Fears for Britain’s car industry deepened yesterday as bosses called for clarity over when tariffs on exports to the US will be reduced.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Bentley said that despite a trade deal with President Donald Trump announced last week, they were still operating under the previous 25 per cent tariff regime.
Meanwhile, workers at Britain’s biggest car plant in Sunderland were left in the dark after its Japanese owner Nissan said it was shutting seven factories worldwide.
A Downing Street spokesman said it was a ‘concerning’ time for employees at the site.
Carmakers have been grappling with a 25 per cent tariff on all car imports into the US imposed by Trump at the start of April.
The tariff will be reduced to 10 per cent under the UK-US trade deal but manufacturers still do not know when that will take effect.
In the driving seat: Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves visited the JLR factory last month
JLR’s boss Adrian Mardell commented on the tariffs as it reported a 14 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to £2.47billion for the year to the end of March – even as sales were flat at £29billion.
JLR was thought to have been preparing to announce future job cuts until the deal was announced, but Mardell insisted yesterday that it had not been about to take immediate action.
While he welcomed the agreement he said that the company was ‘awaiting confirmation of the effective date’.
And he added that even after the deal takes effect ‘it’s worth remembering that the tariffs remain at four times the level they were prior to April 3’.
Mardell also refused to rule out that JLR – which has already moved some production to Slovakia – might one day build factories in the US.
Other global firms are already doing this in order to avoid Trump’s tariffs. But he added that ‘there are no plans to do that at this point in time’.
JLR had already responded to the tariffs by temporarily pausing exports to the US. They have since resumed. Mardell said that the ‘steep and sudden’ tariffs ‘had an immediate and significant financial impact on auto manufacturers worldwide’.
Frank-Steffen Walliser, chief executive of Bentley, raised questions about how the 100,000 tariff-free quota of UK car exports to the US would work. Just over 100,000 cars were shipped to the US last year.
Walliser told a Financial Times event yesterday: ‘Is the 100,000 for Bentley? I can live with that but I assume our colleagues from JLR would also like to have a chunk.’
He added Bentley was ‘having conversations’ with the Government to find out how the deal would be operating.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining [about the deal being struck], but it is not operational,’ Walliser said.
Nissan on Monday said it was cutting 11,000 jobs, in addition to previously announced cuts of 9,000, and closing seven of its 17 plants. The carmaker did not say whether Sunderland would be affected.
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This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .