Jaguar Land Rover has restarted shipments of vehicles to the United States after pausing them in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, London’s Times newspaper reported on Saturday.
The first shipments of JLR vehicles bound for the U.S. for almost a month left Britain on Wednesday, the report said.
A JLR spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the U.S. is a key market for its luxury brands, with 25per cent tariffs on autos still in effect.
“As we work to address the new US trading terms with our business partners, we are enacting our planned short-term actions, as we develop our mid- to long-term plans. We will give a further update at our full year results in May,” the statement added.
JLR, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, said in April that it would pause shipments of its Britain-made cars to the U.S. for a month as it considered how to mitigate the cost of Trump’s 25per cent tariff on imported cars and light trucks, which came into effect on April 3.
Trump said on Thursday he will soften the blow of his auto tariffs through an executive order mixing credits with relief from other levies on parts and materials.
British luxury carmaker Aston Martin’s CEO Adrian Hallmark said on Wednesday it would split the costs from U.S. tariffs between the company and its customers, and sell down its U.S. inventory while limiting shipments there.
Britain’s car industry employs 200,000 people directly. The United States is the second-biggest importer of British-made cars after the European Union, with a near 20per cent share, data from industry body SMMT shows.
