President Trump’s on-again, off-again romance with implementing tariffs on some of America’s key trading partners is giving corporate executives pause — including the top executive at SiriusXM.
CEO Jennifer Witz, among other considerations, now must weigh the possible impact of how an auto tariff might compromise her company’s ability to sign up new satellite radio subscribers.
“Hard to say right now where that will land,” Witz told the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Wednesday. “The first two months were very strong, but again, with potential tariffs going in place, it could impact the new car side of the business.”
Trump had earlier announced plans to slap a 25% tariff on everything imported from Canada and Mexico, plus a 10% tariff on Chinese imports, which many executives and industry analysts believed would negatively impact the industry, which is already facing headwinds related to affordability and other concerns.
But by Wednesday, those plans were no longer operative, at least as far as the auto industry is concerned. But that exemption might only last a month.
“And then, you know, on the ad side of the business, or at least on the automotive side, we’re protected on the used car side, right? No tariff impact there,” Witz said. “It’s about 50% of our trial starts and more opportunities for us to grow there. On the outside, it’s definitely changing day-by-day… And it’s by category. There’s been some recent softness on retail and CPG, probably understandable, but that shows up in programmatic first. And so, we’ll watch it carefully.”
On sales of new vehicles, the fear is that the tariffs could make new vehicles more expensive, therefore discouraging would-be buyers and, ultimately, making it harder for the satcaster to sell more subscriptions.
Witz said SiriusXM at the start of 2025 expected “relatively stable” sales of new vehicles.
Witz also said SiriusXM is weighing the consequences that tariffs might bring, including a weaker U.S. economy and sliding consumer confidence. There are also lingering concerns about inflation.
“It’s choppy,” Witz said. “That’s the best expression… The first two months of the year were pretty stable, and now, over the last couple days, there’s a lot of uncertainty, stock market volatility, inflation or stagflation. Retail and CPG (consumer packaging products) are seeing some impacts.
“But again, we’ve got a lot of areas that we have more control over, where we can drive growth, while we manage through some of that instability,” she added.
The drama surrounding Trump’s aspirations related to tariffs comes against the backdrop of SiriusXM’s decision to focus on in-car subscribers. It has been turning away from out-of-car streaming customers, which come with a higher cost.
“We didn’t see the growth in streaming stand-alone subscriptions, and we’ve rationalized our marketing spend there,” Witz told the conference.