Don Herring tried to think positively Wednesday afternoon, minutes before President Trump announced a variety of levels of tariffs, including those on foreign-made cars and trucks. "I was hoping he'd announce we made a deal the 25% (tariff) wouldn't be necessary, but we heard he's going to do 25%. Clearly, I'm disappointed."

Herring owns the Don Herring Mitsubishi dealerships in both Plano and Irving, where he employs a total of about 80 people. He also serves as the Chairman of the North Texas Automobile Dealers Association. He watched with CBS News Texas as the President unveiled his new policy. 

Herring said, "When we first heard about this, Mitsubishi sent us out a letter saying it could impact the MSRP of the vehicles because that's too large of a tariff from Mitsubishi to be able to absorb." 

For now, Herring said the carmaker has a 100-day supply of new vehicles already imported to the United States before the tariffs went into effect after 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. That means those vehicles won't be subjected to tariffs. 

All of the vehicles Mitsubishi sells in the U.S. are made outside of the country. Most are manufactured in Japan. The vehicles imported into the U.S. after 11:59 p.m. this past Wednesday will be subjected to a 25% tariff. If the automaker does have to pay the tariff, which are taxes, Herring suspects the company will pass the costs along to the consumer. But for now, he isn't sure how much that would be. 

Herring said he's developed a plan. "We started looking and we've been expanding our used car operations anyway, so we are working on trying to get our used car prices to the point where new cars will be icing on the cake."

Herring said if tariffs are applied to new vehicles, he expects customers will look at used cars instead, increasing the demand for these type of vehicles. "Right now, we sold about 40 out of this location (Irving), about 30 out of the location in Plano, so it's not necessarily doubling or tripling," said Herring. "In this store, it's about a 20% increase and in the Plano store, it's a little more than that. So, it's a very achievable goal to get to. I am confident that we can do that even if these car prices go up." 

This week's full episode can be found below: