GM CEO Mary Barra stands firm on production: We will 'build where we sell'
Even though President-elect Donald Trump has moved on this week to criticizing actress Meryl Streep, General Motors CEO Mary Barra emphasized Monday that the automaker will continue "to build where we sell" a week after Trump threatened to impose a stiff tariff on the Chevrolet Cruzes that GM imports to the U.S. from Mexico.
"We have more than 40 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and over the last two years alone we have investment more than $11 billion creating thousands of new jobs in the U.S., as well as recruiting technical talent," Barra said Monday morning after Chevrolet unveiled the 2018 Chevrolet Traverse at the Detroit auto show.
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Trade experts have said that it would be highly unusual for Trump to impose a tariff on a single company, as he threatened to do last week with GM and Toyota. It is specifically barred under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
He could ignore the trade agreement, but it would set a precedent, according to trade experts. Punishing GM with a tariff on its Mexico-made cars -- or any other U.S. company that has shifted production there -- could prompt a Mexican response that would hurt U.S. exports and raise the price of all goods from the country.
GM might be able to challenge any Trump tariff in court and win, Gary Hufbauer, a researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told the Chicago Tribune last week. The 1974 law that Trump would likely cite as the source of his trade authority allows presidents to target countries, not companies.
Trump has created what he calls the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, made up of 16 business leaders, including Barra.
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Asked what she would tell the President-elect in order to protect free trade, Barra said, "Our general principle is to build where we sell, and that is primarily what we do both in China and the United States. We're going to work to make the business stronger and make America stronger, and also recognize that we are a global company."
