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UK automobile manufacturing collapsed in Could to the bottom stage since 1949 after US President Donald Trump’s tariff warfare compelled 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 12 months 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 automobile factories had been shut down throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020.
British luxurious manufacturers, together with Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin, suspended automobile shipments to the US from April after the Trump administration slapped increased 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, beneath 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 annually.
“Whereas 2025 has proved to be an extremely difficult 12 months for UK automotive manufacturing, there’s the start of some optimism for the longer term,” SMMT’s chief govt Mike Hawes mentioned, citing the commerce settlement and the current unveiling of the UK’s industrial technique, which guarantees to carry down power 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 learn of the particular allocation of the quota system.
“It comes dwell 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, mentioned 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 warfare broke out, UK automobile manufacturing had been declining because the trade struggled to fulfill the nation’s powerful electrical automobile gross sales targets.
Stellantis final 12 months mentioned the price of complying with the federal government’s “zero emission automobile mandate” was partly behind its determination to shut its Luton van manufacturing facility and consolidate its UK operations at its Ellesmere Port manufacturing facility in Cheshire.
Ford additionally blamed the mandate because it lower 800 UK roles final 12 months in a wider European restructuring.
