Jan. 25, 2018—Foreign auto manufacturers are now producing more vehicles in the U.S. than all other companies, for the first time in U.S. history, Forbes noted in a recent report. That’s based on projections for the first quarter of 2018 from Wards Auto.
One key: workers in the largely southern U.S. states where foreign manufacturers tend to operate—states like Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas—aren’t unionized.
In less than two weeks, when the U.S. releases annual trade data, it’s likely to reveal that, for the sixth consecutive year, auto imports will have set a record.
While foreign OEMs are producing more vehicles inside the U.S. borders than their domestic counterparts, their imports are also growing (one technicality to consider here: many vehicles brought into the U.S. are made literally just down the road from Detroit, in the Canadian province of Ontario; Canadian imports currently account for nearly 25 percent of all U.S. imports).
So, in the view of the White House, an OEM like Ford undergoing assembly in Canada is bad, but a South Korean Kia being manufactured in Georgia is good, the Forbes article notes.
In coming years, Forbes also feels Chinese and Indian auto manufacturers could further encroach upon an industry that had been the exclusive realm of the U.S.
