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Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa on Wednesday noted the short-term focus is to fix the struggling automaker Espinosa who only assumed leadership of the Japanese automaker in April faces an uphill battle to change the tide of Nissan s whittled down fortunes The firm has been contending with declining sales the transition to electric vehicles and steep global competition particularly from Chinese rivals Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa on Wednesday noted the short-term focus is to fix the struggling automaker as it undergoes major restructuring efforts to get back on a solid footing I think in the short term the focus that we have is to fix ourselves Espinosa communicated CNBC s Squawk Box Europe We are convinced that the plan is enough and robust he added Espinosa who only assumed leadership of the Japanese automaker in April faces an uphill battle to change the tide of Nissan s whittled down fortunes The firm has been contending with declining sales the transition to electric vehicles and steep global competition particularly from Chinese rivals These challenges have now been exacerbated by U S President Donald Trump s sweeping global tariffs on steel and aluminum along with other so-called reciprocal levies on individual countries that are briefly reduced under a reprieve set to expire in July Last month Espinosa revealed the company s plans to slash jobs and shut down seven plants amid expectations of a drop in sale volumes in the current fiscal year At the end of last year the company fleetingly flirted with a accomplishable tie-up with Japanese peer Honda in talks that could have created the world s third largest automaker by sales but negotiations broke down in February Re-sizing the company The size of the task is big Espinosa announced Our landing was not good in and thus we have a transformation that has to come But this is a matter that did not start like two years ago it s a fundamental trouble that we re fixing If you take a step back eight to years ago the company had very lofty goals for rise Nissan s management had previously targeted annual sales of million cars per year and as such the company invested heavily on ceiling human materials and capital expenditure Ultimately however the company peaked at annual sales of million back in and Nissan is now running at sales of million to million cars per year Espinosa noted We are re-sizing the company and this is why we have accelerated our efforts on cost both fixed cost and viable cost So we have very deep initiatives under our new Re Nissan plan and we re devoted to it Espinosa reported Tokyo-listed shares of Nissan are down year-to-date