Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Tuesday, May 13.
A major initiative that could serve as a model for how Asian automakers grapple with President Donald Trump's tariffs emerged amid the red ink and painful job cuts announced early today at Nissan Motor Co.
As we've noted before, Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa wants to turn a major liability — unused U.S. plant capacity — into a potential asset. Nissan is bloated with unused capacity at factories around the world, but by the end of the company's new restructuring plan, it aims to be at full capacity.
To use up some of that excess factory firepower, Nissan is in talks with Mitsubishi and Honda about joint manufacturing in the U.S., where global companies are trying to source more product, Hans Greimel wrote.
Read more: Live updates on tariff news and impacts
The news wasn't much better this morning at Honda Motor Co., particularly for its Canadian business. The automaker will suspend large-scale investments in electric vehicle production infrastructure in Canada because of the uncertainty in the outlook caused by tariffs. CEO Toshihiro Mibe predicted Honda would face a $4 billion impact from tariffs.
The Honda boss also said demand growth for EVs has slowed more than expected and that the company will postpone its big outlays for the EV hub it is building in Canada, Greimel wrote.
Meanwhile, Congress is working on legislation that would likely ding EV demand further. House Republicans on May 12 proposed killing the electric vehicle tax credit and repealing fuel efficiency rules designed to prod automakers into building more zero-emission vehicles as part of a broad-based tax reform bill, Reuters reported. The proposal would repeal a $7,500 new-vehicle tax credit and a $4,000 used-vehicle credit on Dec. 31, Reuters reported.
Finally, General Motors suspended a $55 million project with supplier Piston Automotive to manufacture hydrogen fuel cells at a plant in Detroit, Crain's Detroit Business reported. The automaker paused work at the plant and will determine whether to move forward with it in the coming weeks, a person familiar with the matter said.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day. If you want to view this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
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