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Facing pressure on sales and profits due to US trade tariffs, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is set to cut up to 500 management jobs in the UK. The carmaker said it would launch a voluntary redundancy scheme, with the cuts affecting less than 1.5% of its British workforce. JLR described the workforce reduction as "normal business practice".
Last week, the carmaker revealed a drop in sales in the three months to June caused partly by it pausing exports to the US because of tariffs and also due to the planned wind-down of older Jaguar models.
The company warned last month that US President Donald Trump's decision to impose a 10% tariff on British cars exported to the US would hit its profits.
JLR said it "regularly offers eligible employees voluntary redundancy" and said the current programme was based on "the business's current and future needs". It added that the UK-US trade deal on car imports gives it "confidence to invest £3.5bn" per year.
As part of a wave of tariff announcements made by Trump earlier this year, UK exports of UK cars and automotive parts faced an extra 25% tax, on top of an existing 2.5% levy. This led to JLR pausing shipments of its vehicles to the US.
However, the UK-US deal saw the tariff cut to 10% for a maximum of 100,000 UK cars, which matches the number of these vehicles that the UK exported last year.
Despite this, the new rate is still "a big increase" from the previous tariff of 2.5%, adding that one of its best selling cars, the Defender, is made in Slovakia and that still faces a 27.5% tariff.
Downing Street rejected "absolutely" any suggestion that JLR's job cuts were a personal embarrassment for Sir Keir Starmer, who visited the company in May and declared it was his intention to protect British jobs in the car industry.
A spokesperson for the PM said the UK-US trade deal was "jobs saved, not job done", adding that JLR was "responding to challenging global conditions" in making the cuts.
