President-elect Donald Trump directed his ire at another carmaker Thursday, threatening Toyota with a border tax for planning to build a factory in Mexico.
“Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S.,” Trump tweeted. “NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax.”
Toyota already builds Corollas from a factory in Mississippi and had produced more than 500,000 units as of early 2015. While Japan’s largest automaker is planning to build a Corolla plant in Mexico, it’s slated for Apaseo el Grande, Guanajuato. The company has a factory in Baja, California, near the Mexico border, building Tacoma pickups.
Hours before Trump’s tweet, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said he would take the president-elect’s decisions into account when planning the automaker’s Mexico operations, after Ford scrapped plans to build a $1.6 billion new plant in the country.
Toyota’s American depositary receipts fell 0.7 percent and traded down 0.5 percent to $120.61 as of 1:49 p.m. in New York.
Trump’s attacks on the auto industry are in keeping with his pledges to revive U.S. manufacturing that has steadily migrated to countries with cheaper labor for decades. He targeted General Motors earlier this week for building a version of its Cruze compact south of the border, and Ford’s move on Tuesday closely followed a decision by United Technologies Corp.’s Carrier in November.
Toyoda told reporters at a New Year’s gathering that he’ll handle the situation after understanding it better, when asked for a reaction to the news that Ford had canceled a plan to build a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico following criticism by Trump.
(c) 2017, Bloomberg ยท Mike Dorning
