Porsche just gave Volkswagen's Audi brand a deliberate sidestep. Days after Audi committed $4 billion to a new Georgia factory, Porsche's finance chief made clear the sports car brand is not following.

Jochen Breckner, Porsche's chief financial officer, said low production volumes rule out shifting manufacturing to the United States. That leaves Porsche's entire US lineup, Cayenne included, built in Europe and shipped across the Atlantic. US import duties now total 15 percent on most cars from Europe, on top of the longstanding 2.5 percent base rate.

Breckner laid out the numbers behind the decision plainly: "We would still have engines and other parts that we would need to export into the United States," pointing to the dense European supplier network that Porsche's low-volume models depend on even if final assembly moved stateside.

Volkswagen's Audi brand just made a different calculation with its new factory in Georgia, which will build SUVs by the hundreds of thousands a year. Porsche does not sell at that scale. Splitting a small production run across two continents adds cost without solving the tariff problem.

Breckner also said he is not banking on relief from Washington. "We are basing our business model on the assumption that the 15 percent tariffs [will] remain in place," he said. Porsche has told investors it expects tariff costs related to the current 15 percent regime to run in the high hundreds of millions of euros in 2026, after roughly €500 million over the first nine months of 2025.

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