BMW will stick to its plan of building a new $1 billion plant in Mexico, despite the threats coming from President-elect Donald Trump, who said that he’ll impose a 35 percent tariff on imported cars.
In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Donald Trump criticized German automakers like BMW, Mercedes and VW for not producing more cars in their U.S. factories.
“If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 percent tax,” Trump said during the interview.
“I would tell BMW that if you are building a factory in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the USA, without a 35 percent tax, then you can forget that,” Trump said.
The Bavarian carmaker though will follow its original plan and finish construction of the new plant in San Luis Potosi which is going to begin building up to 150,000 units of the next-generation 3-Series in 2019, reports AutoNews.
BMW said that production planning should follow the market; their South African plant will cease exporting 3-Series to the US in 2019 and start building the X3 SUV instead. “Simply put, we are installing 3-series capacity in a new plant to supply global markets. We will decide where those cars go depending on the international framework conditions applicable nearer start of production in 2019,” Ian Robertson, BMW brand’s board member for sales, told the publication.
Peter Schwarzenbauer, BMW’s member of the Board of Management also repeated to reporters that the company will stick to its plan and finish building the new facilities in Mexico.
BMW is the latest company in Trump’s list of carmakers he warns, following Toyota and Ford among others, with the latter cancelling its plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Mexico.
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