‘Infuriated’ Bill Ford Met with Trump Over Mexico Comments

WASHINGTON, DC — Ford Motor Co. executive chairman Bill Ford Jr. told the Economic Club of Washington Wednesday that he has met with Republican Donald Trump, who has been unrelenting in his criticism of the Dearborn-based automaker’s investments in Mexico throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, but especially since Ford announced it would move small car production to lower-cost plants in Mexico.

Ford called Trump’s condemnation of the No. 2 automaker’s plans “infuriating” and “frustrating.”

Trump said last spring that if he is elected president, he will slap a punitive 35 percent tariff on any Mexico-made cars entering the country — though it’s unclear how he would do that.

Then, in his opening salvo at last month’s presidential debate, Trump said: “So, Ford is leaving — thousands of jobs. You see that, their small-car division leaving. Leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio. They are all leaving.”

Earlier, Trump said Ford would “fire all of their employees in the United States,” and called the decision to move small car production south of the border “horrible” and something the U.S. government “shouldn’t allow it to happen.”

The automaker emphatically denied Trump’s claims. In a statement, Ford said it has been in the United States for more than 100 years and “will be here forever.”

At the Washington Economic Club, Ford said that the No. 2 automaker’s chief executive, Mark Fields, wrote Trump last year to explain the nature of Ford’s investments in Mexico, Reuters reports. It’s unclear when Trump and Ford met and what transpired at the meeting.

Ford said he’s not sure his message got through, The Detroit News reported.

“He’s a very good listener and he knows the facts, but who knows what the campaign trail is all about,” Ford said. “I certainly don’t.”

Both General Motors and Chrysler received federal government bailouts during the Great Recession, but Ford didn’t.

“I would like to think Ford is everything that should be celebrated about what’s right with the country,” Ford said during the speech, The Detroit News reported. “We didn’t go bankrupt, we paid back our loans, we did it the right way.”

The only small cars manufactured by Ford in the United States are made at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne. Production there will end in 2018.

Photos: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons / Bill Ford Jr. via Ford Motor Co.