about thousands and thousands of jobs being lost,” D’Agnolo said. “We’d truly be a ghost town, here in Windsor, if we lost this type of business.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has also warned that it could affect as many as 500,000 jobs across the province, which is Canada’s most populated, with many of those being automotive roles.
Many also expect the increased costs to be passed onto the consumer, though it’s still unclear exactly what the repercussions of the tariffs could be. We could also see businesses absorb some or all of these costs, though some initial research seems to suggest that buyers will see higher sticker prices across the industry.
“It is going to be a lot of impact,” Aruna Anand, chief executive officer of parts supplier Continental AG’s North American business, said in an interview. “The question is who is absorbing the price and it becomes, are we able to absorb that price or is it going to be shifted to the end consumer?”
In a separate report from Reuters on Saturday, it was suggested that automakers such as General Motors (GM) and Toyota could, however, shift more production from overseas factories to those in the U.S., while major aluminum manufacturer Alcoa is considering re-routing plans that could potentially reduce tariffs. Many electric vehicle (EV) battery materials also come from metal mining operations in China, with some of these sectors just beginning to emerge domestically.
Others also report that the move could “undermine competitiveness” in the American auto industry, ultimately increasing the cost of building cars in the U.S.
“Our American automakers … should not have their competitiveness undermined by tariffs that will raise the cost of building vehicles in the United States and stymie investment in the American workforce,” says Matt Blunt, the President of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Stellantis, GM and Ford.
During Tesla’s Q4 earnings call last week, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja also warned that tariffs could affect profitability for the company, since its all of its production facilities utilize parts from around the globe.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs,” Taneja said. “Over the years, we’ve tried to localize our supply chain in every market, but we are still very reliant on parts from across the world for all our businesses. Therefore, the imposition of tariffs, which is very likely, will have an impact on our business and profitability.”
It’s still not quite clear at this time how the tariffs may affect Tesla’s prices. While Tesla has regularly advertised having the “most American-made cars” with final assembly for the market taking place at its factories in Texas and California, the company also gets a significant amount of components from Canada.
In a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in October, Tesla did disclose what percentage of its vehicle parts are made in either Canada or the U.S., as compared to other countries such as Mexico and Japan. Some of the figures also don’t disclose where the remaining amounts come from, though they can give users an idea of how many components come from Mexico compared to either the U.S. or Canada.
You can see that data for Tesla’s vehicles below, though it’s also worth noting that it does not show the ratio of U.S. to Canadian parts—just a combined percentage from the two countries. You can also view the full filing from the NHTSA here.
- Cybertruck: 65 percent from U.S. and Canada; 25 percent from Mexico
- Model 3 Long Range: 75 percent from U.S. and Canada; 20 percent from Mexico
- Model 3 Performance: 70 percent from U.S. and Canada; 20 percent from Mexico
- Model Y (all trims): 70 percent from U.S. and Canada; 25 percent from Mexico
- Model S: 65 percent from U.S. and Canada; 20 percent from Mexico
- Model X: 60 percent from U.S. and Canada; 25 percent from Mexico
What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.
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Elon Musk recently restated a fact that still defines SpaceX’s origin story: if Falcon 1’s fourth launch had failed, the company would not exist. The comment answered a reminder that after three consecutive losses, SpaceX had money for only one more attempt.
On X, Peter Diamandis said that the present-day acknowledgement of SpaceX’s success does not discount the rough start the company had. “Almost nobody remembers that Elon’s first rocket failed three times, and there was money for exactly only one more attempt.”
Musk said, “If the 4th launch had failed, SpaceX would not exist.”
If the 4th launch had failed, SpaceX would not exist
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
In late 2008, the firm was nearly out of cash. Another failure would have ended payroll, closed the Hawthorne factory, and left the Falcon 9 and Dragon programs as unfinished drawings.
The first flight lifted off from Omelek Island on 24 March 2006. Thirty-three seconds later, a corroded aluminum fitting on a fuel line leaked. Kerosene ignited around the Merlin engine, control was lost, and the vehicle came apart. The small DARPA payload, FalconSAT-2, survived the short flight only to land on a storage shed near the pad. Investigators later traced the fitting to a materials mix-up that should never have reached the rocket.
Flight 2, on 21 March 2007, looked far better at first. The first stage burned cleanly and handed off to the Kestrel-powered upper stage. The vehicle crossed 100 kilometers and reached a peak of about 289 kilometers. Then propellant slosh in the second-stage tank started a circular coning motion that grew until the engine shut down. Telemetry faded as the stage tumbled, and SpaceX had reached space but not orbit. Over the next year, the team redesigned everything from the ground up, including tanks, baffles, and the new regeneratively cooled Merlin 1C.
