By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Auto stocks pushing higher as President Trump hints at potential tariff relief for automakers.
00:11 Donald Trump
I’m looking at something to help some of the car companies where they’re switching to parts that were made in Canada, Mexico, and other places, and they need a little bit of time because they’re going to make them here.
00:46 Speaker A
Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian joins us here with more. Pras, walk us through that soundbite.
00:54 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, you know, maybe some relief here for car companies. Don’t know if it’s going to actually address the auto tariff or the imports are actually the car parts part that he mentioned. Is it going to be a car part exclusion that might we might hear about before the May 3rd deadline? So possibly some help here. So the stocks go up here, GM, Ford, Tesla, they’re all popping here today on that little sound bite. But obviously, no clarity here. We’re not sure what that means exactly. All we do know is that tariffs potentially could raise prices by $3,000 to $12,000 for your sort of mid-level cars and and could could result in 1.5 to 1.8 million lost sales this year if they going to go in full on, according to various reports. So, uh, big deal here for for the auto companies. They need that that that relief potentially to stave off lost sales and potentially lost income, too. Right.
02:03 Speaker A
Yeah, and here’s another one for you, uh, Pras. Uh, still China’s critical mineral export ban that could weigh on the automakers. How does that factor in?
02:15 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, I mean, this is the other side of the trade war, right? China saying, “Okay, you want to play with us. Now, we’re going to cut off your, you know, these 90% of the rare earth magnets for batteries and things like that.” Or motors come from China, 99% of the rare earth metals for other components, uh, like those batteries and other things like, uh, uh, drone equipment come from these minerals. So it’s the second side of the coin here. Uh, I spoke to an official in the White House talking about how it’s not certain that these exports have actually stopped. It’s they’ve the Chinese put a licensing process in place, but other reports say the exports are stuck at port. They’re not leaving until they get more clarity on the licensing process. So right now it’s stuck. That’s a big problem. Right.
03:27 Speaker A
Yeah, and we only have one mine, MP materials, out in Eagle Pass, California, right? That actually makes the rare earths to make the electromagnetic battery.
03:42 Pras Subramanian
Yeah, even even Musk tweeted about this last night talking about how, you know, these rare earths are not rare. Uh, they’re everywhere, but the question is, how do you refine them? And only China has the ability to mass refine these. We might have that soon, but not yet. Right.
04:04 Speaker A
All right, Pras. Thank you. Appreciate it.