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President Trump addressing his cabinet on Tuesday
At a White House Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said his policies, including tariffs, are the reason domestic auto production is up.
Yes, production appears to be slightly higher, but Trump wildly exaggerated the figures. He’s not even close.
“Domestic auto production is up 18,000 cars a month, and we haven’t even started yet because a lot of these plants aren’t built,” Trump told Cabinet members in a public meeting. “It’s up 18,000 because Ford, General Motors, and a couple of others — Stellantis — are taking their existing plants and, as quickly as they can, adding onto them.”
Eighteen thousand a month?
Sam Fiorani, vice president of Global Vehicle Forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, told the Detroit Free Press that auto production since Trump’s inauguration is up a total of about 1,000 cars from February through July compared to 2024. That comes to roughly 166 more cars per month.
Under Trump's claim, the increase would amount to 108,000 more cars during that six-month stretch, not 1,000.
“No new plants have been built, and even plant expansions couldn’t be operational in just six months,” Fiorani told the Free Press.
Fiorani tells Deadline Detroit:
"The 18,000/unit figure launched this line of questioning. I tried to figure out where that number came from because it’s usually a real number just used in the wrong way. In this instance, I could not find any related number that looked close."
Watch Trump talk about the auto industry below.
