A recent Autoline After Hours (2025) episode had the breathless title, “11 Car Brands That Tariffs Could Force Out of U.S. Market.” I would imagine that this episode got an unusual number of views on YouTube. But if you click into it, the discussion was considerably more measured than the headline.
Co-host John McElroy’s list of potentially endangered brands included those that currently import all of their vehicles: Audi, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Maserati, Porsche, Mitsubishi, Mini, Aston-Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover and McLaren.
McElroy (2025) acknowledged that Audi had a number of potential options for tapping into the production capacity of the Volkswagen Group. That included a forthcoming Scout Motors factory in South Carolina and a Rivian plant in Georgia. Likewise, Mitsubishi could potentially draw upon its alliance with Nissan or even make a deal with Foxcomm. Meanwhile, McElroy noted that Fiat could be on its way out of the U.S. market even without tariffs.
What’s left are primarily higher-priced brands such as Porsche, Maserati, Jaguar, Land Rover Aston-Martin and McLaren. I assume that these brands would have the most headroom to increase prices if negotiations with the Trump administration don’t succeed in bringing down the tariffs.
The remaining brands that are more moderately priced — Mini and Alfa-Romeo — are marginal enough in the U.S. that tariffs could turn out to be a good excuse to put them out of their misery. Much the same could be said for Mitsubishi, which has been struggling for years.
In addition, all of this assumes that the current level of tariffs are kept for a sustained amount of time. However, today Great Britain and the U.S. announced an agreement that would cut tariffs on most vehicles to 10 percent (Irwin, 2025). And given that one fourth of Jaguar Land Rover’s entire production goes to the U.S. (Reid, 2025), it would make sense that the automaker would try to stay the course.
So while tariffs may pose major short-term challenges to most of these brands, at this point it is difficult to see any of them pulling out of the U.S. market unless they were already teetering on the brink. Why didn’t Autoline go with that news peg? I assume because it wasn’t nearly so clickbaity.
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RE:SOURCES
- Autoline After Hours; 2025. “11 Car Brands That Tariffs Could Force Out of U.S. Market.” No. 742. Posted May 8.
- Irwin, John; 2025. “U.S. to reduce tariff rate on most U.K. vehicles to 10% as part of trade framework.” Automotive News. Posted May 8.
- Reid, Carlton; 2025. “Donald Trump’s UK Trade Deal Could Secure Jaguar’s Resurrection.” Wired. Posted May 8.
The new UK trade agreement which saw lowered ‘tariffs’ on ultra high end British luxury cars amounts to little more than a waiver for his rich American buddies. It’s pathetic.