Ford CEO Mark Fields used a potential worst-case scenario as the premise for his statements last month when he claimed new federal fuel economy rules would cost the nation one million jobs.
Independent industry analysts and environmental groups looked into Fields’ comments and found huge job losses were just one potential — and unlikely — consequence in a September report by the Center for Automotive Research, Automotive News reported.
President Donald Trump is having a pow-wow with General Motors chief executive Mary Barra, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a slew of other top U.S. executives today. The business community finds itself increasingly divided over how to respond to certain policies, especially after Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit the president’s advisory panel over an executive order that temporarily ceased travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Pressure from activists has forced numerous companies to take a public stance on the issue. Elon Musk in particular has begun to face harsh criticism for condemning the ban but continuing to work with the White House on business issues. (Read More…)
President Donald Trump doesn’t want to waste any time renegotiating — or replacing — the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Yesterday, Trump announced his intention to speed up the start of negotiations, leading to much diplomatic scurrying and plenty of confusion among the ranks of North American suppliers. No one knows how the trade landscape will look once talks wrap up.
While the move aims to boost U.S. employment, many U.S. companies, as well as America’s neighbors, fear downsides from potential tariffs. (Read More…)
BMW Group CEO Harald Krüger says the automaker fully intends on sicking with its current investment strategies in Mexico and the United States, even after President Donald Trump’s proposal to levy steep import taxes on vehicles brought into American borders.
“We need free world trade,” Krueger told the CAR Symposium automotive congress in Bochum, Germany, on Wednesday. (Read More…)
Ford Motor Company chief executive officer and doomsday prophet Mark Fields thinks one million American jobs will be placed in peril if the country’s current fuel economy standards aren’t made more flexible.
The alarming scenario was given by Fields to President Trump himself at last week’s private meeting of U.S. automakers at the White House. (Read More…)
When Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada left office in 2006 after a six-year stint, he didn’t go quietly into political retirement.
With the advent of social media, the outspoken Fox gained the ability to launch barbs with ease and generally treat politicians like a well-used piñata. His latest target? Take a guess.
Following President Trump’s recent declarations — including a promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and a threat to impose a 20 percent border tax on Mexican goods — Fox spoke his mind on the issue, trolling Trump on Twitter and making statements on the U.S. auto industry that won’t get him invited to many parties in Detroit. (Read More…)
Ten high-profile manufacturing executives, including Ford CEO Mark Fields and Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk, visited the White House today, where they were informed by President Donald Trump today that he would dramatically reduce corporate taxation and scale down regulations by as much as seventy-five percent.
Trump promised the return of manufacturing plants and jobs within the United States during his campaign. Making it more appetizing for specific companies to do so is an essential aspect of that plan, however, the new President also issued the caveat that companies choosing to invest outside of American soil would have to pay for it. (Read More…)
Update: Added dealer info, sales background.
Contrary to a statement released two days ago by General Motors, it seems not all Cruze sedans sold in the United States are made in the United States.
According to TTAC alum Ed Niedermeyer, a number of 2017 Chevrolet Cruzes — even those for sale at a dealer in Lordstown, Ohio, where GM manufactures the Cruze in the United States — are Hecho en Mexico.
Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields didn’t completely walk back the company’s long-range production plans today, but the automaker pull a hard U-turn on one goal.
In a speech at the automaker’s Flat Rock, Michigan assembly plant this morning, Fields said he was “encouraged” by President-elect Donald Trump’s “pro-growth policies.” Because of this, the Blue Oval’s planned $1.6 billion small car plant in Mexico is now off the table. Instead, the automaker will expand and modernize Flat Rock as it brings a slew of promised hybrid and electric vehicles to production. (Read More…)
Updated with statement from General Motors.
It’s not just Ford’s Mexican assembly plants that has President-elect steaming on Twitter.
Donald Trump’s latest online automotive salvo wasn’t directed at the Blue Oval, which was a favorite corporate punching bag during the election campaign. Rather, it was General Motors’ turn to be blasted. (Read More…)
President-elect Donald Trump has named General Motors CEO Mary Barra to his advisory board on economic issues and jobs growth.
While this could also be a coincidental slight against Mark Fields for publicly criticizing the new president’s repeated verbal attacks against Ford, this isn’t the first time Barra has been considered for unexpected political involvement this year. Hillary Clinton had shortlisted her as a possible running mate for the 2016 election. (Read More…)
Threatening to move isn’t new.
16 years ago, legions of American citizens promised to leave the United States if Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore. While there’s evidence that suggests emigration from the United States to Canada occurred at an accelerated rate during Bush’s two terms in the White House, it was more likely tied to the state of the economy overall than differences in personal politics.
But that didn’t stop Americans — not just celebrities, but Americans en masse — from shutting down Citizen And Immigration Canada’s website with excessive traffic on the night of 2016’s Trump electoral victory earlier this week.
Had the website operated normally, you would have discovered that moving to Canada isn’t easy. Yet your desire to relocate will not be sated by a move to sunny SoCal or the Florida Keys. You’re determined to live in Cape Breton, or Portage la Prairie, or Trois-Rivières. And in the automotive sphere, there are some things you really need to know. (Read More…)
So, there’s an election on, and a certain candidate has made some high-profile, sometimes inflammatory comments about American manufacturing and jobs being sent south of the Rio Grande. That person’s name is Donald T. No, perhaps that’s too obvious. D. Trump.
The Republican nominee recently found himself in a cage match with Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields after accusing the automaker of sending its jobs to Mexico. But one manufacturer that Trump does favor, one that he invests heavily in and whose products he plans to use to build a certain wall, also has a “Mexican problem.” (Read More…)
Donald Trump, while on the campaign trail in Michigan, is still promising to apply a 35-percent import tariff on vehicles built by Ford if it continues with plans to expand operations in Mexico, even though Trump wouldn’t have the authority to implement a tariff as president, reports The Detroit Free Press.
“We are going to do something that is going to (be) great (and) a very big beneficiary is going to be Michigan,” Trump said while speaking to supporters at Macomb Community College on Friday. “The car business is being abused more than most other businesses. … Mexico is becoming the new China.”
And we all know how much Trump looooooooves China.
Nissan scolded one of its dealers Tuesday for releasing an ad showing the battering of a piñata resembling Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Automotive News is reporting.
The ad depicts salesmen repeatedly hitting a Trump-looking piñata and declaring, “At Van Nuys Nissan, Latinos rule.” The ad was made after Trump denounced some undocumented Mexican immigrants as “rapists” in a June political speech.
“We find these advertisements to be neither responsible or respectful, and we do not condone what they represent,” Nissan said in a statement. “We expect our dealers to establish advertising that is responsible and respectful and represents the best interest of the Nissan brand.”
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