The company produces luxury cars including Jaguars, defenders and range cars, has no manufacturing facilities in the United States, and exports all cars it sells there. In the last three months of 2024, it shipped 38,000 cars to the United States. As of Thursday, the Trump administration imposed a 25% tax on imported cars.
“The United States is a significant market for JLR luxury brands,” the company said in a statement. “When we work to resolve new deal terms with our business partners, we are developing short-term lawsuits, including a cargo suspension in April, as we have a medium- to long-term plan.”
The United States is the largest single-country export market for British cars, with 6.4 billion pounds ($8.3 billion) of vehicles shipped there in 2023. This is about one-tenth of the overall export of British goods.
Automatic tariffs present a particular challenge for British luxury car manufacturers, including Bentley and Aston Martin, which often have only a small number of production locations as they sell relatively few vehicles. For them, it is not economical to establish manufacturing in the United States, leaving them with no easy tariff approach. Jaguar Land Rover sells about one-fifth of cars in the United States.
