British luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover halts shipments to the US due to tariffs

Jaguar Land Rover, the British luxury carmaker, announced that it will halt shipments to the United States in April, while the company adapts to the tariffs on automobiles put in place by President Donald Trump.

“The U.S.A. is an important market for JLR’s luxury brands,” the company said in a statement. “As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are enacting our short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans.”

In general, the automotive sector will be affected by the 25% auto import tariffs announced by the Trump administration.

Particularly, this measure hits hard Jaguar Land Rover, which has no factories in the U.S. and exports all the cars it sells in the country.

The United States is, along with the United Kingdom and China, one of the British luxury carmaker's main markets.

In the last three months of 2024, the company shipped 38,000 vehicles to the U.S., before the tariffs went into effect.

The automotive tariffs not only put JLR in a difficult situation, but also pose a challenge to other British luxury manufacturers, such as Bentley and Aston Martin.

In fact, these brands, which already have a low level of sales in the U.S., would find it even more complex to get around the tariff hurdle in order to sell in U.S. territory. For these brands, setting up shop in the U.S. has not been commercially viable.

Jaguar Land Rover, on the other hand, sells about one-fifth of its cars in the United States, a significant amount.

According to The New York Times, during the fiscal year ending March 2024, the British manufacturer "sold about 95,000 cars and reported £6.5 billion in revenue for sales in the United States."

However, the tariffs create a giant dilemma for JLR, because if it passes on the full cost of the tariffs to the price of its cars, that would undoubtedly mean an increase of several thousand dollars per unit, which could directly undermine the percentage of sales and eventually its business margins.

Many brands are likely to face such problems in the face of tariffs. Some companies, such as Hyundai (South Korea), have already announced multi-billion dollar investments in the U.S., even beginning the construction of new plants in the country.