The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has revived this Friday a practice that harks back to another era in Washington: the era, which seems distant but took place just a year ago, in which he turned global trade upside down with a message on his social network, Truth. This time he has turned to that platform to announce, in what represents a new escalation in his global trade war, that, “since the European Union is not complying with our Trade Agreement, next week” Washington will increase “the tariffs applied to the European Union on cars and trucks exported to the United States.”
The new levy, Trump said, who did not specify how the EU has violated the trade pact reached last summer, will be 25%. Currently, European products pay a general tariff of 15%, which is not reciprocal, meaning that American vehicles do not pay the same tariff in Europe.
Trump’s message on Truth adds that automotive companies on the other side of the Atlantic always have one option left: “Manufacture cars and trucks in plants located in the United States,” because those “WILL NOT be subject to any tariff” (the capitals are his). “There are currently many car and truck plants under construction, with an investment exceeding 100 billion dollars; a RECORD figure in the history of vehicle manufacturing. These plants, which have American workers, will open their doors very soon. Nothing like what is happening today in the United States has ever been seen before!” wrote the president of the world’s largest economy.
Trump’s threat had an immediate impact on the automotive sector in the US stock markets. In a session without clear references due to the closure of European markets for the May Day holiday, investors reacted by selling shares of the main manufacturers on the US stock exchange: at mid-session, Ford fell 1.95%, General Motors dropped 1.22%, and Ferrari lost 2.08% on the stock market.
The announcement by the US president plunges once again a sector that already suffered a poor 2025 into uncertainty, largely due to the tariff storm unleashed by Trump, which affected the financial results of its own car manufacturers. The most affected by this new tax is Germany, the largest European exporter of vehicles to the US. According to data from the US Department of Commerce, the German country sold cars worth 24,781.8 million dollars in 2024 (latest available data), about 21,101 million euros at the current exchange rate. Germany is thus the fifth largest car exporter to the country, only behind Mexico, Japan, Korea, and Canada.
As for Spain, the impact is very limited, since the national automotive industry does not sell a single vehicle to the US. It has not done so since 2023, a year in which Spain exported 51,700 cars there from the Ford Almussafes (Valencia) and Mercedes-Benz Vitoria plants. These vehicles were the Ford Transit Connect and Tourneo Connect vans — the first was for commercial activity, while the second was for passenger transport —; and the Mercedes-Benz Vito, which was marketed in the US under the name Metris. The star company decided to stop selling this vehicle to the US both in its van and passenger versions due to a homologation problem. Ford, for its part, stopped doing so due to its decision to remove models from the Valencia plant, which today operates at minimum capacity with a single model, the Kuga.
Who it does affect is the car components industry, since the sector does sell parts to the US and, above all, to other European countries such as Germany, which the tariff hits directly. In 2024, direct exports of parts to the US accounted for only 4% of the foreign sales of national component manufacturers, about 1,021 million euros, according to data from Sernauto (the sector’s employers’ association).
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