UK automaker Jaguar Land Rover pauses US shipments

Jaguar Land Rover, the British luxury automaker, said Saturday that it was pausing shipments to the United States in April, days after President Donald Trump's auto tariffs went into effect.

The company, which makes luxury cars that include Jaguars, Defenders and Range Rovers, does not have manufacturing facilities in the United States and exports all the cars it sells there. In the last three months of 2024, it shipped 38,000 cars to the United States. The Trump administration imposed a tariff of 25% on imported cars as of Thursday.

"The USA 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."

The United States is the largest single-country export market for British cars, with 6.4 billion pounds ($8.3 billion) worth of vehicles shipped there in 2023. That's about a tenth of Britain's overall exports in goods.

The auto tariffs pose a particular challenge for British luxury carmakers, which also include Bentley and Aston Martin, because they sell relatively few vehicles and, therefore, tend to have only a small number of production sites. For them, setting up manufacturing in the United States hasn't been economical, leaving them without an easy way to circumnavigate tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover sells about a fifth of its cars in the United States.