World leaders react to President Trump’s automobile tariffs
Canadian, South Korean, German and Japanese world leaders quickly reacted to President Trump’s tariffs on cars.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday imposing 25% tariffs on all cars and light-duty trucks imported into the U.S., saying it would force more automakers to move production to the U.S. and lead to lower prices for vehicles for consumers.
The executive order says the tariffs will take effect on or after 12:01 a.m. April 3 for automobiles, and on the “date specified in the Federal Register for automobile parts, but no later than May 3, 2025.”
During the announcement, Trump made several claims about auto production in the U.S. that were false. The Detroit Free Press fact-checked some of these claims below.
1. The U.S. lost all auto plants to other countries
Trump: “This is the automobile industry, and this will continue to spur growth like you haven’t seen. Before I was elected, we were losing all of our plants that were being built in Mexico and Canada and other places.”
U.S. automakers have produced vehicles in Canada and Mexico for more than 100 years. The newest U.S. automaker assembly plant in Mexico is Stellantis’ Saltillo factory, which opened in 2013. The newest assembly plant built in Canada was by Toyota, in Woodstock, in 2005, said Dimitry Anastakis, the L.R. Wilson and R.J. Currie Chair in Canadian Business History at the University of Toronto.
Stellantis is currently constructing a battery plant in Windsor, announced in 2022, and Ford opened a transmission plant in Mexico in 2017.
“The notion that a bunch of plants have suddenly sprung out of the ground is untrue,” Anastakis said. “There hasn’t been a greenfield plant (meaning built from scratch) from GM, Ford or Stellantis in probably 40 years. The last one, I think, was CAMI Assembly in 1988, and it was a joint venture.”
He added: “Trump keeps talking like there’s three different industries in three different countries, but it’s not. It’s one industry working to create U.S. vehicles for the U.S., Canadian and Mexican market.”
In recent years, due to the auto industry’s shift toward electric vehicles and federal legislation, automakers have announced billions of dollars in manufacturing investments, much of it in the U.S. For example, Hyundai in 2022 said it would invest about $10 billion through 2025 in the U.S. and celebrated the opening of its new plant in Georgia on Wednesday.
Stellantis, which owns the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands, announced in 2023 that it would build its second U.S.-based electric vehicle battery plant in Kokomo, Indiana.
General Motors has invested more than $60 billion since the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement took effect, a spokesman said.
GM’s Brownstown Battery Assembly Plant in Michigan opened in the summer of 2009 after a $43 million investment to manufacture lithium-ion battery packs, according to the company website, and in 2018, Brownstown was part of an additional $100 million GM investment. GM’s Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center, announced in 2021, was another addition to more than $5 billion already invested in batteries in the U.S. The company builds battery cells through its joint-venture Ultium with LG Energy Solutions at its Spring Hill, Tennessee, and Warren, Ohio, locations.
Ford said that 80% of its vehicles are made stateside, and all of its trucks. Ford said it employs more U.S. autoworkers, 57,000, than any other domestic automaker. Ford spokesman Said Deep said the F-Series pickups are all assembled in the United States. It gets some of the engines for the pickups out of Canada but also builds many of the pickups’ engines in Cleveland. “We export more vehicles from the USA than any other automaker, too,” Deep said.
Ford is in the process of establishing a lithium iron phosphate battery plant in Marshall, called BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, with battery production slated for 2026. BlueOval City is planned for Tennessee, and two other sites planned for Kentucky are called BlueOval SK.
2. Honda is building a new plant in Indiana
Trump: “Now those plants largely have stopped, and they’re moving them to our country in Indiana, the great state of Indiana. I love Indiana. Honda is building one of the biggest plants anywhere, and they’ve just started. They wouldn’t have done it without this. In all cases, they wouldn’t have done it without what we’re doing.”
Honda has said it will build the next-generation Civic at its existing plant in Indiana rather than in Mexico, but “Honda did not announce plans for a new plant in the U.S. at this time,” according to a statement provided to the Free Press from America Honda spokesperson Chris Martin. The statement added: “We have invested over $3 billion in advanced vehicle manufacturing in America in just the past three years, with a cumulative total of more than $24.7 billion” over 45 years.
3. A record number of new auto plants are opening in the U.S.
Trump: “And we’re already setting records for new plants. I think the new plant number, the tally is just within a period of a few weeks. It’s very large. I want to be accurate. It’s very large.”
No automakers have announced new plants in the U.S. this year. South Korea’s Hyundai Steel did announce this week that it will invest $5.8 billion along with Hyundai Motor Group to build a steel plant in Louisiana.
4. Car prices will go down
Trump: “And you’re going to see prices going down, but it’s going to go down specifically because they’re going to buy what we’re doing, incentivizing companies and even countries, but companies to come into America and build.”
Analysts widely agree that vehicle prices will rise. Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a research note Wednesday night that the tariffs would be a “hurricane-like headwind to foreign (and many U.S.) automakers and ultimately push the average price of cars up $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the make/model/price point.”
It’s reasonable to expect that vehicle prices will rise, Jessica Caldwell, head of insights for the automotive research site Edmunds, said in an email Wednesday, which presents an added challenge to an industry that is already grappling with ongoing affordability concerns. Several countries have already announced retaliatory tariffs.
Senior autos writer Jamie LaReau contributed reporting to this article.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com.
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