“Given the original document implied the deal would come into force shortly after the announcement, I think there is a reasonable expectation that the benefits will be backdated once they are eventually put on the books,” Lowe said. “But this isn’t 100 percent guaranteed.”
Getting pummeled
Executives from Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Steel told lawmakers last week that they’re getting pummeled by U.S. tariffs. The duties have hit Britain’s steel exporters since early March, while carmakers have faced the sectoral duties since early April.
“The deal is not implemented as it stands at the moment,” Murray Paul, public affairs director at Jaguar Land Rover, told the U.K. parliament’s Business and Trade Committee.
The firm, he said, is “working under the assumption” that it will be reimbursed for any tariffs that it has paid the U.S. government backdated to May 8. “We need to know when the [Executive Order] will be signed for implementation.”
“There’s … a limit [to] how much we can do in the background to absorb some of that pricing,” JLR’s Paul said, noting that price rises have been passed on to customers. The firm had paused its exports after Trump imposed the 25 percent tariffs in early April, but restarted U.S. shipments the weekend before Downing Street announced the deal.
The 25 percent tariffs on British steel exports have proven “extraordinarily difficult,” Russell Codling, Tata Steel’s director of markets and business development, told members of parliament. The company does between £100 million and £150 million-worth of business in the U.S. each year.
Even with just the 25 percent tariff, Codling said, “at the moment we’re extremely exposed.”
Stefan Boscia contributed reporting.
