Tariffs Slow Buy-Sell Deals, But Demand Persists

While dealership transactions dipped in the first half of 2025, brokers say the market is in the seller’s territory.

You can’t say dealers are unaffected by tariffs on imported autos and parts – tariffs are forcing them to scramble harder than ever to manage inventory, costs, margins and affordability – but they are gaining confidence that tariffs are just one more burden to be borne, according to dealership buy/sell brokers and quarterly reports from the big, publicly traded megadealer groups speaking with WardsAuto.

Money to Spend

Tariffs or no tariffs, buy-sell experts report the buy-sell market for new-car dealerships continues to be strong and continues to be a seller’s market.

Time-Out

Having said that, buy/sells are off from the recent peak in 2021, and brokers say some buyers and sellers postponed closings in the first half due to the fast-changing nature of tariff and trade negotiations. Getting those deals back on track could lead to a busier second half for dealership buy-sells.

Familiar Playbook

Counting transactions rather than dealership rooftops, Kerrigan Advisors says in its second-quarter Blue Sky Report that an estimated 220 transactions were completed in the first half of 2025, an increase of 8% vs. the first half of 2024.

Erin Kerrigan, founder and managing director of Kerrigan Advisors, says the same strategies that got auto retail through the Great Recession and through the COVID pandemic appear – so far – to be effective at dealing with tariffs on imports.

That playbook includes reliance on fixed operations, cost-cutting and efficiencies driven in part by technology, she tells WardsAuto.

Hunkering Down 101

“It’s not dissimilar from the period where from outside the industry, there was a lot of concern about car dealers when volume plummeted in the early days of the pandemic," Kerrigan says. Ultimately, that scarcity drove new-car prices to record highs.

“Dealers have a lot of levers they can pull,” Kerrigan says. “The business model is so flexible, whether it’s high interest rates, or a chip crisis, the pandemic, you name it. The retailer has the advantage of the higher-margin parts and service business. It’s very well-insulated from economic cycles and unforeseen fiscal crises.”

For the trailing 12 months ended June 30, 2025, Kerrigan Advisors estimates there were 454 buy-sell transactions, up 3.7% from the year-ago period.

Dealers are Coming So Far

In quarterly earnings calls, the six big, publicly traded megadealer groups report they are weathering the tariff storm so far, although they acknowledge it’s still impossible to predict with any precision just how tariffs will affect pricing and model selection.

"The effects so far include pull-ahead sales in March and April, as customers sought to beat the tariffs," says CEO Michael Manley of AutoNation, Fort Lauderdale, FL. Manley says having a big, diverse selection of brands should improve AutoNation’s odds of providing customers with brands and models that are less impacted by tariffs, and that’s an important way size is a competitive advantage.