Trump’s Problematic Claims on the Auto Industry

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. In Michigan, former President Donald Trump has courted voters in the auto industry with false and no-evidence claims about Chinese auto plants in Mexico and auto industry growth under his administration. He has claimed that Chinese companies didn’t build auto plants in Mexico when he was in office because he threatened them with high tariffs, “but right now they’re building some of the largest auto plants anywhere in the world ever built” and they will “wipe you out.” There is only one, small Chinese car manufacturing plant in Mexico right now, experts say, and it was announced in 2017, during Trump’s term. Other companies say they plan to build plants, but they haven’t done so yet. Trump has promised “to get the auto workers’ jobs back like it was 30 years ago and 40 years ago before everybody left,” saying “we were all set to” bring back the industry “and then we had the COVID disaster come in.” We can’t predict the future, but auto industry jobs declined between 2019 and 2020, before the pandemic, showing no evidence of a pending boom, as Trump said. Both the Trump campaign and...