Trump Says Ford Execs Thanked Him For Heavy Truck Tariffs

Things got off to a bit of a rocky start this past spring when President Donald Trump began implementing tariffs on a variety of imported goods, including automobiles, parts, and raw materials. Automakers have taken - in some cases - serious financial hits from those levies, but for Ford and its large domestic manufacturing footprint, such things can also provide it with a bit of a competitive advantage. That was certainly the case when Trump recently imposed tariffs on imported medium- and heavy-duty trucks, too.

Now, according to Reuters, Trump has said that executives from Ford and General Motors called and thanked him for implementing those tariffs this week, a move that sent the stock prices of both companies "soaring." "They told me that, without Tariffs, it would be a very hard, long 'slog' for Truck and Car Manufacturers in the United States," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

As Ford Authority reported earlier this month, both Ford and General Motors had been lobbying Trump to move forward with plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on imported medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which is something that Stellantis was also asking the administration to waive or soften. The reasoning behind that split pertains to the fact that Stellantis builds its medium-duty Ram trucks in Mexico and sells them in the U.S..

Trump ultimately opted to move forward with that plan, which drew praise from the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. Ford was reportedly arguing that forgoing these tariffs would give some of its rivals an unfair advantage in terms of costs, given the fact that it builds all of its medium- and heavy-duty trucks for the U.S. market domestically, using more expensive labor. GM also argued that if Stellantis was to receive a break, it would lead to other automakers asking for exemptions on tariffs.