Automakers Beg Trump To Extend North American Free Trade Deal Worth ‘Tens Of Billions Of Dollars’

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, November 5, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, a cavalcade of automakers are telling the White House to extend the current North American free trade deal, Toyota finds a silver lining in rising US sales as tariffs impact year-on-year profits, Rivian also outperformed third quarter projections and BYD surpassed Tesla’s sales in the United Kingdom.

Nearly every mass-market automaker with a significant stake in the American market filed comments with the US Trade Representative’s Office ahead of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s formal review. Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Rivian, Stellantis, Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen let them positions be known as the industry hopes for some semblance of stability from the Trump administration. From Reuters:

Hyundai said in a filing that uncertainty about USMCA was delaying investment decisions.

“Early confirmation of USMCA’s extension would immediately unlock over $20 billion in new American investments,” the automaker told the USTR. “Every month of ambiguity slows job creation, site selection and technology development.”

Honda also urged the Trump administration “to expedite the USMCA review process and take immediate steps to normalize North American trade.” The Japanese automaker added “with Chinese firms increasingly seeking to route production through Mexico or Canada to avoid U.S. tariffs, a united front is far more effective to combat transshipment from China.”

Tesla said “to continue this forward momentum and strengthen U.S. competitiveness, the United States should support the continuation of USMCA as a trilateral agreement.”

The impact of this formal review will endure far beyond President Trump’s second term in office. If all three countries party to the deal agree to extend, the USMCA will remain in place for 16 years.

Believe it or not, the tariffs imposed by President Trump are having a significant impact on Toyota’s bottom line. The Japanese automaker’s US sales grew by nearly 6% despite the tariffs provoking a 7% drop in year-on-year profit. There is still demand for Toyota vehicles, but they are just more expensive to produce because the President effectively picked a number out of a hat to tax imports. From the Associated Press:

Toyota said its efforts, such as bigger sales, better model mix and cost cuts, will add more than 900 billion yen ($5.8 billion) to the company’s bottom line in this fiscal year.

“Despite the impact of U.S. tariffs, we have continued to build upon our improvement efforts such as increasing sales volume, improving costs and expanding value chain profits,” it said in a statement.

During the six months through September, it sold more than 1.5 million vehicles in North America and 970,000 vehicles in Japan.

First half sales grew 5.8% to 24.6 trillion yen ($160 billion). For the latest quarter through September, Toyota reported a 62% rise in profit to 932 billion yen ($6 billion) on 12.38 trillion yen ($80 billion ) in sales, up 8% on year.

Toyota is weathering the economic storm and taking steps to maintain its growth. However, the US market is important enough to the Japanese manufacturer that its profit is directly impacted by the policies coming out of the Oval Office.

Rivian is burning cash at a prodigious rate and reported a $1.2 billion loss for this year’s third quarter, slightly worse than last year’s $1.1 billion Q3 loss. Although the figures aren’t comforting, they were better than expected. The electric automaker saw a 32% percent increase in deliveries as customers rushed to take advantage of the EV tax credit before it expired. From Automotive News:

On the company’s earnings call, CEO RJ Scaringe said the surge in EV sales last quarter caused an expected “softer demand environment” in October across the industry.

But Rivian, he said, is looking at the longer-term horizon for EV demand and expects the company will have a winner with its R2 midsize crossover next year.

“Ultimately, customers are going to be making decisions around what’s the best product for them,” Scaringe said. “We need to build the best vehicles and give customers great choices.”

Scaringe said in response to an analyst question that Rivian has no plans to build hybrid vehicles to bolster demand. The R2, smaller than the current R1S crossover, will be competitive as a fully electric vehicle compared with hybrid or gasoline rivals, he said.

Rivian’s hesitancy to hit hybrid relief value may prove prudent if the R2 lives up to the hype provoked by its reveal. Opting to produce hybrid vehicles would begin as a band-aid, but then evolve into a production line it can’t afford to shut down.

BYD is quickly establishing a dominant position in the global electric vehicle market. The Chinese automaker surpassed Tesla in British sales for the first time last month. While Tesla’s decline can be measured by just a few percentage points, BYD’s sales have skyrocketed compared to its figures from last year. From Bloomberg:

The Chinese manufacturer registered almost seven times more new cars than its American counterpart last month, the UK’s automotive trade group said Wednesday. On a year-to-date basis, BYD’s sales have soared more than sixfold to 39,103, while Tesla’s have slipped 4.5% to 35,455.

BYD’s rise has been meteoric — it registered only 8,788 cars last year, when the UK overtook Germany as Europe’s top market for fully electric vehicles. Tesla outsold the company by an almost 6-to-1 margin.

Tesla’s struggles to maintain sales in Europe have been an ongoing challenge with its aging model lineup and Elon Musk’s widespread unpopularity. BYD could claim that it’s the biggest electric automaker in Europe with some legitimacy, but it can now definitely state that the UK is its largest market outside of China.

While many incorrectly believe that Henry Ford invented the automobile, he never claimed the accolade. George Selden, on the other hand, did–at least, here in the U.S. The Western New York native claim that he invented the car and applied for a patent in 1879. His patent application for “a liquid-hydrocarbon engine of the compression type” was approved on November 5, 1895. Read more about Selden’s patent and Ford’s court efforts to fight it at the National Museum of American History.

With Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York City’s mayoral election last night, Eric Adams’ days in office are numbered. While we fondly remember him comparing the city’s trash containerization efforts to landing a man on the Moon, let’s play his anthem one last time.