TOKYO >> Nissan Motor Corp. is tapping a new CEO as it grapples with a growing list of setbacks, from sluggish sales to failed merger talks and looming tariff threats in the United States.

On Tuesday, the Japanese automaker announced that Makoto Uchida, its CEO since 2019, would step down. Ivan Espinosa, 46, a Nissan veteran of two decades and the company’s chief planning officer, will take over as leader next month, the company said.

The move follows a tumultuous year for Nissan, putting the nearly century-old company into a leadership transition midway through a restructuring effort and at a time of heightened uncertainty for the industry.

Yasushi Kimura, the chair of Nissan’s board of directors, said in a news conference Tuesday that it would be “a very challenging start” for Espinosa when he steps into the top job April 1. But “given the industrywide challenges and Nissan’s performance, we believe it is necessary and appropriate to change the top management team,” Kimura said.Nissan’s current leader, Uchida, 58, took charge during another turbulent period, after the ouster of Carlos Ghosn, then Nissan’s chair, on allegations of financial misconduct. Nissan was reeling from a sharp decline in profits, and its leadership was in disarray. Uchida stepped up after Ghosn’s immediate successor resigned over separate issues involving his pay.

Uchida, who ran Nissan’s China business before taking the helm of the group, overhauled its decades-old alliance with French automaker Renault and embarked on a mission to boost profitability by scaling back incentives that had propped up sales during Ghosn’s tenure.

For a time, his strategy seemed to be working. Nissan reported healthy profits in 2022 and 2023, buoyed by a postpandemic surge in demand and a favorable exchange rate. But the company’s aging portfolio of models struggled to keep up with shifting consumer preferences for hybrid and fully electric vehicles in some of its core markets.

That has been especially true in China, where local EV-wielding champions are increasingly outselling smaller foreign brands. Nissan’s unit sales in China fell more than 9% in the nine months through December. Struggling in other regions as well, Nissan cut its profit outlook three times in the current fiscal year.

In November, Uchida revealed restructuring plans that involved slashing Nissan’s global production capacity and cutting thousands of jobs. At the time, he said he felt responsible for the company’s failure to adapt to a fast-evolving market and volunteered to take a 50% pay cut.

Late last year, a potential lifeline emerged for Nissan: the possibility of merging with Honda. The combined entity would have been one of the largest auto groups in the world. But less than two months after the companies began talks, the discussions collapsed because Nissan opposed a proposal from Honda that Nissan become its subsidiary.

The announcement last month that merger talks had failed was made on the same day that Nissan reported declining sales and a nearly 90% plunge in operating profit, to $435 million, for the nine months ending in December.

Uchida said Tuesday that he had tried to improve Nissan’s performance, but people inside and outside of the automaker had begun to question his role in the company’s lack of progress.

“I deeply regret that I had to pass the baton to my successor in these circumstances,” Uchida said.