(Viral Buzz News) —
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Japan’s major carmakers saw their US sales surge in March, fueled by a last-minute rush to buy cars before US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported vehicles kicked in.
Toyota Motor Corp.’s sales rose 8% from a year earlier to 231,336 units, while Honda Motor Co. recorded a 13% jump, according to data released Thursday. Nissan Motor Co. said sales in the country rose 10%, cushioning the impact of a 3.4% decline in global sales to 353,463 units.
Trump’s 25% tariff on imports of all foreign-made vehicles, which kicked in on April 3, has reverberated across the globe, leaving automakers reeling and American consumers facing a potential double-digit surge in car prices.
Japanese carmakers are more exposed than most and, while Toyota has said it will stay the course for now, other major manufacturers are already making adjustments to minimize the fallout.
Mazda Motor Corp. said it will
pause
US production of one model variation that it exports to Canada. Honda
plans to shift
manufacturing of the hybrid version of its Civic from Japan to the US, while Nissan is
halting
US orders for SUVs built in Mexico.
Toyota’s global sales, including subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd., reached just over 1 million units in March, up 11% from a year earlier. That includes 834,467 cars sold outside of Japan, a 6% increase and a record for the month of March. The company’s domestic sales jumped nearly 36%, while total North American sales increased 7%.
Global production rose 10% to 977,241 units in March.
Toyota is recovering from a series of regulatory scandals that forced it to scale back production. It sold 10.8 million cars in 2024, down from the previous year, but still enough to beat Volkswagen AG and maintain its title as the world’s biggest carmaker for a fifth straight year.
(Updates to add details from Honda and Nissan in second paragraph.)
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