WASHINGTON: Donald Trump threatened both General Motors and Toyota this week with taxes on vehicles produced in Mexico and imported into the United States.
Donald Trump threatened both General Motors and Toyota this week with taxes on vehicles produced in Mexico and imported into the United States. (Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)
US president-elect Donald Trump has taken aim at another automaker over its production in Mexico, this time threatening Toyota Motor Corp. with a tax on vehicles brought into the United States.
Toyota currently builds about 100,000 pickup trucks and truck beds annually in Baja California in northwestern Mexico, and plans to raise that output to about 160,000 by 2018.
Trump has the location of the new plant wrong. The company revealed in April 2015 that it would spend $1 billion on an assembly plant in Guanajuato, which is in central Mexico, and move production of its popular Corolla sedan there from another plant in Cambridge, Ont. Toyota moving Corolla production to Mexico from Ontario
When it comes online in 2019, the Guanajuato factory will have the capacity to crank out 200,000 cars a year, bringing an end to the production of the Corolla in Canada. It is one of the bestselling cars in Canada and had been built here since the plant opened in the 1980s. The company said back in 2015 that the plant would “switch from producing Corollas to mid-sized, higher-value vehicles.” Toyota will also continue building Corollas in the US at a plant in Blue Springs, Miss.
