What are these “exports” you speak of?
by digby
For an allegedly sophisticated businessman, Trump doesn’t seem to understand how any of this works:
In an interview with German news magazine Bild published this weekend, Trump said that BMW should reconsider plans to build a $1 billion plant in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The automaker plans to begin building the BMW 3 Series sedan there in 2019.
[…]
BMW says that it will sell the cars it makes in Mexico all over the world, including in the United States, regardless of Trump’s plan to impose a tarriff on any Mexican-built car that come into the U.S.The new Mexican plant is meant to be a boost to the Series 3 production that’s already underway in Germany and China — BMW isn’t relocating any jobs to Mexico.
BMW’s largest plant in the world is in Spartanburg, S.C., that employs 8,800 workers. The facility assembled more than 400,000 X model crossover vehicles last year, 70% of which were shipped to other countries. In fact, BMW is the largest U.S. exporter of cars.
“The BMW Group is at home in the USA,” said the company’s statement.
BMW builds far more cars at its U.S. plant than it sells here. In 2016 it sold 288,000 in the U.S.
It’s a multi-national company that both exports and imports cars, some of which are manufactured here and some of which are not. I know that’s complicated for Trump and his voters to understand but if he wants to insure that Americans have high paying manufacturing jobs he might want to take exports into consideration before he spouts off like a fool on these subjects.
But hey, Trump’s gonna Trump and apparently there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
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