Along those lines, Fields and other Ford executives Wednesday outlined an aggressive plan to invest $4.5 billion over the next four years.
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Trump had told the congregation, “It was just announced that Ford is moving all small vehicle production – all of it, 100 percent – to Mexico over the next two to three years”.
Ford Motor Co. has announced that they will move the production of small cars from the U.S.to Mexico as a means to reinvent the automobile market’s business in the hopes of cutting production costs and increase profitability. He later said he would impose up to a 35 percent tariff on Ford if they refused to bring foreign production back to the U.S.
Back in April, the company announced $2.5 billion in investments to construct a new plant in Mexico.
On Wednesday, Fields confirmed during an investor event the company is shifting all of its small auto production to Mexico, a move that observers had seen in the works for the better part of a year.
Ford now makes some Fiestas in Mexico, but has kept production for some of its Focus and C-Max models in suburban Detroit.
Chesbrough says he doesn’t think the new operations in Mexico are actually pulling supplier jobs out of MI. Financial agreements between the US and Mexico have long allowed major global companies to double their profits while giving very little to Mexico’s local economy.
“We create jobs in numerous places where we do business”, he said. The company cited Mexico’s lower costs as the driving force behind the business decision.
“I don’t know how you can talk down American workers and American businesses and want to be president of the United States”, said Clinton at the time.
Last week, Ford lowered its 2016 pretax profit forecast to $10.2 billion from at least $10.8 billion because of a charge in the third quarter for an expanded vehicle recall. “My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving and that our economy can never grow as it did once before”.
Fields also added that their foreign operations will ultimately result in a positive effect on Ford and give the company more opportunities to continue domestic investment. Fiat Chrysler, for example, announced in July it was essentially ending manufacturing in the US and potentially shipping the work to Mexico. The stock is down nearly 14 percent so far this year. Americans don’t want to buy small vehicles at the moment (actually, they nearly never want to buy small cars), so Ford’s only rationale for continuing to build them is to satisfy more stringent federal fuel-economy standards in the future; and to have small cars around if gas prices spike and Americans go through one of their brief flirtations with Euro-scale rides.
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In this January 12, 2015, file photo, Ford vehicles sit on the lot at a auto dealership, in Brandon, Fla.
