Aston Martin’s 24-hour scramble to get lower US tariffs pays off
Aston Martin scrambled to deliver three months’ worth of cars to dealers in the US within 24 hours as it rushed to qualify for lower tariffs that came into effect on 30 June.By invoicing the whole quarter’s cars on that same day it avoided having to report a sales slump that might have alarmed investors.The operation may not have matched the drama of the James Bond films that have long featured the brand, but it “was quite exciting, to put it mildly”, said Adrian Hallmark, Aston Martin’s chief executive.Donald Trump has shaken the global economy with a trade war, causing a particular stir in the car industry with his imposition of a 25% tariff on 3 April on top of an existing 2.5% levy.
Germany’s Mercedes-Benz said on Wednesday Trump’s border taxes would cost it about €360m (£311m) this year, while the sportscar-maker Porsche said it had taken a €400m hit from the levies in the first half of the year.However, in early May, the US president and Keir Starmer agreed a deal to limit tariffs on 100,000 British-made cars per year to 10%.That rate came into force at one minute past midnight on 30 June, the final day of the second financial quarter.Aston Martin Lagonda manufactures all its cars in factories in Gaydon, Warwickshire, and St Athan, south Wales.It shipped 328 cars to dealers in the Americas between April and June but the majority were sent on 30 June.
It was a “mammoth task”, Hallmark said.“This left us with 24 hours to invoice the entire quarter’s-worth of vehicle sales in the US.”The one-day scramble illustrates the tariff turmoil causing headaches for goods exporters around the world.Aston Martin revealed that it had raised prices for US customers by 3% to absorb some of the hit from the border taxes.Getting the cars to dealers early would have meant a big financial blow from absorbing the higher tariff rate, while late arrivals that missed the quarter-end would have meant reporting a big slump in sales.
So Aston Martin decided to send hundreds of cars to bonded warehouses in the US – where goods can be stored without being subject to tariffs – before delivery firms raced to get them all to dealers before the end of day on 30 June.Those cars attracted the 10% rate, rather than 27.5%.Other carmakers face higher costs.The EU reached a deal with the US to cut tariffs on most goods including cars to 15%.
Mercedes-Benz boss Ola Källenius said he did not expect any improvement on that for the car industry, despite lobbying for a lower rate from Germany’s carmakers.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionAston Martin also said it had cut production and limited exports to the US to try to limit the financial impact.Even after its 30 June operation, Aston Martin could still be hit later in the year when it launches its million-dollar Valhalla, a mid-engine hypercar that it hopes will be a major contributor to profits.However, it is worried that the quota of 100,000 cars covered by the 10% tariff could be used up before it can get the Valhalla to dealers – potentially adding more than £100,000 to the price if importers must pay the 27.5% rate.
British companies exported just over 100,000 cars to the US last year, with the bulk being Range Rovers shipped by JLR,The quota could mean an end-of-year race between British carmakers to get their vehicles into the country, with “pressure on the number of slots available on the 100,000 quota”, Hallmark said,
Stephen Colbert on Trump’s Scotland trip: ‘A grift for the whole family’
Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump using his taxpayer-funded time to open up a golf course in Scotland and an effort to rename the Kennedy Center after him.“Folks, I read once that if you’re a passenger in an auto accident, it helps if you’re just a little drunk,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday evening. “Because – and the science backs this up – a drunk passenger is a little loose. And if you’re a little loose, you’re less likely to get severely injured than if you tense up right before impact.”“Which brings me to our president,” the Late Show host continued
Heritage coalition saves Scottish modernist ‘jewel’ in fiercely fought auction
A coalition of design and conservation charities has won an auction to buy a threatened modernist building in the Scottish Borders after a fiercely contested bidding battle.The group, headed by the National Trust for Scotland, paid a final hammer price of £279,000 for the Bernat Klein Studio near Selkirk in an online auction on Wednesday morning. The final price of the property, which has lain unused and derelict for more than 20 years, could be in the region of £336,000.The building, regarded by conservators as a jewel of late-modernist British architecture, was designed by the highly regarded architect Peter Womersley in 1972. It was created for the textile designer Bernat Klein, whose clients included Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent
The ‘Black Sundance’ honoring film-makers of color and focusing on community building
The voice of the writer Toni Cade Bambara overlays a montage of archival film and photographs of Black people at school and work in a new feature documentary about her life. “The Reconstruction era offers a window into the 1930s,” Bambara says in the film. “There is the same drive for land, for the vote, for labor rights, education. The same need for self-help enterprises, for group cooperation.”So begins TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing, the biographical film about the Black author, documentarian and social activist whose work on Black liberation and feminism helped inspire 20th-century social justice movements
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Epstein scandal: ‘How do you expect the media to move on, when Trump has such a hard time doing so?’
Late-night hosts followed Donald Trump and his Jeffrey Epstein scandal to Scotland, where he found new ways to put his foot in his mouth.Donald Trump headed to Scotland this week, nominally to work on a trade deal with the European Union, but also to put “an ocean’s distance between himself and the Epstein scandal”, said Jon Stewart on Monday’s Daily Show.But “how do you expect the media to move on, when Trump has such a hard time doing so?” he wondered.Stewart played a clip of a Scottish reporter asking Trump, “Mr President, was part of the rush to get this deal done to knock the Jeffrey Epstein story out?”“He’s all like, ‘How did you even hear about … I thought you guys just got Baywatch like three months ago?’” Stewart laughed. “‘Doesn’t anybody here have a question about this trade deal sinking both of our economies with tariffs?’”In response to the question, Trump offered what Stewart called his “13 Reasons Why I’m Not Involved with a Pedophile”
By the 30s, Katharine Hepburn was box office poison. Then she made The Philadelphia Story
As a stuck-up socialite tangled in a love triangle, Hepburn delivers one of the most memorable screwball heroines – and we can’t help but love herThese days, Katharine Hepburn is revered as a progressive icon of Hollywood’s golden age, an androgynous (and possibly queer) fashion rebel whose four best actress awards have yet to be topped at the Oscars. But back in 1938, only six years into her illustrious career, she was branded as “box office poison”.She was a star ahead of her time, her domineering screen presence registering as shrill and petulant by the tail end of the 1930s. After the box office disappointments of Bringing up Baby and Holiday – both now canonised romcom classics – she retreated from Hollywood and signed on to a new play penned by her friend Philip Barry: The Philadelphia Story.Like its film adaptation, Barry’s script centres on Tracy Lord, a stuck-up socialite (easily read as a stand-in for Hepburn herself) set to marry a wealthy politician, only for the wedding to be upended by the arrival of two competing romantic prospects: her ex-husband, CK Dexter Haven, and tabloid reporter Mike Connor
The joy of railways is shared by millions | Letters
Although a not a full-on Thomas the Tank Engine fan, I have for 65 years been an out-there and unashamed enthusiast for anything running on rails (‘Thomas the Tank Engine clung to me like a disease’: the film about the choo-choo’s global grownup superfans, 22 July).My wife and I sometimes do front-of-house at a heritage railway and can confirm the attraction of railways for those with autism, particularly young people. There is a predictability about railways, timetables, signals and all the other paraphernalia that is very attractive.Also, there is endless scope for studying minutiae and collecting odd bits of information. Numbers and names on the engines, liveries (colours of trains to you), performance records and endless other statistics
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