That engine flew on Flight 3 on 2 August 2008. The first stage performed almost perfectly and reached 217 kilometers. After main-engine cutoff, leftover fuel in the cooling channels produced a faint residual thrust, roughly 10 pounds per square inch of chamber pressure. On a Texas test stand, the effect was invisible beneath ambient air pressure. In vacuum it was enough to push the spent first stage back into the second stage after separation. The stages collided, the upper stage spun, and the mission was lost. Musk later said a slightly longer delay before staging would have saved the flight.
Six weeks later, the team assembled Flight 4 from remaining parts and flew it on 28 September 2008 at 23:15 UTC. The payload was Ratsat, a 165-kilogram aluminum mass simulator built in-house. Staging was delayed so residual thrust could decay. The Kestrel ignited, the fairing split away, and nine and a half minutes after liftoff the vehicle was in orbit. After a coast, the second stage restarted, settling into a 621-by-643-kilometer path at 9.35 degrees inclination. Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit. Musk called the insertion “middle of the bull’s-eye.”
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That success unlocked NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services award later that year. Without it, there would have been no Falcon 9, no reusable first stages, and no Dragon cargo or crew flights to the International Space Station. Launch prices would have remained far higher. Starlink’s constellation would not exist; broadband from low Earth orbit would still be a paper concept.
Ride-share markets, high launch cadence, and the current pace of lunar and Mars hardware would be years behind. Communications, Earth observation, and the cost of putting anything into space would look more like the 2000s than the 2020s.
One extra second of residual thrust in August 2008 would have written a different decade.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update turns Grok from a talking companion into a true in-car controller, with considerably expanded capabilities. Where the assistant once answered questions and handled navigation, it can now operate hardware and software through ordinary speech, including several requests at the same time.
Grok has become incredibly robust over the past few quarters, and this new ability that Tesla has included with its Summer Update is perhaps the clearest sign of just how capable it has become.
You can issue many commands to Grok at once, and each will be taken care of: anything from headlight control to climate adjustments to mirror folding can now all be taken care of with a simple sentence spoken toward Grok:
This is cool, you can now give Grok a ton of commands at once in your Tesla and it’ll do them all together.
The commands I gave:
• Fold mirrors
• Turn on wipers to fastest setting
• Change temp to 65°
• Open self-driving app
• Open gloveboxComes with Tesla’s 2026 Summer… pic.twitter.com/drZxoHrknv
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 26, 2026
Here’s another example I used in my Model Y:
🚨 Using Grok to control the cabin temperature and turn on headlights in 2026 Model Y on FSD v14.3.8 and 2026.26.6.5 pic.twitter.com/7clgQkGABk
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2026
Tesla’s official Release Notes list the core powers of Grok’s new capabilities: Grok can place phone calls from a paired phone, search a streaming service and queue music, adjust climate, and search the Controls panel. Drivers can also ask it questions about the vehicle or the latest features included in a recent software update.
It can also take care of driving settings, dynamics, and other relevant preferences that deal with how the car operates and handles.
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It’s also more of a use case than a novelty feature. Grok was great for learning about something that was being pondered while Full Self-Driving was taking care of the major automotive responsibilities, but it did have some useful functionality when it came to navigation.
Another less-noted improvement is the swift transition that Grok has from thinking of its answer to giving you one. In the past, it would take a few seconds for Grok to truly come up with a valuable response. It now seems that it is improving, at least slightly.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to get a major fix with pothole avoidance, a feature that CEO Elon Musk said recently was “coming soon.” The feature has been included within the FSD v14 release notes for some time as an upcoming improvement.
Potholes come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is universal about them, and that is the fact that every driver wants to avoid them. Driving into or over a pothole can cause tire and wheel damage, alignment issues, and even, in some more severe instances, injury to occupants or major damage to a vehicle in despair.
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Musk said late last night in a post that pothole avoidance while utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite is “coming soon.”
Coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2026
Full Self-Driving, even in its most recent and robust forms, still has its shortcomings. While the suite has performed exceptionally well with avoiding on-road obstacles like cardboard boxes, horse droppings, car parts, and other debris, it still seems to struggle with recognizing certain things.
Potholes and other abrupt changes in a road’s layout are things that FSD still tends to struggle with. Perhaps the suite’s 3D modeling is still in need of some additional data or some sort of script that will help it to avoid a potentially destructive pothole or bump in the road that would be easily recognizable by the human eye.
Musk has mentioned pothole avoidance for some time, with the initial idea coming in April 2019 when an owner first requested the feature. Musk said that Tesla would “definitely” develop pothole avoidance.
In August 2020, Musk said Tesla was in the process of labeling bumps and potholes so cars can either slow down or steer around them altogether.
Tesla to utilize micro maps for pothole-detection in future update
Avoiding major disturbances in the road is a necessary feature for Full Self-Driving to have, especially as Tesla is working toward a fully autonomous program that will eventually allow every occupant in the vehicle to sleep, work, or enjoy leisure time while traveling.
That truly begins this week with the launch of Cybercab on Thursday.
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