With President Trump evidently having no objections to seeing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) potentially disappear, the American International Automobile Dealers Association (AIADA) expressed great concern over the impact changes to the policy involving the U.S., Canada and Mexico would likely have on the cost of vehicle prices.

This past Wednesday, Trump hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada where the leaders discussed a wide array of issues, including NAFTA, which apparently isn’t favored by the current administration.

When replying to a question that NAFTA only needed some “tweaks,” Trump replied, “Well, I don’t think anything changed. We’re negotiating a NAFTA deal. It’s time, after all of these years, and we'll see what happens.

“It’s possible we won't be able to make a deal, and it’s possible that we will,” the president continued according to a transcript released by the White House. “We have a great personal relationship, and we have a relationship now as two countries, I think, that's as close as ever.

“But we'll see if we can do the kind of changes that we need,” Trump went on to say. “We have to protect our workers, and, in all fairness, the Prime Minister wants to protect Canada and his people also. So we'll see what happens with NAFTA, but I've been opposed to NAFTA for a long time. In terms of the fairness of NAFTA, I said we'll renegotiate. And I think Justin understands this: If we can't make a deal, it'll be terminated, and that will be fine. They're going to do well; we're going to do well, but maybe that won’t be necessary. But it has to be fair to both countries.”

After the country’s leaders met, AIADA president Cody Lusk issued his assessment.

“America’s 9,600 international nameplate dealership franchises, and the 577,000 Americans they employ, are concerned about the prices their customers may be forced to pay if certain aspects of NAFTA are changed. In 2017, Edmunds predicts that the average vehicle transaction price will increase to an all-time high of $35,000. American consumers can’t afford the additional costs that would come with disruptive changes to NAFTA,” Lusk said.

"The auto industry is one of NAFTA's biggest success stories and helped international nameplate dealers — located in cities and towns across America — to sell 8.4 million vehicles to American consumers last year resulting in 59 percent of total U.S. retail vehicle sales,” he continued.

“While NAFTA modernization is important, we urge caution in considering the jobs that might be lost and the prices American consumers may incur as the result of changes to key aspects of the agreement,” Lusk went on to say.

More analysis from AIADA can be found at AIADA.org/our-impact.