Donald Trump Takes Credit For Keeping Ford Plant That Was Never Leaving

DEARBORN, MI — Ford Motor Co. CEO Bill Ford and President-elect Donald Trump are friends now, did you know? Yes, apparently. After spending much of the campaign blistering Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co. for its plan to move small-car production to Mexico, Trump took to Twitter Thursday night and bragged, basically, that he had set his pal straight and saved about 4,700 jobs at a Kentucky plant where the automaker's Lincoln MKC SUV and Ford Escape models are built.

But here’s the thing: Ford never intended to move Lincoln production to Mexico in the first place.

It's always good for Michigan’s all-important auto industry when the people who make cars get along with the people who have the power to unwind trade agreements, impose steep import tariffs and dial back emissions standards, so it is nice they have made up.

It's just that a friendship between the Manhattan billionaire businessman, casino owner and reality television star and the CEO of the world’s No. 2 automaker seemed unlikely a month ago. Ford told a group of investors and business leaders in Washington, D.C., in early October that he had met with then-candidate Trump and called him out for “infuriating” and “frustrating” statements, including the one in which Trump incorrectly claimed that Ford would “fire all of their employees in the United States.”

It’s all smoothed over now, if Trump’s tweets can be taken literally. “Just got a call from my friend Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, who advised me that he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky — no Mexico,” Trump tweeted, following up with: “I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!”

Ford has said all along that it was building a $1.6 billion production plant and moving only the production of less profitable lines to Mexico, where labor is cheaper. Ford already has a significant presence there. Last year, the automaker announced plans to invest $2.5 billion in two new engine and transmission plants in Mexico, as well as expand production of its diesel engine line there.

See Also

• ‘Infuriated’ Bill Ford Confronted Trump Over Mexico Comments
• Automakers Ask Donald Trump to Relax Fuel Standards; UAW Wants to Unravel NAFTA

Ford executives said in April that investments in Mexico won’t be offset by closing U.S. plants. Last year, 80 percent of Ford’s North American vehicles were built in the United States, and the automaker built more cars and trucks domestically than its competitors, Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, told The Detroit News.

Even if Ford had wanted to shutter the Kentucky plant, the United Auto Workers' labor contract that expires in 2019 would have prevented it, Reuters reported. However, Bloomberg reported that when that contract expires, Ford may move MKC production to Mexico.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons