President Donald J. Trump. No longer the punchline to a joke about the dire state of American politics, the now-acting POTUS is indeed the man who was made most famous by his ability to fire people on television with a firm and swift manipulation of his hand.
Long before Mr. Trump was sworn into office as the President of the United States, he took hard aim at the entire automotive industry. From the campaign trail, to Twitter, to the Oval Office, and back to Twitter – Trump has not been shy when it comes to telling automakers what he thinks of them when vehicle manufacturing is moved out of the country.
One of the first auto brands that gave in to the incredible public pressure that Trump delivered, was the Ford Motor Company. In January, after becoming the latest victim of the then President-Elect’s Twitter humiliation, Ford Motor Company announced their plans to cancel a $1.6 billion plant planned for Mexico, and instead expand their current manufacturing plant in Michigan. CEO Mark Fields stated that the decision had nothing to do with the pressure from Trump, and everything to do with Ford’s confidence in the Trump presidency. It seems like a decent amount of ass-kissing was happening between Fields and Trump, it’s because there was.
In the same month that Trump assailed Ford for their plans to expand manufacturing in Mexico, the then President-Elect was also coming down hard on Toyota. Singling out the company for their plans to build a factory in Mexico to manufacture the Corolla, Trump declared that Toyota needs to “Build those new plants here.”
Fast forward to April of 2017, and it seems that after Toyota Motor Corporation announced plans to invest $1.33 billion into an existing factory in the United States, President Trump is taking all the credit. It’s not unlike the boisterous and over-confident President to take credit for the accomplishments of others, and he didn’t hesitate for a second in Toyota’s case.
Toyota has laid out plans to expand their current U.S. facilities, as well as add upwards of 700 jobs for citizens. On the heels of Toyota’s announcement, President Trump stated that Toyota’s decision “is further evidence that manufacturers are now confident that the economic climate has greatly improved under my administration.”
Over the next five years, Toyota plans to invest a total of $10 billion here in the United States. Despite this incredible boost to the economy, President Trump is still not satisfied with Toyota’s decision to go ahead with their $1 billion factory in Mexico, it seems as though the POTUS is laying off of further public criticism for the time being.
As President Trump continues on his mission to chastise every automaker who so much as thinks about taking jobs out of the United States and bringing them to Mexico, it’s certain that we will see more of these stories in the near future.
What in the world would we do without the expert guidance of Mr. Trump?
