Nissan is already in a rocky position, and it’s reportedly boosting U.S. production to avoid tariffs devastating its bottom line.
Even with its precarious financial situation, Nissan still has remarkably popular cars in the United States, with its Rogue SUV consistently among the three best-selling crossovers in the country. Now, the automaker is reportedly planning to boost manufacturing at its Smyrna, Tennessee plant for the compact Rogue by 56%, as it (like several other companies) leverage strategies to mitigate the impact of 25% automotive tariffs enacted by the Trump administration a month ago.
According to a report by Automotive News:
“Nissan now plans to capitalize on current geopolitics to stem the hemorrhaging at its two Southeast U.S. factories amid a sales slump in recent years.”
Nissan was planning to shift some of the production capacity for the next-generation Rogue to its Kyushu, Japan facility to curtail manufacturing costs. However, it’s scrapping that plan in favor of utilizing space on the line in Smyrna, Tennessee. Instead of eliminating a second shift, the company reportedly aims to maintain that second shift, while ramping up production in June. The company initially cut back on output from Smyrna as well as its Canton, Mississippi plant — dropping combined production at both plants by 13% to 525,583 vehicles last year — as oversupply of core models cut into Nissan’s fiscal performance.
Smyrna, for its part, is able to produce up to 640,000 vehicles annually. As it cut one shift last year, however, production fell to about 314,500 vehicles. “We have big facilities, big capacities, and today we don’t have max capacity,” Nissan Americas chairman Christian Meunier told CNBC in a recent interview.
In addition to boosting U.S. production, Nissan also shaved some money off the MSRPs for the Rogue and Pathfinder as news of the tariffs originally circulated. The automaker is also reportedly planning to bring more popular features down-market into the entry-level trims, where the Rogue can potentially make a stronger case as a value leader, while some of its rivals could see significant price hikes. In order to better compete against mainstays like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V, Nissan is bringing a plug-in hybrid Rogue to market next year, while we can expect a completely new generation for 2027.
