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Can Leapmotor save Stellantis in the shift to electric vehicles?

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In a tough automotive industry, Stellantis is facing challenges. As we recently reported, the company’s profits fell 70% in 2024, and its outspoken CEO Carlos Tavares quit at the end of the year. 

Although many traditional automakers have found the shift to electrification disruptive, Stellantis seems to have particularly struggled to negotiate the new market. Now there’s yet another brand being added to its huge portfolio that promises more electric options, but it’s a bit different from the rest. Could Leapmotor be the Stellantis marque that turns the multinational behemoth’s fortunes around? 

Leapmotor joins the other 14 members of the Stellantis group (although only eight are active in Europe). The Stellantis name was born when PSA Group (which combined Peugeot, Citroen, Vauxhall/Opel, and DS) merged with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram). But all these brands are fully owned by Stellantis. Leapmotor is a Chinese company, which has been operating in its home country since 2015. Stellantis purchased 20% of the business in China in 2023, but now also owns 51% of the Leapmotor International wing that was launched in Europe in 2024 to bring the brand to a global market.

Why Leapmotor?

From one perspective, it’s valid to ask why Stellantis needs yet another brand. But Leapmotor potentially plugs a gap like nothing else in its portfolio. When the current battery-electric (BEV) transition started around 2020, Stellantis appeared to have mostly one drivetrain on offer. This combined a 136hp motor driving a vehicle’s front wheels with a 50kWh battery. It appeared in everything from compact hatchbacks like the Peugeot e-208 all the way up to sizeable vans like the Citroen e-Dispatch (although some vans did offer larger batteries).

From one perspective, it’s valid to ask why Stellantis needs yet another brand. But Leapmotor potentially plugs a gap like nothing else in its portfolio.

The results weren’t terrible, and neither were the prices (by BEV standards), but they were platforms shared with internal combustion engine (ICE) versions. This meant they missed out on some of the benefits from design innovations that pure-BEV platforms make possible, such as larger under-floor batteries for lots of range, dual-motor performance, and increased interior space.

More recently, the company has developed more advanced EV drivetrains, such as STLA Small and Medium. These have been presented as being intended specifically for BEVs, but they do still support ICE. They are more “BEV first” than pure BEV, but that is still a considerable improvement over the compromised prior platforms. This has allowed new models like the Peugeot e-3008 to offer more competitive features than previous Stellantis EVs, such as much larger batteries capable of over 400 miles of range. The technology stack also feels much more seamlessly integrated into the car.

However, the vehicles built on these new Stellantis platforms still exhibit a continuing problem for most European carmakers – they remain relatively expensive. That’s not a disaster when most automakers have the same issue with BEV pricing. But now that Korean and Chinese brands are starting to offer strong competition in Europe, the EV market is becoming increasingly cramped and price-sensitive, making it hard to stand out. For example, Chinese automaker BYD is posing a considerable challenge, and in the U.K. MG has been expanding electric possibilities.

Stellantis’ incumbent advantage

However, while challenger brands can tempt with very compelling pricing, they often lack the support network to continue the good experience after sales. What Stellantis is hoping is that there is a powerful synergy between what it has to offer as a traditional incumbent automaker–a well-established network of dealerships and service centers–and what Chinese brands can provide. These days, that’s not just low costs, but also advanced technology. The Leapmotor cars arriving in Europe boast innovative BEV features, and they have plenty of leading-edge safety tech built in as standard too.

However, price is still a key feature of the Leapmotor offering. The most market-challenging model among the first two launched in Europe is the T03, a small four-door hatchback. The T03 is arriving in Britain at £15,995 ($20,500). By EV standards that’s a bargain. The Dacia Spring starts at £14,995 ($19,500), but that’s without an infotainment screen, which the T03 has as standard. The Spring also has a smaller battery (meaning less range) and a less powerful motor. Leapmotor aims to match the Spring on price but surpass on EV features and quality.

The story is similar with the other car Leapmotor has launched in Europe so far – the C10. At first glance, this looks a lot more “me too” than the T03. It’s a mid-sized electric SUV costing £36,500 ($47,000), and there are a lot of competitors from other brands around this price. However, Leapmotor only offers one premium-grade trim level for the C10, like the T03, with features like a panoramic sunroof, a heat-pump (improving winter range), heated and ventilated front seats, and a kick-to-open tailgate as standard. Other brands charge a lot more once you add these kinds of luxuries. The C10 has initially been launched as a BEV with 263 miles of WLTP range, but a “serial hybrid” is also imminent.

Bracing for the Chinese automotive invasion

The Leapmotor venture isn’t just an excuse for Stellantis to import cheap cars made in China, however. The cheapest model, the T03, is made in Tychy in Poland, so should be resistant to the global trade war that is evolving daily. The C10 is imported from China, but the next model to be released, the B10, will be built in Slovakia and Germany. Three more models will be introduced by the end of 2027. Leapmotor aims to continue its ethos of offering premium features for keen prices with these launches.

There is an increasing array of quality Chinese or Chinese-owned EV brands entering the European market, including XPENG and Geely-owned marques ZEEKR and Lynk & Co. Geely is also the force behind Swedish Volvo and Polestar. Changan (which has Ford and Mazda joint ventures) is another Chinese brand just about to enter Europe. The challenges for European automakers are only set to increase.

