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With less than three weeks until he takes office, President-elect Donald Trump shows no sign of dialing down either the frequency or the tone of his Twitter pronouncements.
Today, in his continuing campaign against large U.S. corporations taking advantage of lower labor costs abroad to produce products and import them back into the country, Trump took aim at General Motors.
General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A.or pay big border tax!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017
Reuters reports, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted U.S. carmaker General Motors Co and threatened to impose a “big border tax” for making some of its Chevrolet Cruze cars in Mexico.
“General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” Trump said in a post on Twitter.
Shares of GM fell about 1 percent in premarket trading after Trump’s tweet.
Representatives for GM could not be reached immediately for comment.
In November, GM said it planned in early 2017 to lay off 2,000 employees at two U.S. auto plants, including one in Lordstown, Ohio, where it builds the compact Chevrolet Cruze.
GM had planned to build the Cruze hatchback in Mexico while continuing to build the Cruze sedan in Ohio, supplier sources have said.
The shift is part of a larger trend among Detroit’s Big Three automakers to produce more small cars for the North American market in Mexico in an effort to lower labor costs, while using higher-paid U.S. workers to build more profitable trucks, sport utility vehicles and luxury cars.
Of course, no corporation builds its business based on how much it can screw American workers. Corporations exist to make goods and services people want to buy, and can sell profitably.
If the tax and regulatory policies in the United States aren’t attractive, of course businesses will look elsewhere to do business.
But let’s first look at reducing our corporate tax rate (the highest in the world) and eliminate strangling regulations. Let’s encourage the repatriation of some of the trillions of assets corporations are keeping offshore.
Before we demonize companies for avoiding the onerous tax and regulatory policies they face here in the US, how ’bout we get rid of those policies?
[Note: This article was written by Michele Hickford]
