A chronicle on cars, tariffs, and the economy of absurdity.
Author: ©2025 William Castano-Bedoya
THE CHOKED ROAR OF THE ENGINE: CHRONICLE OF A BALD EAGLE THAT CHOSE TO SHOOT ITSELF
Between breaths, chewed thoughts, and clouds shifting shape, during today’s walk, I’m overwhelmed by questions I translate into reasoning: How can one destroy a domestic industry while making people believe it’s being saved? Does the bald eagle think itself enlightened, destined to stir the world with its flight only to reign under a new global order? Or rather, does it believe it is the only one in the sky—exclusive in its existence—blind to the other animals that also rule the air, the land, and the symbols?
Under the guise of economic patriotism, tariffs of up to a hundred billion dollars are being announced on imported automobiles and parts.
But I sense, as an ordinary consumer who owns a car more out of need than pride—and who has seen a great deal of the world, its treaties, its businesses, and its truths—that the result won’t be an immediate industrial revival or a spike in employment, which is already low and will worsen with the exodus of immigrants who support the American workforce. Whether cars are imported or assembled locally, people won’t buy more than they already do. Growth rates won’t be aggressive; they’ll continue to follow the market’s natural rhythm: new drivers joining each year, older ones retiring. The shift, however, will favor electric vehicles over conventional ones. It’s no longer the same to buy a gas car made of nearly a million parts—polluting neighborhoods with tar combustion—as it is to drive a Tesla or BYD: vehicles that only need ever-faster charging and minimal maintenance.
Since I was a child, I’ve thought best while walking, writing three-mile chronicles for my blog, along with fiction novels. It’s not factories that drive markets—it’s consumption. And consumption, far from increasing, is trending downward due to rising prices. To me, this isn’t a market expansion. It’s a strategic inflation disguised as sovereignty. A perfect storm that strikes the consumer, crushes innovation, and threatens to isolate the country from the global auto trade.
To this, add a shift in behavior. Americans, who once replaced their cars at the end of a lease or finance contract, are now holding on to their old vehicles—not out of nostalgia, but because the leap to a new one has become almost prohibitive.
International manufacturers, forced to open factories in the U.S. to dodge tariffs, don’t see this as an obligation but rather as an open invitation to invade the market and put pressure—on American soil—on legacy brands like Ford, GM, and Chrysler. The cake once reserved for the bald eagle will now be devoured by lions, dragons, roosters, and imperial eagles at the same dinner table. All were invited, and no one calculated the cost.
Have the BMWs of the imperial eagle—assembled for years on the soil of the now-despised bald eagle—become any cheaper? Not at all. Despite traveling fewer miles to dealerships, their prices remain high, protected by brand prestige and complex assembly. Local assembly has brought no real price benefit to consumers, especially amid inflation and retaliatory tariffs. They don’t bear the cost of the trade war. They don’t pay the ego’s price. They watch, position themselves, and advance. What for some is an industrial tragedy, for others is a masterstroke of expansion. Who wins? They do. Who loses? Detroit’s brands.
Ford, GM, and Stellantis manufacture vehicles or parts in countries like Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, South Korea, and China. These same factories are at risk if those governments retaliate against American brands. This policy not only attacks historic partners like Mexico and Canada but also sends a hostile message to Europe and Asia, disrupting a production balance that companies themselves took decades to build. That’s the destabilizing threat looming from the other side of the tariff wall. Because protectionism disguised as greatness only makes life more expensive and the future poorer.
And, as always, the final blow lands on the shoulders of the common citizen. Each car an American wants to buy could cost up to ten thousand dollars more. Because tariffs, in the end, are always paid by the consumer. Factories won’t absorb that weight; they’ll pass it on. What was meant to protect becomes a punishment for those who just want a reliable, efficient, and affordable vehicle.
With each step, in the spring air of this April 2025, I digest this reflection. I can’t stop thinking about the bald eagle—that symbol that once soared high, full of pride and horizon, has changed its nature. It no longer glides. It no longer watches. Now it lunges, preys—even within its own yard. It’s become a creature that doesn’t hunt out of hunger, but impulse. It no longer distinguishes fox from lamb. It strikes for ego, for display, drunk on power. And in doing so, it wounds its own, harms those it was meant to protect.
I wonder if this country, which for decades built its strength on free markets and global competitiveness, recognizes itself in this behavior. What became of the conservative creed that once worshipped free trade, minimal government, and efficient markets?
What’s most disconcerting is that this model was chosen. Voters—many of them consumers—placed their faith in someone who has turned the economy into a battlefield. It’s as if the whole country strapped itself to the wheel, intent on crashing into a tariff wall with no brakes and no questions.
But when the eagle cries from above, certain of its sovereignty, the world learns to fly with different symbols. China leads in electric vehicles, Europe advances in innovation, and the United States retreats into a protectionism that smells like the 20th century. The future isn’t built with walls or tariffs—it’s built with vision, collaboration, and intelligence.
I keep walking. Maybe tomorrow, in another three miles, I’ll understand what went wrong—or if, perhaps, the eagle never knew where it was flying.
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William Castaño
William Castaño-Bedoya is an American writer based in Coral Gables, Florida. His literary fiction explores the ethical, psychological, and emotional structures that shape human relationships, focusing on love, vulnerability, and the tensions between power and compassion. His narrative voice is marked by interiority, silence, and moral inquiry, privileging emotional intelligence over spectacle. After a long career in marketing and creative leadership, he turned fully to literature, bringing a strategic understanding of contemporary human experience to his work. He is the author of several novels, including "The Intriguing Stillness of the Tides", "We the Other People", "Ludovico", "Flowers for Maria Sucel", "The Galpon", and "We’ll Meet in Stockholm".
