Ford Motor Company made news on Tuesday when they announced that plans to build and open a new plant in Mexico had been scrapped and that the company would instead be investing in an existing assembly plant in Michigan.
The new plant would have cost $1.6 billion, so the cancellation has likely yielded disappointment from Mexican officials because of the potential to create thousands of jobs. The investment in Michigan will total $700 million and create 700 more jobs, according to Ford CEO Mark Fields.
After the announcement, Field told Fox Business Network,
“One of the factors that we’re looking at is a more positive U.S. manufacturing business environment under President-elect Trump and some of the pro-growth policies he said he’s going to pursue. And so this is a vote of confidence.”
Trump later tweeted the following in support of Ford—and as a way to take credit for the change in plans.
Thank you to Ford for scrapping a new plant in Mexico and creating 700 new jobs in the U.S. This is just the beginning – much more to follow
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
After Trump posted the above tweet, Fields came back again to clarify what the new investment and cancelled plans was all about. He made sure that citizens knew that the company didn’t work with Trump and that they made their decision completely on their own.
“We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” said Fields to NBC. “The bottom line is we’re not seeing the volume and the demand that we expected for that plant. We’re looking at our capacity and saying, ‘you know what, we can build that in an existing facility and use capacity that we already have.”
As wonderful as it must be to be in good graces with the soon-to-be president, it’s also probably bad for business since less than half of voters were in support of Donald Trump on Election Day. In an effort to appear neutral, Fields responded in an appropriate way so that business is continuously based on market changes, not boycotts based on political beliefs.
Ford isn’t the only company that has been making changes to their international and domestic plans, seemingly in the wake of Trump’s proposed plans for American business. AC and furnace maker Carrier decided to stay in the U.S. rather than moving some business to Mexico last month and Sprint recently announced that they would be adding thousands of U.S. jobs. Trump took credit for the latter decision as well, though a New York Times editorial recently knocked that notion down by revealing that the new jobs were decided on well before the election even occurred.
Only time will tell if Donald Trump’s politics will have a positive impact on American business, jobs, and the consumer confidence index, but until then the president-elect is likely to continue boasting that he is behind any positive changes that occur.
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