By DANIEL JONES, US CONSUMER AND REAL ESTATE EDITOR
Ford has laid bare the full scale of the tariff damage battering its business after posting the biggest quarterly loss in its history.
The US car giant said a surprise $900 million blow from changes to a federal tariff-relief program helped push it deep into the red at the end of 2025.
In the final three months of the year, Ford lost $11.1 billion - a staggering reversal from the $1.8 billion profit it made in the same period a year earlier.
It marks the worst quarterly performance in Ford’s 122-year history, driven by heavy charges linked to its struggling electric vehicle division in addition to the tariff costs.
Company bosses said they were only told in December that a tariff credit scheme would not stretch back as far as they had expected - leaving them to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs.
‘We were notified very late in the year of an unexpected change,’ said Ford’s finance chief Sherry House.
The company, led by chief executive Jim Farley, has also been forced to scale back its electric vehicle ambitions as demand slumps.
It had already warned it would take a $19.5 billion hit from cutting back those plans - and that cost showed up in this quarter’s results.
Jim Farley, chief executive of Ford, stands beside a Ford F-150 in Dearborn, Michigan. The car giant has just posted the biggest quarterly loss in its history after a surprise $900 million tariff hit and billions in electric vehicle write-downs
Actress Sydney Sweeney promotes the Ford Bronco in 2023. Ford has been forced to rein in its electric vehicle ambitions amid cooling demand, taking a $19.5 billion hit as tariff costs and EV losses batter profits
Rivals including General Motors and Stellantis have made similar moves, with the three Detroit giants announcing more than $50 billion in combined charges as they rein in electric plans.
For the full year, Ford posted an $8.2 billion loss, compared with a $5.9 billion profit in 2024, even though annual revenue rose slightly to $187.3 billion. It marked the company’s worst annual loss since the 2008 financial crisis.
Tariffs will also be a heavy burden this year. Ford spent around $2 billion on import duties last year and expects a similar bill in 2026.
The costs were made worse by fires at aluminum supplier Novelis, which forced Ford to import more heavily taxed metal for its bestselling F-Series trucks while a New York plant remains offline.
Despite the losses, Ford said it expects profits and cash flow to improve this year - though it warned its electric vehicle division will continue losing money until at least 2029.
