Ford Stock Is Having A Rough Year — Did Trump’s Team Just Kill Hopes For Any Tariff Relief?

• Fire at a major American supplier created supply constraints for vehicles, including the F-150, Ford's premium pickup truck.
• Shares of Ford have plunged more than 12% year-to-date and have remained an underperformer relative to the SPX.  
• Ford and other aluminum buyers in the US are paying a tariff, regardless of whether the aluminum they use is imported or domestically produced.

Shares of Ford Motor Co. are back in focus ahead of Wednesday’s market open after the Trump administration reportedly rejected the automaker’s request to provide relief on Aluminum tariffs. The U.S. automaker cited an accident at a major supplier plant that created supply bottlenecks.

The Trump government, however, has denied any concessions to automakers and stated that the administration had already provided some relief from other national security tariffs last year, when they permitted automakers to recoup some of the tariff costs that they paid for some of the automotive parts that were subject to 25% levies, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the talks.

Ford shares have plunged over 12%, year to date. Shares of Ford have plunged more than 12% year to date, lagging the benchmark S&P 500, which is down about 3%.

2025 Fire At Novelis Plant

Last fall, two fires at Novelis’ aluminum rolling plant in Oswego, N.Y., disrupted supply and led to the estimated closure of the plant until June this year. Fires damaged plants where aluminum is rolled into thin sheets used in automotive body parts. This plant is the biggest domestic supplier of aluminum sheet for the U.S. automotive industry. It serves a number of companies, including Ford, Stellantis, General Motors, and foreign automakers with US-based facilities.

To address the shortcomings of the Oswego plant, Atlanta-based Novelis, part of India’s Hindalco Industries, has been doubling down to make up for lost production by importing material from its factories in Europe and South Korea. By doing so, the company is required to pay 50% duty under Trump’s tariff regime. The cost is passed on to automakers when they buy aluminum.

This supply chain disruption has hurt Ford deeply, as its premium pickup truck model relied heavily on aluminum from these plants.

The report stated that while Ford and other automakers “have raised supply concerns in light of the Novelis incident, they have not requested tariff relief on this matter in a particularly pronounced way.”

Will Trump Roll Out New Metal Tariffs?

According to the report, automakers and other consumers of steel and aluminum products could face even higher tariffs in the coming months, following the Trump administration's review of the metal tariffs last week. These changes could impose a 25% tariff on the finished product rather than a 50% levy on the metal alone.

In June 2025, Trump announced that articles made of aluminum, steel, or copper will pay a flat 50% on their full value, while their derivatives will be charged a 25% on their full value.

Currently, the 50% tariff is passed on to the costs for domestically produced aluminum. The buyers make a separate payment for their metal purchases, which covers costs such as delivery and tariffs. This delivery premium is now about $2,500 a metric ton, according to the report. According to the report, even if this fire hadn’t occurred, they’d still be paying the delivery premium.

Ford’s Struggle With Tariffs

Ford has already suffered a blow of $900 million due to tariffs last year. After the Q4 earnings, the company's chief said that U.S. officials alerted the company in December that a tariff-relief program announced in October would be retroactive to November, not all the way back to May as the automaker had anticipated.

Last year, the company also took a $19.5 billion writedown and withdrew from many electric vehicle launch plans. The company also said it would replace the F-150 Lightning, its electric variant, with a new extended-range electric model that uses a gas-powered engine to recharge the battery.

How Are Ford Retail Traders Reacting?

The retail sentiment surrounding the stock has improved from ‘Bearish’ to ‘Neutral’, while message volumes have remained ‘Normal’ from the previous day.

Earlier this year, sentiment and message volumes spiked following the news of its Universal EV platform which has been designed to produce a family of affordable EVs at scale.

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