Trump Says He’s Open to Chinese Automakers Building Cars in the U.S.
On Friday, President Donald Trump signaled that he would not oppose Chinese Automakers establishing production facilities to the United States, breaking with bipartisan efforts in Congress to limit the reach and economic impact of the rapidly growing Chinese auto market.
The news itself came by way of an interview on the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle,” during which the president spoke with host Laura Ingraham about the potential for Chinese automakers to gain a foothold here in the American market. “If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I’d be okay with that,” said Trump.
“Japan does it, but they hire our people,” added Trump. “The big thing is they hire our people.”
Nearly every major automaker from Japan, Germany, and South Korea all maintain some sort of production footprint here in the United States. As the president noted, these facilities employ large numbers of Americans across the country. Japanese automakers alone are responsible for some 2.3 millions jobs across the U.S., ranging from plant workers, engineers and designers down through dealer staff and suppliers, according to a recent study from the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association.
That said, legislators on both sides of the aisle remain skeptical of allowing Chinese automakers to establish a similar foothold in the States. There are economic reasons for that hesitation, as Europe’s automakers have already begun to feel the pricing pressure of affordable Chinese products, which themselves are often subsidized by the Chinese government. Members of Congress representing car-producing states are particularly concerned about the potential disaster that could await American automakers if low-priced Chinese offerings were to find their way to the U.S.
“You don’t have to be a deep expert to understand that the Chinese Communist Party heavily subsidizes their industry, so they have a whole strategy of basically stealing our intellectual property—making stuff like cars and drones off of stuff that we’ve invented, and then heavily subsidizing them so that they undercut and kill the industry that they enter,” Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told Road & Track earlier this year.
In addition, politicians and policy experts have voiced concerns over potential national security concerns that could arise with Chinese carmakers’ vehicles in the country. Slotkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, also highlighted the possibilities of companies “bringing in a subsidized vehicle that’s going to undersell all American vehicles, and in the meantime, hoover up a ton of video—full-motion video on military bases, [of] our critical infrastructure, our bridges, our tunnels, our electrical grid.”
With President Trump slated to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping in Washington within the month, there has already been pressure on the President to take action. Just last week the largest lobbying group for the auto industry officially put pressure on the President to ban the sale of Chinese vehicles in the States by the end of the year. That said, Reuters reports that rumors have continued to swirl that Trump aims to make some sort of deal with Xi Jinping in regard to this issue.
Road & Track will continue to update you with more information regarding the legality of Chinese automobiles in the States as the story develops.
Born and raised in Metro Detroit, associate editor Lucas Bell has spent his entire life surrounded by the automotive industry. He may daily drive an aging Mustang, but his Porsche 944 and NB Miata both take up most of his free time.