In a talk at the Economic Club of Chicago yesterday, Trump doubled down on his intent to violate the USMCA North American free trade agreement negotiated by his own administration by instituting new tariffs on cars produced in Mexico. In a long, rambling story, Trump detailed his experience with a manufacturer of auto plants in Mexico, who claimed the candidate’s plans for tariffs had already caused companies to abandon their plans to build new plants in the nation. I truly apologize for how long and meandering this anecdote is, but this is just how the guy talks:
Mexico is a tremendous challenge for us right now, tremendous. China is building massive auto plants in Mexico. And they’re gonna build them, and they’re going to take those cars and sell them into the United States — they’re very near the border — and they’re going to have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages. And that’s going to be the end of Michigan, it’s going to be the end of frankly South Carolina, gonna be the end of everything.
So I’ve been talking about this, and I said to [a “friend” of Trump who “builds auto plants”] about nine months ago, I said, “You know what? I want you do to me a favor, John,” — his name is John, I don’t want to give his last name because he might not like it — but I said “I want to see an auto plant, I want to go and see one of these — you know, you press a button and everything works, right? I want to see one of the big ones.”
He said, “All right, good.”
I said, “Where do we go? I’d like to go to Michigan, I’d like to go to someplace in the United States.”
He said, “No, we can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“We’re not building anything big in the United States, that’s not — we don’t build the big ones here.”
I said, “Where are you building the biggest ones?”
He said, “In Mexico. We’re building giant plants, the biggest plants anywhere in the world, in Mexico.”
I said, “So you mean they’re going to make cars cheaply? They have advantages over labor and other things, and they’re going to sell them into the United States, and they’re going to put Michigan out of business. Is that what—”
“I don’t know anything about that, all I do is build the plants. If you want to see a plant, we’ll go to Mexico, I’ll show you the biggest plant in the world.”
That was nine months ago, I saw him — and I talked about it all the time, because I think it’s a serious threat to our country, because not only autos, but other things — so then I see him, two days ago, I was talking at another club. Very nice club, and like this — except, I don’t know, I think you people are probably even wealthier, okay. This was in Detroit, which was appropriate, and I was talking — I was showing them all sorts of charts about how their car — you know, it’s just gone down, it’s like terrible.
And I saw him, and I said, “Oh, how are doing, how’ve you been?” I said, “Could I ask you, how are those plants that you mentioned, those giant plants that you’re building in Mexico, how is that coming along? Have you finished them?”
“No sir, they abandoned the project when they heard you’re running, they abandoned the project when they saw that you were winning and doing well.”
Because I told them, and I said it publicly, they’re not going to sell one car into the United Sates. I said if I run this country, if I’m going to be President of this country, I’m going to put a 100, 200, 2000 percent tariff — they’re not going to sell one car into the United States.
It’s unclear whether Trump meant a tariff on all Mexican-manufactured vehicles or simply those from factories built by “China” (presumably Chinese automakers), but his prior eagerness to apply those same tariffs to Ford, GM, Stellantis, and John Deere would point towards the former.
It’s also unclear, given how auto manufacturing in Canada appears to have flown under the candidate’s radar, whether he intends every car sold in the U.S. be built here or if this move is intended more to antagonize Mexico specifically. One of those goals is likely impossible, but the other seems all too easy for Trump — a man already prone to inciting trade wars around automobiles.