Granite Countertops in Ridgeville, SC

A vehicle that Volvo Cars once promised to build in the Lowcountry — but never did — could roll off the assembly line in the Palmetto State after all.

CEO Jim Rowan has doubled down on potential plans to move some production from overseas to the U.S. if President Donald Trump goes through with threats to hike tariffs on cars made in the European Union to 25 percent.

Rowan first floated the idea to shift production during a Feb. 6 conference call with analysts and again this month in an interview with Reuters.

One of the cars that could get moved to Volvo's $1.2 billion plant in Ridgeville is the popular XC90 sport-utility vehicle, Rowan told Reuters. That car is currently built at a factory in Sweden.

If that happens, it will fulfill Volvo's 2017 vow to add a next-generation XC90 as the second vehicle on a new production line in Berkeley County. But instead of adding the XC90, Volvo focused all of its South Carolina production on the slow-selling S60 sedan, which was phased out last year when the all-electric EX90 sport-utility vehicle was introduced.

Volvo now says the EX90 is the "second vehicle" it was talking about all along and plans to add it to the Ridgeville plant in 2021 were delayed by the pandemic and supply chain disruptions.

In addition to the XC90, Rowan said Volvo could move the mid-sized XC60 SUV or other models to Ridgeville.

"We have space, paint shops, the buildings, all that's there." Rowan said. "We just need to make a final decision on which models and which platforms that we would move to the USA."

Rowan said the final decision will depend on whether new tariffs are imposed and how much they will be. Car exports from Europe are currently charged a 2.5 percent tariff, but Trump has proposed increasing that to 25 percent.

"It's looking like that number is going to go up," Rowan said. "If it's 10 percent each way, we can cope with that. But if it goes to 25 percent, it's a hell of a lot more difficult from a profit perspective. We'd have to wait and see the tariff quotes and then that would help us make that decision."

Volvo has already switched production to other countries to avoid tariffs. Last year, the automaker said it would move its battery powered EX30 to Belgium from China to avoid EU tariffs. That plant will boost production later this year to serve both the European and U.S. markets.

Tariffs are among the biggest headwinds Volvo could be facing in the coming year.

"We're going to see more turbulence," Rowan said in February after the automaker posted a lower fourth-quarter profit.

Volvo sold 763,389 cars globally in 2024 — a 7.7 percent increase from 2023. While that was in line with Volvo's guidance for the year, the automaker dramatically cut that from a previous guidance of up to a 15 percent increase as market conditions worsened toward year's end.

Global sales are down 2.2 percent this year through February, with consumers buying 101,482 cars. Volvo's suite of gas-powered and hybrid SUVs remain the automaker's most popular models while the EX90 has seen sluggish sales. The XC40, XC60 and XC90 trio have sold a combined 72,209 units year-to-date while 1,828 EX90s were sold in January and February.

Volvo, based in Sweden and majority owned by China's Geely Holding Group, had not reported U.S. sales figures as of March 6.