At a White House breakfast meeting, President Trump upped the pressure on U.S. automakers to keep plants and jobs in the U.S. but also promised that he was making the nation an easier place to do business.
Mr. Trump met with chief executives from General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which was the latest in a series of White House powwows with business and labor union leaders to suss out his economic plan.
“We’re bringing manufacturing back to the United States big league,” Mr. Trump told the auto executive at the start of the meeting. “We’re reducing taxes very substantially and we’re reducing unnecessary regulations. And we want regulations, but we want real regulation that mean something.”
Mr. Trump has used a carrot-and-stick strategy to keep jobs in the U.S., promising regulatory and tax relief with one hand while threatening with the other to slap a “border tax” on products imported from factories moved abroad.
Mr. Trump summed up his message in a tweet before the meeting: “I want new plants to be built here for cars sold here!”
At the meeting, he told them that the business climate would reverse from what he described as “inhospitable” under former President Obama.
“You’re going to find this to be from being very inhospitable to extremely hospitable. I think we’ll go down as one of the most friendly countries and right now it’s not,” Mr. Trump said.
At a meeting Monday with some of the country’s top business executives from industries ranging from technology to apparel, Mr. Trump touted his plan to slash corporate taxes from 35 percent to as low as 15 percent and to reduce federal regulations by as much as 75 percent.
Mr. Trump told the automobile executives that he was an environmentalist at heart but that environmental regulations were “out of control” and unnecessarily stifling business.
“We’re going to make it a very short process, and we’re going to either give you your permits or we’re not going to give you your permits. But you’re going to know very quickly,” he said. “And generally speaking, we’re going to be giving you your permits.”
He also reassured the Big Three automakers that “You’re not being singled out.”
Mr. Trump has been highly critical of U.S. automobile companies that move production to Mexico and has threatened to slap a “border tax” on imports by companies that use offshore factories.
Putting pressure on U.S. companies to “buy American and hire American” appeared to have paid some early dividends for Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Earlier this month, Ford scrapped plans for a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico and announced a $700 million investment in an existing factory in Flat Rock, Michigan.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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