Ford has announced the company will cancel the $1.6 million plant it planned to build in Mexico. Instead, the company will invest $700 million in Michigan:
Ford (F) CEO Mark Fields said the investment is a “vote of confidence” in the pro-business environment president-elect Donald Trump is creating. However, he stressed Ford did not do any sort of special deal with Trump.”We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” Fields told CNN’s Poppy Harlow in an exclusive interview Tuesday.The $700 million investment will go to the Flat Rock, Michigan plant to produce more electric and self-driving cars. Ford believes electric vehicles will outsell gasoline-powered vehicles within the next 15 years.
However, he also admitted that production on the next Focus sedan will occur in Mexico, but will happen at an already existing plant.
Fields said at a press conference that while Ford remains “a global automaker,” the company’s “home is right here in the United States.”
The investment will create 700 temporary jobs, which will eventually turn into permanent positions, giving the Michigan plant an “hourly staff of about 3,600.”
Unions hailed Ford’s decision:
“I am thrilled that we have been able to secure additional UAW-Ford jobs for American workers,” UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles said in the release. “The men and women of Flat Rock Assembly have shown a great commitment to manufacturing quality products, and we look forward to their continued success with a new generation of high-tech vehicles.”
Trump blasted Ford on the campaign trail for moving production to Mexico. In November, Trump caused a ruckus when he boasted on Twitter that Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, told him that the company planned to keep a plant in Louisville, KY.
Ford planned to move production of the Lincoln MKC to Mexico, not the entire plant.
At the end of 2015, “Ford announced a $1.3 billion investment in the Kentucky Truck Plant” to create 2,000 new jobs.
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