In Savannah, Trump Copies Canada, Threatens Tariffs on Mexico Made Cars

In Savannah, Trump Copies Canada, Threatens Tariffs on Mexico Made Cars

Donald Trump was in Savannah for a campaign stop on Tuesday where he spoke for 90 minutes, bringing up tariffs, taxes, and a real threat of tariffs on Mexico-made cars.

“To the auto workers, your industry has been decimated by many years of incompetent leadership both politically and at the corporate level,” he said. “With EVs coming, they are mostly all going to be made in China. But we are going to turn it around. China is building major auto plants in Mexico, but if you do it I’m putting tariffs on every car,” he said. “They think they’re going to sell their cars into the U.S. and destroy Michigan….but we are going to put a 100% tariff on every single car coming across the Mexican border and tell them that the only way they’re going to get rid of that tariff is to build the plant here not two hours over the border and selling it into our country. We are not doing that anymore. When they learn about that tariff you’ll see a big difference. It used to be that we were the only place to make cars, but that was chipped away by Japan. But we are going to come roaring back. People around the world will be buying cars that are proudly stamped…made in the USA,” he said.

Trump spoke of his tariff plan, but this time did not give any specific tariff percentage rate. In the past, that number was between 10% and 20%. He even once said he would impose a 60% tariff on all China imports, though he did not single China out in his tariff proposals. He said he would use tariffs to raise revenue, pay down debts, and make it more attractive to manufacture domestically.

“We are going to bring trillions of dollars of wealth back to the USA and we are going to do it fast. American workers will no longer be worried about losing their jobs to foreign nations. Instead, foreign nations will be worried about losing their jobs to us for once. You’re going to have a lot of companies wanting to be here because this is where the money is. I want German car companies to build their plants here. I want to beat China in electronics production. We have the greatest minds here and we end up building our innovations somewhere else and a lot of that has to do with bad tax policy. I will be offering every manufacturer the lowest taxes, the lowest energy costs, the lowest regulatory burden and free access to the best and biggest market on the planet if you make your product here. If you don’t want to make your product here, that’s okay too but then you will have to pay a tariff, a very substantial tariff. A lot of people didn’t like tariffs but they are finding out that I was right and tariffs will not cause inflation, by the way. I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff revenue and I had low inflation…maybe 1.2%. This (tariff) policy is what built America and this is the policy that is going to save us.”

Besides tariffs, Trump took a page from Canada’s playbook and said he would like to have a 15% C-Corp tax rate for companies that manufacture domestically. He repeated this line numerous times throughout his speech on Tuesday, with the podium behind him decorated with the text advertising his 15% corporate tax proposal right behind him.

He said he wants more R&D tax credits, and wants to allow companies to be able to write off on their taxes 100% of heavy machinery purchases and new equipment purchases in the first year of buying it.

Trump warned that strict environmental rules and tax policies made outsourcing attractive.

“We are going to use our natural resources to our benefit and it will be clean and environmentally perfect so we can make everything we need,” he said, speaking about the environmental rules that make mining for minerals used to make EV batteries and other things more costly and time consuming than it is in China. “We have oil, we have gas, we have the rare earths. We don’t have to get it all from overseas,” he said, sticking to his mantra of making the U.S. a low cost energy producer with easy-to-understand and flexible regulations and tax policies that make industrial investments plausible.

“To exploit these pro-manufacturing policies, I will appoint a manufacturing ambassador whose sole task will be to persuade American companies to pack up and move home,” Trump said. “We have watched countries steal our jobs and now we are going to go into those countries and steal their jobs, how’s that?”

Trump reiterated his opposition to the Nippon Steel purchase of U.S. Steel. The deal is still under review with the Biden administration also expressing some disdain for the acquisition of the 70 year old Pennsylvania steel company.

“I will stop it,” he said. “We are not going to let it happen. U.S. Steel was once one of the greatest companies in the world, and we are not going to let it get sold off so easily.”

MADE IN AMERICA.

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