The CEO of Ford Motor Company dodged CNN’s Poppy Harlow‘s question to him about whether Donald J. Trump was right when he said Ford will fire all of its employees in the United States and move all the jobs to Mexico.
“You know, Poppy, it is really unfortunate when politics get in the way and the facts are: Ford’s investment in the U.S. and commitment to American jobs has never been stronger,” said Mark Fields, who took over the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker in July 2014.
“So, Mr. Trump is wrong, correct?” Harlow asked.
“That is correct,” he said. The jobs going to Mexico are new jobs and the American workers now building the Focus will be tasked with other production lines.
“Facts are stubborn things sometimes,” he said. “We are going to continue to lay them out in a season of a lot of political activity.”
Harlow then asked why Ford is creating 2,800 new jobs to Mexico at all? Why not create more jobs in America?
“We create jobs in many of the places where we do business,” he said. “We are a global company and we produce in many different places and this is about growing our company globally.”
Fields refused to comment on Trump’s threat of a 35 percent tariff on American cars coming in from Mexico.
Marks said Ford has created more than 28,000 new jobs in the U.S. in the last five years and the company is the top American producer of vehicles.
Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, was reacting to Ford’s Thursday announcement that it was making major changes in its manufacturing division.
The Detroit Free Press reported:
Ford plans to eventually shift all North American small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico, CEO Mark Fields told investors Tuesday, even though the company’s production investments in Mexico have become a lightning rod for controversy in the presidential election.
“Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States,” Fields said at a daylong investor conference in Dearborn.
The paper also noted that Mexico has become a “Mecca” for car makers and the country’s auto production is now larger than Canada’s. Ford’s Fusion and Fiesta models are already made in Mexico. The new Ford plant is expected to cost $1.6 billion to build.
Harlow asked Fields if Ford will cut a single American job because of the move to Mexico. “Absolutely not. Zero,” he said.
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