Car company executives have been reluctant to directly criticize President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported cars and car parts, despite a palpable sense of dread about the damage they believe his trade policies will do to their operations and profits.
Instead, they are pursuing a more subtle strategy, emphasizing how much they have already invested in U.S. manufacturing, in the hope that the president will show mercy.
In advertisements, media interviews and photo ops in recent weeks, automakers have been declaring their dedication to producing cars in the United States and highlighting the investments they have already made.
BMW and Ford Motor have placed full-page newspaper advertisements that emphasize how many jobs they have created in the United States.
Hyundai executives appeared at the White House last month to announce plans to invest $21 billion in the company’s U.S. operations, allowing Mr. Trump to take credit.
At the New York International Auto Show this week, rare was the executive who didn’t mention how much his or her company has invested in American manufacturing and jobs.
“More than 15 automakers are not only in the U.S. market but building cars and trucks here in America,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most large automakers. “We’re continuing to invest here, we are continuing to expand our plants here, continuing to build supply chains here.”
The automakers’ media campaigns will reach millions of Americans, but seem to be largely aimed at an audience of one. Boasting about how much they already contribute to the U.S. economy is a way of resisting tariffs, without offending Mr. Trump.
At least some White House officials appear to be sympathetic to the industry’s point of view, Mr. Bozzella said. “Certainly there are policymakers in the administration that understand the complexity of the industry and the lead time required to be able to comply with a new trade regime,” he said.
Mr. Bozzella and other industry representatives say it is unrealistic to expect tariffs to lead to an investment boom. Carmakers cannot quickly relocate factories from Mexico or Canada to the United States, they say, or overhaul complex, far-flung supplier networks, especially when the Trump administration’s trade policies are fluid and unpredictable.
“This is a very long-term business,” Kjell Gruner, the president of Volkswagen Group of America, told reporters at the auto show. “You make investment decisions for sometimes decades.” Trade policy “has been so volatile,” he said. “We need stable conditions.”
Volkswagen makes cars including the electric ID.4 in Chattanooga, Tenn., and is building a factory in South Carolina to produce off-road vehicles using the Scout brand. Audi, which also belongs to Volkswagen and produces cars in Europe and Mexico, is considering manufacturing in the United States, Oliver Blume, Volkswagen’s chief executive, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in an interview published Friday.
BMW’s ads highlighted the $14 billion the German carmaker invested in its factory complex in South Carolina, where it produces sport utility vehicles for the U.S. market and for export. The ads also mentioned the 120,000 jobs that BMW says it supports in the United States.
But the company denied there was any political agenda behind the full-page ads that the company ran in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today in recent weeks.
The ads “were several months in the works and designed to mark our milestone 50th anniversary in the U.S.,” Phil DiIanni, a BMW spokesman, said. The campaign, he added, was “in no way related to the current political environment, or meant to be a political statement.”
Ford will be more explicitly political in ads scheduled to run this weekend in The Journal, The Times, The Washington Post and several Detroit papers.
“The Ford Motor Company would like to take a moment to address the idea that every American car company has pulled up stakes and off-shored everything that isn’t nailed down,” the ads say.
The ads say 80 percent of the vehicles that Ford sells in the United States are made in America, including 100 percent of the company’s popular F-Series trucks.
Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, is virtually alone among his peers in publicly criticizing Mr. Trump’s trade policies, saying in February that 25 percent tariffs on cars made in Mexico or Canada would “blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen.”
Automakers don’t mention that much of the new investment in factories during the last five years was the result of Biden administration policies. The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats in Congress in 2022 provided subsidies, loans and tax credits intended to create a domestic electric vehicle industry and prevent China from dominating that technology.
Hyundai said its decision to build a $12.6 billion electric vehicle and battery plant in Georgia was made during the first Trump administration. “It wasn’t because of I.R.A. or tax credits,” Randy Parker, the chief executive of Hyundai North America, said in an interview.
“We are investing in America, and we’re not going to Canada, we aren’t going to Mexico,” Mr. Parker said. “That’s something that I’m certainly proud of, and yes, I do hope that message is getting through.”
Car companies have invested $78 billion in projects related to electric vehicles, creating almost 280,000 jobs, according to figures compiled by Jay Turner, an associate professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, and student researchers.
Investment in batteries has come to almost $200 billion, creating more than 130,000 jobs. While some of that investment predated the Biden administration, it accelerated after the Inflation Reduction Act became law, according to the research.
Republicans have said they will repeal the legislation, though they could run into resistance within the party from senators or representatives whose constituents are benefiting from the jobs.
Robert Lee, the president for North America of LG Energy Solution, a South Korean battery maker, said he was “cautiously optimistic” that Republicans would preserve at least some of the incentives. LG has three factories operating in the United States supplying General Motors and other customers. Four more factories are nearing completion or in the works.
“I think they recognize that the auto industry is really critical and complex,” Mr. Lee, who has been involved in discussions with political leaders, said at the auto show.
But he said U.S. manufacturers still depended on China for some key battery materials and components that faced stiff tariffs. Rising prices could suppress demand for electric vehicles and make it harder for LG and other companies to earn a return on their investments.
“We would just ask for a little bit of time in terms of transitioning our supply base,” he said.
Neal E. Boudette contributed reporting.
Jack Ewing writes about the auto industry with an emphasis on electric vehicles.
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