Trump Meets with Automaker, Manufacturing Chiefs
CARS.COM — President Donald Trump offered both carrots and a stick in a meeting today with about a dozen CEOs, including those of Ford and Tesla, to promote U.S. manufacturing jobs.
He promised the leaders he would lower corporate taxes and cut regulations so that companies could expand U.S. plants faster, but he also repeated his threat to put large tariffs on products they make elsewhere and import into the U.S., according to a report on the meeting by Reuters.
Related: New Ford Ranger, Bronco Confirmed for Michigan Assembly
Trump said he had been told by business leaders that cutting regulations was more important. “When you want to expand your plant, or when Mark wants to come in and build a big massive plant, or when Dell wants to come in and do something monstrous and special — you’re going to have your approvals really fast,” Trump said, referring to Ford CEO Mark Fields.
Fields was positive about the meeting.
“Walking out of the meeting today, I know I come out with a lot of confidence that the president is very, very serious in making sure the United States economy is going to be strong and have policies — tax, regulatory or trade — to drive that,” said Fields afterward in statement, reported Reuters. “That encourages all of us, as CEOs, as we make decisions going forward.”
Also representing an automaker was Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He also is CEO of rocket company SpaceX, and Tesla now includes a home energy business, the former SolarCity. GM CEO Mary Barra was not at today’s meeting organized by Trump’s Manufacturing Council advisory group headed by Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, but she was appointed by Trump to a different economic group, the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum. Among others participating in the breakfast meeting were CEOs from companies as diverse as United States Steel, Dell and Under Armour.
Ford was an early Trump target in his presidential campaign over plans for a new plant in Mexico, but more recently GM and Toyota have come under Twitter fire from the president over manufacturing plans for Mexico. Ford dropped plans for a new plant in Mexico, and GM announced plans for new investments and jobs in the U.S. These announcements, as well as some by other automakers, appear to be part of an effort by the companies to craft a communications strategy to highlight such moves, though they likely had been underway before the election, according to this rundown of recent issues concerning automakers and trade by the Detroit Free Press.
Cars.com’s American-Made Index has tracked models using criteria about parts and assembly points for more than a decade. Vehicles that top our list have at least 75 percent domestic parts (as defined by Congress), have their final assembly point in the U.S. and are ranked by their sales, with the understanding that the more units of a car, truck or SUV that are sold, the more autoworkers and suppliers are employed. The list includes both foreign and domestic automakers.
