Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Thursday, March 6.
The automotive headlines today are filled with "uncertainty" from President Donald Trump's tariff roller coaster — an ordeal faced by automakers and their suppliers on an hourly basis, at least this week. Looking for something resembling certainty as this plays out in every automotive executive office in North America? Here are a couple of stories to contemplate.
Credit ratings: S&P Global downgraded Stellantis by a notch today amid the headwinds caused by tariffs. The company said it does not see Stellantis absorbing the cost of tariffs and expects the automaker to pass on the impact using pricing and possibly shifting some assembly to the U.S., Reuters said. It's a good bet more downgrades are coming, if not from tariffs then from the softening U.S. and global economy.
Suppliers: Linamar Chair Linda Hasenfratz — one of the few auto supplier leaders willing to blast the tariffs publicly — reiterated that no company in its right mind would move permanent production to the U.S. because of Trump's tariffs.
Read more: Live updates on tariff news and impacts
Interactive map: Auto manufacturing sites in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico
Hasenfratz said on an earnings call that it would cost the company billions of dollars and take months or years to shift production if it reacted to tariffs that are "here today, gone tomorrow and back the next day."
"You must focus on long term. You can't get sucked into the noise of what's going on in making key decisions like that," Hasenfratz said in our story from Automotive News Canada.
What's more: In this story by John Irwin, some suppliers indicated in a recent survey that they would consider moving production out of North America entirely to avoid the tariffs.
Companies may source some components outside of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement region to places such as Honduras, Nicaragua, Singapore, Thailand and the Middle East in order to avoid higher prices from tariffs, Mark Wakefield, global automotive market lead at AlixPartners, told Automotive News.
Another certainty: Automakers and suppliers not named Linamar will be very careful about what they say about the tariffs. General Motors and Ford Motor Co. both redefined the term "diplomatic" in their responses to the one-month tariff reprieve granted by Trump on Wednesday.
"We thank President Trump for his approach, which enables American automakers like GM to compete and invest domestically," GM said in its statement.
VW most impacted? This story today by Jack Walsworth details just how much Volkswagen Group relies on Mexico for its North American production and the problems it faces with the tariffs. Few companies could be hurt by the tariffs as much as VW.
In nontariff news, a story from Urvaksh Karkaria underscores how far the once-mighty Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has fallen. Mitsubishi's bestselling U.S. nameplate, the Outlander, will no longer use a platform from Nissan-Renault after its next redesign, a person familiar with the plan told Automotive News.
Industry forecaster GlobalData told Karkaria that it expects the next-generation Outlander to run on a modified Mitsubishi platform.
As for Nissan, the ongoing management turmoil could be coming to a head next week.
And be sure to check out our tariff live blog!
That's it for today. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Phil Nussel, online editor
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