Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. CEO and President Mark Stewart said the tiremaker doesn’t yet have “a clear read” on whether the flow of imported tires into the U.S. has slowed in reaction to President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Yet, Goodyear is taking action to capitalize where it can.
“It’s nearly certain that we will continue to see some volatility in our markets related to U.S. trade policy,” Stewart said, adding that “it’s also clear that we have a lot of opportunity in front of us.”
As the tiremaker had previously announced, it is building out its product portfolio — in both the Goodyear and Cooper brands — and the company is investing in more production capacity in the U.S. by an additional 10 million “premium” tire units over the next two years.
Goodyear’s View of the U.S. Tire Market
Christina Zamarro, executive vice president and chief financial officer, painted this picture of the overall U.S. passenger and light truck tire market.
- The total consumer tire market includes about 300 million tires, when accounting for both original equipment and replacement tire units.
- Goodyear estimates “just over 50%” of those tires are sourced outside of the U.S., Mexico and Canada. (“Non-USMCA countries,” as she put it, referring to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade.)
- Goodyear sells about 60 million tires in the U.S. each year.
- Of those 60 million units, about 12% are sourced from non-USMCA countries.
“This means that Goodyear’s U.S. tariff exposure equates to about one-quarter of the average for the industry. This is no doubt a significant advantage for our U.S. business going forward.”
Zamarro noted that in addition to tariffs on consumer tires, the tiremaker will also be subject to tariffs on imported raw materials, “and to a lesser extent, commercial tires.”
Combined, Goodyear forecasts tariffs will add $300 million in annualized costs in 2025 — based on the company’s sourcing plans and the tariff rates currently in place.
But the tiremaker might also make gains from “price-mix opportunities, or from higher volume,” Zamarro said.
As of now, Goodyear is forecasting a price-mix benefit of around $150 million in the third and fourth quarters, and a $135 million benefit in the second quarter — reflecting the tiremaker’s 4% price hike which went into effect on May 1.
Forecast on Tire Units
Trade uncertainty under President Donald Trump has already affected the U.S. tire market, and Goodyear expects those effects to continue throughout all of 2025.
Zamarro said Goodyear is expecting the flow of tires that were bought in anticipation of Trump’s tariff actions to carry through into the third quarter. “We have not yet seen a decrease in imports,” she said, noting that ocean freight rates from southeast Asia have so far remained steady. If those rates were to drop, she would expect that would be a sign that shipments had decreased.
For the full year, Goodyear is expecting both the consumer and commercial tire markets to range from negative 2% to a positive 2%.
In the consumer market, Goodyear expects uncertainty to continue to affect both the replacement and the OE channels. On the commercial side, Goodyear is looking for replacement commercial demand to recover later in the second half of 2025. The OE commercial market should remain weak throughout the first half of the year, with a recovery expected to begin in the fourth quarter.
For the first quarter, Goodyear sold 38.5 million tires globally, down from 40.4 million units in the same period in 2024. Looking at data from 2023 and 2024, it was the softest quarter for unit sales in that two-year-plus period.
Unit sales in the Americas totaled were also at a low for that same two-year-plus comparison, with 18.4 million units sold, down from 19 million tires in the first quarter of 2024.
