DETROIT (AP) — As President Donald Trump travels the country to rally support for Republican candidates ahead of the midterm elections, he is touting his economic agenda and crediting GOP-backed tariffs with industry growth — including what he says are more vehicle manufacturing plants all over the country.
Speaking at a Baltimore shipyard earlier this week, he credited his administration with drawing automakers back from at least five countries and painted a picture of historic plant construction after decades where there had been none at all.
But while Trump has found some success in boosting car manufacturing to the U.S. and forging deals within the industry, much of what he said was overblown or untrue.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
What’s happening with car manufacturing in the U.S.
TRUMP, on Tuesday: “We didn’t build a car plant for 44 years in this country. Now we’re building more car plants than we ever have in history.”
THE FACTS: It is not true that a vehicle factory has not been built in the U.S. in 44 years. The U.S. is also not currently building more auto manufacturing plants than it ever has.
More than two dozen major new vehicle assembly plants opened in the United States during the past four decades, based on the manufacturer histories, public records and data from industry group Autos Drive America. Others have been bought, retooled or repurposed.
That said, the U.S. has seen some significant automotive manufacturing movement under Trump.
So far in Trump’s second term, Rivian broke ground on a second factory in Georgia, and the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America opened there, too. At the time, Trump praised Hyundai and touted the news as “a clear demonstration that tariffs very strongly work.”
In his first term, Mazda and Toyota announced a mammoth joint vehicle facility in Huntsville, Alabama and Volvo’s first U.S. plant opened in South Carolina.
The developments under Trump broadly align with what’s been happening over at least the last two decades, experts say.
“We’ve always made lots and lots of the cars that people are buying here. If you buy a Honda in the U.S., it’s more likely that that was made in the U.S. That was true long before Trump,” said Joshua Hausman, University of Michigan associate professor of economics. “There have been car factories built regularly over the past few decades.”
The White House provided a list of projects that total more than $50 billion in investments by automakers, which the administration credits to the president’s trade agenda. Among them are a $10 billion investment from Toyota said to be for operations across the country — the automaker has not confirmed it will be for adding plants — and plans by Stellantis to invest $13 billion in expanding its U.S. footprint. Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Mercedes-Benz are said to be investing some $15 billion in projects of their own.
“The President successfully launched a manufacturing renaissance with trillions of dollars in investments pouring into our country,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, crediting the investment to Trump’s America First Trade Agenda.
But not all of the news under Trump has specifically been for all-new vehicle assembly, and Trump’s accomplishments don’t differ much from President Joe Biden’s administration and others, industry experts noted.
As with Trump, the U.S. saw the opening of both new and retrofitted auto plants under Biden. EV manufacturers Rivian reopened a former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Ill. and Lucid opened a plant in Casa Grande, Ariz.
Tesla opened an all-new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. Ford opened the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, and began construction on BlueOval City, a complex for EVs and batteries, in Stanton, Tennessee.
GM announced its plans to pour $7 billion into EV and battery plants in Michigan, and Vietnamese automaker VinFast said it would build an EV plant in North Carolina.
As of this year, Autos Drive America counted 51 total light vehicle assembly plants operating in the U.S., down just slightly from 52 five years earlier.
Foreign automakers have had a long presence in the U.S.
TRUMP: “Our car industry is coming back. They’re leaving Canada, they’re leaving Mexico, they’re leaving Japan and Germany, South Korea. ”
THE FACTS: Many foreign automakers have been part of the industry in the U.S. for decades.
Volkswagen began assembling vehicles in the U.S. in the late 1970s; Honda, Nissan, Toyota and various European manufacturers followed suit in the 1980s — around the 44 year timeframe that Trump referred to earlier this week. These companies now make and sell millions of vehicles in the U.S. each year.
American vehicle manufacturing and auto assembly jobs began to decline at the same time as domestic automakers lost market share to those foreign-owned companies.
The U.S. industry’s woes came to a head during the 2008 financial crisis under the Bush administration. American companies faltered while foreign automakers, and demand for their vehicles, grew. The nation saw more imported vehicles and increased production abroad.
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, GM had to be bailed out from bankruptcy. In the years following 2008, the American industry recovered some, both under Trump and Biden.
Biden’s policies led to a major push for investment in more fuel-efficient and electric vehicles, though many of those once-ambitious plans have since been dialed back as a result of Trump’s policies and slow consumer demand. That is, until the war in Iran sent gas prices soaring and juiced interest in cleaner vehicles.
Trump takes credit with tariffs
TRUMP: “It’s all because of my favorite word tariffs.”
THE FACTS: Experts said it’s not as simple as crediting new auto manufacturing investment in the U.S. to tariffs.
“The current wave of tariffs has led to relocation of production, but they have not resulted in a tsunami of new assembly plants,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions. “Vehicle manufacturers invest for the long-haul and not based on one administration’s short-term decisions.”
Building a factory takes a long time, Hausman said.
“When people think there’s a good chance that six months from now the tariffs will be reduced, or in the next presidential administration, the tariffs will be eliminated, there’s no particular reason to think that would lead car manufacturers to build new factories,” he said.
Some experts say the Trump administration’s policies have hobbled industry investment. Even if tariffs have incentivized parts of the industry to shore up U.S. operations, they also play a role in driving up vehicle prices.
Trump’s tariffs impact not only vehicles coming from abroad, but also some of the key supplies necessary to build vehicles in the U.S., such as steel and aluminum.
Automakers have to calculate whether the tariffs from offshore production outweigh producing vehicles in the U.S. while having to navigate increased costs of manufacturing goods here.
“The global automotive industry is very price sensitive and requires sourcing components and locating assembly facilities based on making the end product globally competitive,” Fiorani said. “Tariffs are disrupting the equations used to get to today’s vehicles and making them more expensive by making the affordable choices too expensive to use.”
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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at [email protected].
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