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Mercedes-Benz has shortened its annual guidelines and warned that the sale of vehicles would be “considerably lower” than last year after the rates of the Trump administration had halved his profit in the second quarter.
The company, based in Stuttgart, said on Wednesday that it expected an adapted return on the sales margin at its car division to vary between 4 and 6 percent in 2025 when recording the impact of higher American car rates. That compared to a previous prediction range of 6 to 8 percent.
The accompanying reduction follows a similar step of the German rival Volkswagen, because companies have started describing the financial impact of the extra rate of 25 percent that the US president imposed on cars imported from the EU in the US.
After the trade agreement between the EU and the US, the rate percentage is expected to fall from 27.5 percent, a figure that includes an earlier obligation of 2.5 percent to 15 percent.
For the quarter of April to June, Mercedes-Benz reported that the adjusted income before interest and taxes decreased by 51 percent from a year earlier to € 2 billion, in line with analyst expectations.
The net income fell by 69 percent to € 957 million, while sales fell 9.8 percent to € 33 billion when the group adjusted the vehicle resources to tackle the tariff impact.
