

Some automakers like Toyota, which has been less affected by the chip shortage than others, are advertising zero-interest loans on some cars.īuyers often have to take vehicles that don’t meet their specifications, and move fast when they find one close enough. Financing cars is also relatively cheap - at least for people with good credit. Government payments have helped lots of people, but many Americans, kept from vacationing or eating out, saved money. auto plants returned to making cars after years of churning out tanks and planes.ĭealers said virtually everything was selling, from luxury vehicles and sports cars that cost more than $100,000 to basic used cars that many parents buy for teenagers.Įven though the unemployment rate is still higher than before the pandemic, many people have money to spend. Industry executives said the last time demand and supply were this out of sync was most likely after the end of World War II, when U.S. The cars disappear quickly because of customer waiting lists, Mr. Once or twice a week, a truck arrives with five or 10 vehicles. His dealerships normally have 600 to 700 cars in stock. “The industry has had strikes and material shortages before that have left us short of inventory, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mark Scarpelli, the owner of two Chevrolet dealerships near Chicago. Coronavirus Origins: Two new studies exploring how the Covid outbreak began concluded that the wet market in Wuhan, China, was the likely epicenter of its emergence.Young Children : In a new survey, a majority of American parents said they would refuse the coronavirus vaccine for their children, citing concern with the shot’s side effects.Rural America: New research found that Covid killed Black and Hispanic people across small towns and farmlands at considerably higher rates last year than it did their white neighbors.Boosters: The Biden administration is expected to begin a Covid-19 booster campaign in September, offering updated vaccines that should prove more effective against the now-dominant Omicron subvariant BA.5.Industry officials blame limited production capacity for semiconductors and pandemic-related disruptions in supply and demand for the shortage. The chip shortage, for example, is affecting automakers all over the world and is not directly related to U.S. Government stimulus may have helped some consumers, but it is hard to say how much. But Biden administration officials have pointed out that temporary supply shortages are largely responsible for the surge in prices of cars and other goods. Republican lawmakers have argued that the March legislation is overheating the economy and are citing the rise in prices to oppose additional government spending. The government said this week that consumer prices across the economy rose 5.4 percent in the last year through June. Those price increases have fed a debate in Washington about whether President Biden’s policies, particularly the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan he signed in March, are responsible for the sharp rise in inflation.
