DETROIT (dpa-AFX) - US customs policy has only given new car sales in the US a brief boost. After customers brought forward vehicle purchases in the spring in anticipation of tariffs on cars and car parts in order to avoid rising costs, the trend weakened again in the second quarter.
US carmaker General Motors, for example, delivered over seven percent more cars in the second quarter than a year earlier, but after surprisingly strong figures in April and May, the trend cooled again in June, in line with the rest of the industry. Ford even recorded a 14 percent increase in sales in the quarter thanks to a discount campaign, but this was no longer the case in June.
German carmakers performed differently. While BMW's passenger car sales rose by 9.7 percent, sales of larger SUVs declined significantly. Overall, the Munich-based company posted a 0.4 percent drop in sales.
The situation was different for Volkswagen, where sales slumped by 29 percent overall and for passenger cars alone. Volkswagen spoke of a "challenging environment." Its subsidiary Audi also reported a 19 percent drop in sales.
Japanese carmaker Toyota posted a seven percent increase in the United States in the past quarter, but sales stagnated in June. "From the end of March to the beginning of May, we had a lot of pull-forward effects – I think across the entire industry," said David Christ, head of Toyota's US brand sales. Since then, he said, the pace of sales has returned to what he would describe as normal.
Many US customers flocked to car dealerships in the spring to buy cars before US tariffs on imported cars and parts came into effect. According to the analysis company J.D. Power, this drove sales up by 2.5 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.
Recently, some foreign car manufacturers have already had to accept declines. Sales by Japanese manufacturer Subaru fell by 16 percent, while Korean supplier Kia lost a good 3 percent. Japanese manufacturer Nissan sold 6.5 percent fewer cars in the US in the quarter as a whole, while Honda recorded an 8.4 percent increase from April to June. /stw/tih/nas/tav/jha/
