Trump warns Toyota to invest in the US

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump targeted Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) on Thursday, threatening to impose a hefty fee on the world's largest automaker if it builds its Corolla cars for the U.S. market at a plant in Mexico.

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax," Trump said in a post on Twitter.

It was Trump's latest broadside against automakers building cars in Mexico and first against a foreign automaker. The president-elect's attacks on investments by companies in Mexico have cast a shadow over cross-border production networks central to more than $583 billion a year in trade between the two countries.

The value of the Mexican peso has skidded amid fears that Trump's policies would harm Latin America's second-biggest economy -- and declined Thursday after Trump's tweet.

Toyota, which announced plans to build a new Mexican facility in Guanajuato in April 2015, said it would not take away from U.S. employment.

"Toyota looks forward to collaborating with the Trump administration to serve in the best interests of consumers and the automotive industry," Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said.

Trump's tweet confuses Toyota's existing Baja plant with the planned $1 billion plant in Guanajuato, where construction got under way in November. A Trump spokeswoman did not return a request seeking additional comment.

Baja produces around 100,000 pickup trucks and truck beds annually. The Guanajuato plant will build Corollas and have an annual capacity of 200,000 when it comes online in 2019, shifting production of the small car from Canada.

The Japanese automaker's American Depositary Receipts fell after Trump's tweet and closed down 0.6 percent at $120.44 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda said in Japan on Thursday that the automaker has no immediate plans to curb production in Mexico, preferring to wait until after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration before deciding whether to make any changes.

"We will consider our option as we see what policies the incoming president adopts," Toyoda said at an industry gathering in Tokyo on Thursday before Trump's tweet, when asked whether his company was considering any changes to a production plant the automaker was building in Mexico.

Automakers in the United States have been slammed by Trump for building cars in lower-cost factories south of the border, which he said costs American jobs. Pressure to curb that production intensified this week after Ford Motor scrapped plans to build a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Mexico after Trump harshly criticized the investment.

Ford, however, still plans to shift production of small cars to Mexico from Michigan, even as it uses $700 million from the planned Mexico investment to expand its operations in Flat Rock, Michigan, and add 700 jobs.

Reuters