Statement: “We have automobile plants being built at levels we've never seen … and they're going up fast.”
President Donald Trump’s plan to impose widespread tariffs on foreign goods aims to persuade foreign manufacturers to produce their goods in U.S. factories and employ Americans.
During a recent interview with the conservative network Newsmax, Trump said this effort had already produced results.
"We have automobile plants being built at levels we've never seen anything like it, and they're going up fast," Trump said March 26.
When we asked White House staff for evidence, they cited recent expansion plan announcements from Hyundai, Stellantis and Honda.
However, automotive industry experts said Trump exaggerated. In most cases, these announcements represent reallocations of investments at existing facilities, not newly built plants. And they might or might not come to fruition.
It’s premature for the president to take credit for plant expansion given his short time in office, said Dimitry Anastakis, a University of Toronto business history professor and author of the 2024 book "The North American Auto Industry since NAFTA."
"Plants are planned years in advance," Anastakis said.
We found no data to confirm that the spate of recent announcements amounts to a record-setting level of automotive manufacturing investment.
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