Last year, Ashlyn White and her husband replaced their two cars with one, newer (but still used) vehicle with fresh “bells and whistles.” But there was a surprise: Their new auto insurance rate was about the same despite having half as many vehicles.

“I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to keep saving up” to pay the premiums, White said, “but here we are.”

And rising rates may not be done, experts warn. Proposed tariffs threaten to upend current auto supply chains, boosting prices, particularly on cars and parts from Canada, Mexico and China. Those costs likely would trickle down and affect insurance claims and future rates, experts agree.

Just how much remains uncertain, such as whether tariffs will truly take effect April 2, the date President Donald Trump set after announcing, then temporarily pausing, the taxes on auto parts. On Tuesday, Trump said in a social media post that he’d double some proposed tariffs on Canada and “substantially increase” those on cars.

As the cost of parts and therefore vehicle repairs rises, insurance companies will have to retool their calculations, said Don Grauel, a Baltimore-area independent insurance agent of more than 25 years.

“There’s no doubt it’s going to increase it [insurance rates], but depending who you ask it’s going to be a varied amount,” Grauel said.

A recent report from Insurify, an online aggregator that helps people shop for policies, estimates an 8% rise in rates by the end of the year, a steeper increase than what it predicted before the proposed tariffs. Grauel and other experts aren’t as ready to place a dollar figure on it but agree that disruptions to auto supply chains will have a ripple effect.

The warning comes as auto insurance rates have risen dramatically in Maryland in recent years, perhaps no worse than right here in Baltimore, after the pandemic seemingly undid years of driver education courses and deadly auto crashes spiked nationwide.

Repair costs already have risen dramatically as parts became more modular and sophisticated, Grauel said — think bumpers with sensors or rearview mirrors with cameras compared to their low-tech counterparts of decades past.

Free trade agreements prompted the creation of supply chains where parts and vehicles travel back and forth between the U.S., Mexico and Canada multiple times before final assembly. Margins for the cars most people drive — think Fords, Hondas and Toyotas — are much slimmer than those of luxury brands, said Tinglong Dai, a supply chain expert at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Complex supply chains help automakers squeeze as much juice as possible.

Tariffs could “destroy” those supply chains, Dai said, and have greater impacts on Maryland’s economy due to how they would affect car imports at the Port of Baltimore.

“Those cars can easily be made in the USA!” Trump said on social media, adding that he believed tariffs could “permanently shut down” auto manufacturing up north.

Dai is concerned they would have the same effect here — automakers may choose to leave the U.S. altogether for cheaper deals elsewhere, he said.

The problem is greater than higher MSRP price tags for new cars.

More expensive parts mean mechanics give drivers higher estimates at the body shop, leading to pricier claims for insurance companies, Grauel said. Companies likely would label more cars totaled as replacement values change, he added.

Claims will feel it first, but rates will follow — the pandemic may offer some insight as to how.

The onset of COVID brought empty roads and fewer insurance claims, which meant insurance companies kept more of their money and in turn could lower rates, said Dave Pieffer, chief operating officer of Maryland Auto Insurance, a state agency often referred to as Maryland’s insurer of last resort. Since Maryland drivers are required by law to have insurance, Maryland Auto steps in if other insurance companies deny coverage to someone.

Maryland Auto’s policy count dropped from roughly 33,000 to 19,000 during the early period of the pandemic as more people could afford the lower rates available.

Then, drivers returned to the roads but didn’t kick the bad habits they grew accustomed to with fewer people driving around. Road fatalities spiked. Insurance companies lost money on claims. Premiums jumped.

Now, Maryland Auto has more than 40,000 policies, Pieffer said.

The pandemic also disrupted supply chains, and a parts shortage caused big increases to replacement costs. Pieffer worries that uncertainty around the tariffs could cause similar disruptions.

The auto insurance market was just stabilizing after years of rising rates, said Michel Léonard, chief economist and data scientist at the Insurance Information Institute. But the tariff proposals bring new uncertainty.

“Just on the basis of those new costs due to the tariffs, until it stabilizes ... this would drive up, no pun intended, premium rates on the same scale as what we’ve had as consumers to pay in terms of back-to-back increases for several years,” Léonard said.

So what can you do?

“The way you save money is you evaluate your coverage, not just shopping … it’s not a can of soup, it’s different,” Grauel said.

Marylanders like White can look to bundle policies together like for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance, make use of telematics services to prove good driving habits or pursue a usage-based insurance rate, Grauel said.

“You need to have car insurance if you want to get anywhere,” White said. “Hopefully this balances out at some point.”