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UK car manufacturing collapsed in Could to the bottom degree since 1949 after US President Donald Trump’s tariff struggle pressured Aston Martin and different British carmakers to halt their shipments to the US.
Automobile and van manufacturing at British vegetation fell 33 per cent in Could from a yr earlier to 49,810 items, figures from the Society of Motor Producers and Merchants launched on Friday confirmed.
Output declined for the fifth consecutive month, marking the worst month-to-month efficiency in 76 years, excluding when car factories had been shut down in the course of the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020.
British luxurious manufacturers, together with Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin, suspended vehicle shipments to the US from April after the Trump administration slapped greater tariffs on foreign-made autos imported into the US.
Automobile shipments to the US fell 55 per cent year-on-year in Could, decreasing the US share of exports from 18 per cent to 11 per cent. Exports to the EU additionally fell 22.5 per cent.
These US shipments are anticipated to renew with the scheduled implementation of the US-UK commerce deal on Monday, underneath which Trump agreed to chop a 27.5 per cent American tariff on automobiles to 10 per cent for the primary 100,000 autos shipped from the UK every year.
“Whereas 2025 has proved to be an extremely difficult yr for UK automotive manufacturing, there may be the start of some optimism for the long run,” SMMT’s chief govt Mike Hawes stated, citing the commerce settlement and the latest unveiling of the UK’s industrial technique, which guarantees to carry down vitality prices by as much as 25 per cent.
The settlement with the US was introduced by Trump on Could 8 however automotive executives have expressed frustration with the velocity of its implementation. Simply days forward of the deal taking impact, corporations have but to be told of the precise allocation of the quota system.
“It comes stay on the thirtieth of June . . . so we’re planing to bill three months’ price of gross sales in a 24-hour interval,” Adrian Hallmark, Aston Martin’s chief govt, stated at an SMMT occasion on Tuesday. “That’s complexity and dynamism.”
Hallmark nonetheless welcomed the deal, saying British carmakers had been now “much less worse off than a few of our European and non-European opponents”.
Even earlier than the US commerce struggle broke out, UK vehicle production had been declining because the business struggled to satisfy the nation’s powerful electrical car gross sales targets.
Stellantis final yr stated the price of complying with the federal government’s “zero emission car mandate” was partly behind its choice to shut its Luton van manufacturing unit and consolidate its UK operations at its Ellesmere Port manufacturing unit in Cheshire.
Ford additionally blamed the mandate because it lower 800 UK roles final yr in a wider European restructuring.
