Welcome in, today is Monday, August third, and we start in Japan, where Automotive News reports the earthquake shutdowns have spread to more of the country's automakers. A development on the earthquake we have been tracking, where Toyota's extended Lexus shutdown was the firmest marker we had. Automotive News reports more factories went offline on July thirty-first, with Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Daihatsu all suspending output after the July twenty-eighth disaster disrupted key suppliers, among them Aisin, Astemo and Renesas. That reporting puts the erased output above ten thousand vehicles, including Toyota 4Runner SUVs, Nissan Rogue crossovers and Lexus models built for export to the United States. Those are volume nameplates, and allocation planners are now working from a shorter pipeline than they were a week ago. A recurring read in the trade is that semiconductor and component disruption could outlast the assembly shutdowns, with chip sites in the Kumamoto cluster reported to be restarting only in phases. Also today, a development on the Canadian tariffs we reported last week. Automotive News reports the Trump administration has imposed duties of ten to twelve and a half percent on goods from more than eighty countries, with an exemption for products already covered by automotive and metals tariffs, or compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That exemption carries many auto parts, which blunts the immediate repricing of North American sourcing. Per the same account, the measures rest on allegations that trading partners have not done enough to stop forced labor, and the administration is investigating whether countries with structural excess manufacturing capacity should face more, probes that could double duties on some partners in the coming months. All of it lands while USMCA talks are still open. Reaction leans skeptical on durability rather than severity, citing refunds already flowing from earlier legal reversals. Separately, Rivian's second-quarter net loss narrowed to eight hundred thirty-seven million dollars from one point one billion a year earlier, with consolidated revenue up twenty-seven percent year over year, according to Automotive News and WardsAuto. Deliveries rose fourteen percent, to twelve thousand one hundred ninety-four vehicles. The company has still never turned a profit, and that reporting says executives expect sustained headwinds from external cost pressures. Automotive World reports Rivian adjusted its delivery forecast by some three thousand units, which that outlet frames as short of what would justify the three hundred thousand unit Georgia plant ahead. Industry reaction focuses less on the growth number than on its composition, with a recurring read that stripping out software licensing and regulatory credits leaves vehicle manufacturing itself at a gross loss. Now to Washington, where rulemaking and deployment approvals are moving on the same track. Automotive World reports NHTSA is fast-tracking the first-ever performance standards for autonomous vehicles, funding that work while clearing Zoox to put driverless robotaxis into service, an approval the same outlet puts at five thousand vehicles. No effective date appears in that reporting, so how the standards timeline lines up against deployments already cleared is still open. Reaction leans toward framing the bottleneck as measurement rather than legal authority, with a recurring view that statute already permits performance standards, but objective, repeatable tests for how a driving system handles the unexpected do not yet exist. Also from Yokohama, Nissan says it has cut vehicle development time by forty percent to match the roughly two-year model cycle Chinese rivals are running. A benchmark like that resets what a competitive programme timeline looks like for anyone still working on longer cycles. Automotive News reports the redesigned Skyline, sold in the past in the United States as the Infiniti Q50, is the first vehicle taken through the new process, with corporate executive Kazuyuki Yamaguchi leading the effort. Some in the trade read the compression as a risk to the reliability reputation the brand depends on. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Stellantis is selling its entire stake in car-sharing arm Free2move to German investment firm Mutares, per Automotive News and WardsAuto; the fleets run in fourteen cities. Ford CEO Jim Farley told employees at a town hall that Chinese automakers could enter the United States market within five to ten years, Automotive News reports. Honda has extended its China joint venture with GAC Group through twenty thirty-eight, per that outlet, after volumes fell from one point six three million vehicles in twenty twenty to six hundred forty-five thousand last year. And finally, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius says the company will protect its United States presence as Congress weighs limits on Chinese ownership, and is seeking to raise the permitted threshold to twenty-five percent.