Growth will be slow this year for automakers as prices normalize, says former Ford CEO

I want to bring in Mark Fields. He is the former Ford President and CEO. He's also a CNBC contributor and he serves on the boards of both Hertz and Qualcomm. Mark, let's run through a few things, right? First of all, what do you think about the health of the consumer right now when it comes to the car business? Well, I think the health of the consumer is still relatively good. But you know, Becky, what you're seeing is issues around high interest rates, interests are issues around affordability. And that's why, you know, when we look at the first half numbers of this year, it's going to be up slightly versus last year. And yet you have to have some, some small impact from the CDK issue. But if you step back and look at the broader market, you know, it's, it's, it's slow growth for this year as prices start coming down, as affordability increases, you'll see higher sales. But I think that the consumer right now you're getting a normalization the, the, the payments, monthly payments for car payments are stabilizing interest rates or sorry, discount rates from the automakers are kind of normalizing post COVID. So relatively OK, but the industry has slow growth and that's not a bad thing. When you think about the overall state of the industry. If interest rates don't come down and you don't get any more flexibility in terms of those loan rates, will that be a problem for automakers that have been kind of counting on it? Well, it will be a problem. As you heard from Phil, if you look at inventory levels, they're up about 50% versus last year and they're, they're about normal levels right now, Becky, about 3 million units and that's that's about normal for this time of year. So if you see consumers, you know, not really kind of stepping up, the automaker is going to face a very important decision. They're either going to have to layer in more discounts to move those units and keep their plants running or they're going to have to take the difficult decision of maybe reducing production, taking some shifts off, etcetera, which has, you know, much bigger impact on the on the automakers and the economy. So I think this will play out over the next couple of months to see what direction the consumers take and then importantly, what directions and actions do the automakers take. Hey, Mark, the CDK issue, this, this software company that so many of the auto auto sales companies use, How big of a deal is that? Just in terms of, I can't believe that it's still, they're still trying to get things back up and running. Hopefully in the next few days that will happen. But the idea that this could take down so many of them. Well, this system, it, it affects about 50% of the dealers here in the US and I saw piece of data the other day that said the the, the software that goes through CDK here in the US represents about 2.6% of the GDP. So as you know, the auto industry has a big impact on the GDP. But this system is the heart of these dealerships. It allows them to make their sales, track their service, do their financials. And so you know, we'll, we'll see as the numbers come out. But I think overall you'll see the impact in June probably in the neighborhood of plus or minus around 100,000 units. And to put that in perspective, that's about 7% versus last year's June number. So it'll have an impact, but it'll be rebounded very quickly in July as the dealers kind of catch up and record their past sales and their their service. I think the interesting thing, Becky, is when you think about the Federal Reserve, you know, this will have some impact on the GDP in the second quarter, not huge, but it'll definitely have an impact in the June numbers. And they're going to have to take that into account as they think about what they're going to do when and if they're going to move on interest rates. But it'll have an impact, but will be quickly rebounded in July. It's interesting.