Even though tariffs might temporarily protect European brands at home, they can’t make them competitive on the global market against the Chinese. Stellantis appears to have adopted a policy more of “if you can’t beat them, join them” with its Leapmotor International strategy. The prices are competitive but for a more premium specification than alternatives, giving the cars a potential edge. This might not be enough to reverse the 70% fall in profits from 2024 entirely, but it could certainly help keep Stellantis in the game as Europe increasingly electrifies.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Bessent not worried about market, calls corrections healthy

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, said he’s not worried about the recent downturn that’s wiped trillions of dollars from the equities market as the US seeks to reshape its economic policies.

“I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy, they are normal,” Bessent said Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press. “I‘m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great.”

The selloff that took the S&P 500 Index into a correction last week came amid investor concerns about the economic effects of the Trump administration’s moves around tariffs, immigration and cuts to the federal government. Losses in equity markets have deepened with mounting growth concerns and souring consumer sentiment

“We are putting the policies in place that will make the affordability crisis go down, inflation moderate and as we set the sails I am confident that the American people will come our way,” said Bessent, who ran Key Square Group before joining the administration.

As the scope of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy broadens, consumers across the political spectrum have become increasingly concerned that the extra duties will lead to higher costs. Global tariffs are now in place on steel and aluminum and there’s an April 2 deadline pending for even broader levies. 

Read More: Here’s a Running Tally of Trump’s Tariff Threats and Actions

While inflation cooled last month, any sustained pickup in price pressures risks causing households to limit discretionary purchases.

In the interview, Bessent said the American Dream isn’t contingent on being able to buy cheap goods from China. Families instead want to afford a home and see their children do better than they are. 

“It’s mortgages, it’s cars, it’s real wage gains,” he said.

As questions about the US economy build, Federal Reserve officials are due to meet this week. Fed Chair Jerome Powell emphasized earlier this month that the central bank doesn’t need to be in a hurry to cut rates but he will likely be pressed about the uncertainty and risks emerging.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Trump administration deports hundreds as judge orders their removals be stopped with planes already in the air

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The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said the immigrants “had already been removed from U.S. territory” when the written order was issued at 7:26 pm.

Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.

“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.

The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

A Justice Department spokesperson on Sunday referred to an earlier statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi blasting Boasberg’s ruling and didn’t immediately answer questions about whether the administration ignored the court’s order.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.

The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.

Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.

The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights

The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn’t announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn’t be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.

“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.

The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they’d be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.

Boasberg barred those Venezuelans’ deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.

The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.

He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.

“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg said, “there’s little I could do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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This US-based company warns revenue could suffer from ‘anti-American sentiment’ amid trade war backlash

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  • Beyond Meat recently flagged the risk that “anti-American sentiment” could hurt sales if it loses customers in other countries or faces other forms of retaliation that affect its sourcing and manufacturing. That’s as US tariffs trigger a global backlash against American products.

Beyond Meat, a producer of plant-based meat substitutes, recently warned that its status as a US company could hurt sales amid an international backlash against President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The El Segundo, Calif.-based company filed a 10-K annual report with the SEC earlier this month that included a section on risk factors.

In regulatory filings, such sections are often a laundry list of a wide universe of potential headwinds, with some more likely than others. Beyond Meat’s flagged the possible risks associated with epidemics, natural disasters, severe weather, civil strife, war, terrorist activity and other geopolitical tensions.

It also mentioned Trump’s tariffs and plans for retaliation by US trade partners like Canada, saying the company may have to raise prices, increase inventory levels, or find new sourcing for products that it imports.

“There is no assurance that we would be able to pass on any cost increases, in full or at all, to our customers, and/or we could lose customers in countries such as Canada due to anti-American sentiment, any of which could materially affect our revenue, gross margin and results of operations,” Beyond Meat warned.

Any trade wars that feature “buy national” policies or other forms of retaliation against US tariffs could hurt the company’s supply chains, prices, demand, and macroeconomic markets, the filing added.

For example, Beyond Meat sources almost all of its pea protein from Canada and manufactures some of its products there.

“We cannot predict future trade policy and regulations in the United States and other countries, the terms of any renegotiated trade agreements or treaties, or tariffs and their impact on our business. A trade war could have a significant adverse effect on world trade and the world economy,” it said, noting that uncertainty on trade policy can also impact consumer confidence and spending.

The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.

To be sure, Beyond Meat’s sales had previously been in a slump before Trump returned to the White House as demand for meat substitutes waned more broadly.

But sales had recently started to turn around. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 4% to $76.7 million, marking the second consecutive quarter of annual growth, the company said last month.

Still, the backlash against US products is real, from alcohol to cutting-edge weapons. Canadians are pulling bottles of American liquor off shelves, and sales of Tesla cars are collapsing in Europe as CEO Elon Musk interjects himself in national elections and becomes more closely associated with Trump’s policies.

Even the F-35 stealth fighter is not immune. NATO allies Canada and Portugal are now having second thoughts about buying the fighter from the US and are taking a look at European alternatives.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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