Jaguar Land Rover axes 500 UK jobs after Trump tariff fallout dents sales
The British luxury car manufacturer said about 1.5% of its staff in the UK would be affected by the job cuts as part of a voluntary redundancy round for managers. JLR, which is owned by India's Tata Motors, employs 33,000 people in the UK.
The car manufacturer reported a 15.1% drop in sales in the three months ended in June after a temporary pause in exports to the US.
JLR stopped shipments to the US in April after Trump imposed a 25% duty on all foreign-made vehicles, before resuming them in May. The country accounts for more than a quarter of JLR's sales.
Trump and Keir Starmer have agreed a trade deal which allows the UK to export 100,000 cars a year to the US at a 10% tariff, reducing it from the 27.5% levy imposed on other countries.
Britain's ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, said shortly after the deal was agreed that it had immediately prevented job losses at JLR's factory in the West Midlands. JLR's chief executive, Adrian Mardell, said the deal would help to sustain 250,000 jobs across the car industry.
Mandelson told CNN at the time: 'This deal has saved those jobs … That's a pretty big achievement in my view, and I'm very pleased that the president has signed it.'
On Thursday, a spokesperson for JLR said: 'As part of normal business practice, we regularly offer eligible employees the opportunity to leave JLR through limited voluntary redundancy programmes.'
The planned redundancies at JLR come as British businesses report they are under pressure due to a £25bn increase in employer national insurance contributions. The official unemployment rate rose to 4.7% in the three months to May, up 0.1% from April.
Jaguar told its investors in June that, as a result of tariff uncertainty, it was lowering its forecast for margins on underlying profits, measured by earnings before interest and taxes, to between 5% and 7% this year, from 10% previously estimated. The company achieved a profit margin of 8.5% in the year to 31 March.
The company reported a 12.2% drop in wholesale sales in North America. Sales in the UK also fell 25.5% in its second quarter after the planned wind down of older Jaguar models. The company stopped selling new cars in the UK late last year as part of its shift towards new electric models, which are expected to hit the market in 2026.
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