GM’s CEO admitted proposed tariffs on cars imported from Mexico and Canada would have a big impact, but said president and automaker shared some ambitions
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- GM CEO Mary Barra has described the automaker and new president Donald Trump as “very goal-aligned.”
- The General Motors chief said both sides want a strong economy and understand automotive jobs are important.
- Barra made the comments while acknowledging that Trump’s proposed import tariffs could hit GM’s business hard.
GM head Mary Barra raised a few eyebrows this week when she claimed the automaker and President Donald Trump are “goal-aligned” despite Trump’s plans to introduce tariffs that Barra admits could have a “very substantial” impact on GM’s business.
“I think we’re very goal-aligned,” the CEO told guests at the Automotive Press Association event on Wednesday, before going on to explain just what the two usually opposing sides see eye-to-eye about.
Related: Trump’s Tariffs Could Cut 17% From Automaker Profits
“We want a strong economy. We want a strong manufacturing base in this country. We agree automotive jobs are important,” Detroit Free Press reports Barra saying. But she made no bones about the difficulty GM (and other automakers) face, both in terms of the uncertainty in the short term, and the potential fallout from Trump’s decisions later during his time in office.
“We’ll have to see what the policies will be,” Barra said. “It’s hard for me to predict what will happen. We’re doing a lot of scenario planning, and we’ll adjust accordingly.”
Barra admitted that Trump’s proposal to place a 25 percent tariff on vehicles imported to the US from Mexico and Canada (where GM has production sites) “could have a very substantial impact” on its profitability, as could scrapping the $7,500 EV tax credit.
Although Trump and Barra have sometimes been at loggerheads, and she was the recipient of the president’s anger on social media over GM cost-cutting measures, Barra described her sometime foe as a good listener. GM will be hoping that he’s still willing to listen to what Barra has to say and not listen too intently to the opinions of Tesla boss Elon Musk – soon to be in charge of the much-hyped Department of Government Efficiency.
“Any time you have an administrative change, there’s policy changes that occur,” Barra said, per The Detroit News. “We’ve been working with any every administration for the last several decades, and General Motors will continue to do that. But I’m actually looking forward to working with the president and with the administration, because I think we can grow the importance of the auto industry and manufacturing.”
