Plant Spartanburg will not bear all of BMW’s tariff losses

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Tariffs will cost BMW some $344 million this year, but that cost is to BMW Group and not Plant Spartanburg as reported in other news media outlets.

BMW Group CFO Nicolas Peter recently told Automobilwoche, a German magazine for automotive executives, that the tariff imposed between the United States and China will cost the company millions, but he was talking about companywide cost and, in fact, never mentioned the South Carolina plant during the interview, according to Kenn Sparks, head of U.S. corporate communications for BMW Group.

At the request of GSA Business Report, Sparks verified the original statement to the magazine, and did so through his colleagues in Munich.

“Here’s what Dr. Peter actually said in the interview as translated into English,” Sparks wrote in an email to GSA Business Report. “‘According to our calculation, this will cost us slightly below 300 million euro.’ … As the CFO of the BMW Group, the ‘us’ he references is the BMW Group, not the plant.”

A number of manufacturers are reporting negative effects of steel and aluminum tariffs, most notably Ford Motor Co., which says it will lose $1 billion and faces layoffs as a result of the tariffs, according to Reuters and other media outlets.