Trump Wrongly Takes Credit for Ford Plants in Mexico

Donald Trump took credit for Ford Motor Co. deciding not to build new plants in Mexico. The only issue with that: Ford is going ahead with its plans to build south of the border.

Trump first retweeted a link to an article with the headline, “Trump successfully pressures Ford to move Mexican plant to Ohio.”

The article cited a CNNMoney report (with no link) that Ford is relocating its facility from Mexico to Youngstown, Ohio. However a spokeswoman for the company told The Washington Post that Ford does not have any plans for a plant in Youngstown.

In his perceived triumph, Trump took to Twitter to take sole credit for creating American jobs and looking out for the little guy.

Trump then followed up with another grammatically incorrect tweet asking a rhetorical question, dismissed that question, and finally asking us to imagine a world where that rhetorical question could actually be factual:

Finally Trump shouted to the heavens with a final tweet:

“FORD LISTENED TO ME, GREAT!”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Trump lied.

Ford never had plans to build a new plant in Ohio and Ford never changed their expansion plans to continue building a plant south of the border. Ford did have plans to shift assembly of some of their truck lines to their existing Avon Lake, Ohio plant. But that decision was made in 2011, a full 4 years before any candidate announced their intention to run for U.S. president.

As Northeast Ohio Media Group reported, the Donald Trump appears to have confused the automobile manufacturer’s expansion plan south of the border with the company’s decision to start production of medium-duty pickups that had previously been manufactured in Mexico. Production began four years after Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another presidential candidate, pushed tax incentives that included breaks for Ford’s plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, about 90 miles from Youngstown.

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