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Nissan (NSANY) Americas chair Christian Meunier came to the New York International Auto Show with a simple message: The brand is back, and it’s building in America.
Standing on the show floor beside the Frontier pickup — one of several US-built vehicles he said is driving the recovery — Meunier said Nissan has been the fastest-growing auto brand in the US for the past six months, fueled by a wave of new product launches and a deliberate shift toward US manufacturing.
“In the last few months, we’ve had some pretty good success regrowing the business again,” Meunier told Yahoo Finance. “We rediscovered that scale is important in our industry. Scale gives you the ability to get the cost in the right place and get the product at an affordable price for people to be able to buy them.”
The company is targeting 10% US sales growth in 2026, with an eye toward reaching 1 million annual US sales by 2027 — a milestone that would mark Nissan’s strongest performance since before the pandemic. Recent launches of the new Leaf, Sentra, and Armada have helped, along with the new Infiniti QX65, revealed last week.
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Nissan still has a lot to prove, however. The company had to cut output and has sold off production capacity as it right-sizes the business. Prior models were lackluster, and competition from China abroad put a huge dent in Nissan’s profits. A failed merger with Honda also put the brand in a tough spot.
But the recent turnaround has drawn notice at the highest levels. President Trump praised Nissan’s US manufacturing expansion on Truth Social, and Meunier said the attention is warranted.
Nissan operates three US facilities — two plants in Tennessee, including a powertrain operation, and a manufacturing plant in Mississippi. The company has rapidly increased the share of US-made vehicles it sells domestically, from roughly 45% when tariffs took effect to 60%-65% today, with a goal of reaching 80%, Meunier said.
“The tariff was not a bad thing for us because it forced us to really accelerate our plan,” Meunier said. “We need to build where we sell. There’s no magic.”
But the tariff picture is more complicated for Nissan’s entry-level lineup. The Sentra and Kicks — two of the brand’s most affordable models — are built in Mexico, where lower labor costs make their price points possible.
Tariffs add $2,500 to $3,000 per vehicle, and with the USMCA trade agreement up for mandatory review in July, Meunier is pressing Washington for relief.
“We need the affordable cars, the entry sedan and entry SUVs made in Mexico,” he said. “A lot of the components are coming from the US, and a lot of engineering resources are in Michigan. It’s good for the American people because they can afford these cars. Enough with cars at $50,000, $60,000 that people can’t afford.”
