Ford is investing $700 million to expand operations at its Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan and build autonomous and electric vehicles, creating 700 new jobs over the next four years. The company also announced that it was canceling a new $1.6 billion plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico in favor of the new Michigan plant expansion.
Even though Ford executives have emphasized that pressure from the incoming Trump administration didn’t impact their decisions, Ford CEO Mark Fields told CNN that the investment in Michigan was a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment that the President elect has promised to implement.
“We expect pro-growth, pro-manufacturing policies and support from the incoming administration,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, in an interview with The Verge. “We took them into account when we made these decisions, but we have a history of investing in the United States… it’s a reinforcement of what has historically been our policy: to invest where we sell. And the US market is very important to us.”
President-elect Trump hammered Ford during the election cycle for plans to move jobs to Mexico, and later claimed credit when Ford announced that it was no longer moving production of the Lincoln MKC to Mexico, though the company cited “changing business conditions” for the decision rather than pressure from Trump. Ford CEO Mark Fields again cited business demands for the cancelling of the Mexican plant, though there’s no denying that the optics of the decision will play into Trump’s narrative.