Posted on 01/24/2017 5:29:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it will invest $600 million and add 400 jobs at one of its U.S. plants, making the announcement a few weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump took aim at the Japanese automaker’s investments in Mexico.
The project is part of Toyota’s plan to spend $10 billion on capital investments in the United States over the next five years, as announced on Jan. 9.
The investment will be used for retooling, new equipment and cutting-edge technologies at its Princeton, Indiana, plant in order to manufacture an additional 40,000 Highlanders per year, Toyota said in a statement.
The production is scheduled to begin in fall 2019. The plant made more than 400,000 vehicles in 2016 and currently employs about 5,300 workers.
“This expansion project is part of Toyota’s localization strategy to build vehicles where they are sold,” the company said, making no reference to Trump.
On Jan. 5, Trump railed against Toyota for its 2015 announcement of plans to build a Mexico factory. Trump said in a tweet that the company should build the plant in the United States or pay a “big border tax.”
Toyota announced the $10 billion plan on Jan. 9, saying that it has spent $21.9 billion on direct investment in the United States and has 10 manufacturing facilities, 1,500 dealerships and 136,000 employees in the country.
Indiana is where Vice President Mike Pence served as governor. Toyota President Akio Toyoda met with Pence in Washington on Jan. 10.
Since his election in November, Trump has been touting his “America First” economic agenda by pressing companies to keep jobs and production in the United States. He won such key industrial states as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania with promises of protecting jobs.
On Monday, Trump accused Japan and China of engaging in trade practices that he said are “not fair” to American companies, while singling out auto trade with Japan as falling into that category.
“If they’re going to charge tax to our countries — if as an example, we sell a car into Japan and they do things to us that make it impossible to sell cars in Japan … it’s not fair,” he said in a meeting with business leaders.
In a related move, Trump on Tuesday urged the chief executives of the Big Three U.S. automakers to build more cars in the United States.
In return, the Republican president promised to cut regulations and taxes to make it more attractive for businesses to operate in the country.
Ford Motor Co. CEO Mark Fields said after a White House meeting with Trump that he and other U.S. auto industry leaders asked the president to correct a strong dollar so as to boost exports of American-made vehicles.
“We’ve repeatedly said that the mother of all trade barriers is currency manipulation,” he told reporters after the talks also attended by chief executives of General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.
Ok, does anyone remember so many factory announcements happening in a 2 week period before??
Toyota is in the process of fleeing California for Texas.
Unfortunately, they are bringing their California employees with them.
That’s only 400 jobs. Obama created eleventy billion jobs. /libtard
Automotive jobs usually have good pay and benefits.
This is the car company that gave a huge amount of money to Jesse Jackson when he claimed that one of their TV commercials was racist.
This is the car company that gave a huge amount of money to Jesse Jackson when he claimed that one of their TV commercials was racist.
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