Liam Denning, Columnist

America First Nostalgia Is Bad for American Cars

April 16, 2026 at 11:34 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Look out ahead.
Photographer: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images North America

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Few industries do patriotism quite like autos. Clint Eastwood’s somber but stirring “halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler that aired in 2012, more national address than advertisement, is a touchstone of the genre. Today, patriotism isn’t just a feeling or a marketing tactic in Detroit. It is table stakes with an “America First” administration that isn’t so much wrapping the auto industry in the flag as smothering with it.

Jim Farley, chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co., began this week with a blog post touting “Another Year of Ford’s Commitment to America.” It’s unlikely to have quite the reach of Chrysler’s iconic TV ad, but that hardly matters when the key demographic consists of one man in the White House. Farley’s boasts about Ford’s domestic manufacturing prowess and exports are tailor-made for President Donald Trump, who envisions a degree of automotive reshoring that borders on autarky.