Trump Tells Detroit Economic Club “Mexico is Becoming a Second China”

For Ford in particular, their popular F-Series accounts for over a third of all sales. Second quarter 2024 sales for pick up trucks and vans were 308,920 units while F-Series sales accounted for 199,463 of that quarter’s sales.

Pickup trucks can be made in Mexico and exported duty free if they meet the 75% domestic content requirement and the higher labor standards, of $16 an hour – a mini-fortune in Mexico but still less than what an American auto worker earns.

Trump has hinted numerous times that he would increase tariffs on cars coming in through Mexico, but this time in Detroit, he made clear he was talking about China makes and models.

“We have a lot of car making states, parts making states, and my goal is to get our country on an auto making path so it can be bigger than it was in its heyday,” he said. “I want the triumph of the auto industry to be one of my greatest legacies. I want American companies to be exporters; they sell a lot of American cars overseas, but they are made abroad in countries like China. And I don’t mind that. Xi Jinping is a strong and smart man,” he said. “He wants to take our industries. We won’t let them play that game. I  want them to build plants here. I want the Germans to build car plants here if they want to sell here. And I hope the Democrats go along with us.”

On tariffs, Trump did not talk about this 10% universal tariff this time, but instead spoke of “reciprocal tariffs”.

See “Tariffs Done Right Can Rebuild Our Economy” by CPA chief economist Jeff Ferry

“If a country is charging us tariffs, which almost all of them do, we will likewise reciprocate and charge them tariffs. We have in some cases 150% tariffs,” he said about some high tariffed items, usually things like agricultural commodities produced in that home market. The U.S. has similarly  high tariffs (and import quotas) on some agriculture items like peanuts, for example. “One of two things will happen when confronted — I will say, either we can play this game with reciprocal tariffs or we can drop our tariffs if you do. But they are not going to drop them. And yet we charge them nothing. It’s a pillaging of our country and it has been going on for a long time,” he said, adding that if businesses leave the U.S. to outsource manufacturing in Mexico or elsewhere he will put tariffs on those new items they are making there.

“We will use hundreds of billions of tariff dollars to benefit American taxpayers and pay down our debt,” Trump said. “Our fiscal deficit is around $2 trillion and we can use that tariff to start a massive debt reduction and (fund) tax cuts.”

He reiterated his proposal to give domestic manufacturers a 15% flat tax, calling it the Build it in America Plan. Canada has something similar, allowing for a 13% reduction in federal income taxes for local producers.

“I’m proposing a 15% made in the USA corporate tax rate.  I’d have 100% write off of heavy  machinery and other equipment necessary to build a plant, write off in the first year, and full expensing for manufacturing investments to build these state of the art plants,” Trump told the Detroit Economic Club. “Our country needs to stay an industrial superpower. I asked a friend of mine who builds auto plants and I said I want to see the big, state of the art plants and he said, for that you have to go to Mexico. That is where they are building them all.”