Fact-checking Donald Trump on whether automobile plants are ‘being built at levels we’ve never seen’

President Donald Trump’s plan to impose widespread tariffs on foreign goods aims to persuade foreign manufacturers to produce their goods in U.S. factories and employ Americans.

During a recent interview with the conservative network Newsmax, Trump said this effort had already produced results. 

"We have automobile plants being built at levels we've never seen anything like it, and they're going up fast," Trump said March 26. 

When we asked White House staff for evidence, they cited recent expansion plan announcements from carmakers Hyundai, Stellantis and Honda. 

However, automotive industry experts said Trump exaggerated. In most cases, these announcements represent reallocations of investments at existing facilities, not newly built plants. And they may or may not come to fruition.

It’s premature for the president to take credit for plant expansion given his short time in office, said Dimitry Anastakis, a University of Toronto business history professor and author of the 2024 book "The North American Auto Industry since NAFTA. "Plants are planned years in advance," he said.

We found no data to confirm that the spate of recent announcements amounts to a record-setting level of automotive manufacturing investment.

Three foreign-based carmakers have recently said they would invest significant sums in U.S. production.

Hyundai. In February, the Korean carmaker announced that it would increase its production capacity at its "metaplant" in Georgia from 300,000 to 500,000 vehicles per year, producing both electric vehicles and hybrids. It also announced that it would increase output by an unspecified amount at its Alabama plant, which currently produces 356,100 vehicles per year. 

In March, Hyundai announced at a White House event that it was initiating a roughly $21 billion investment in the U.S., including a $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana to provide material for the company’s EVs.

Hyundai Motor Co. CEO José Muñoz told Axios that the "the best way" for the company to "navigate tariffs is to increase localization."

Honda. In March, Reuters reported, based on unnamed sources, that the Japanese carmaker would manufacture its next-generation Civic hybrid vehicle in Indiana rather than Mexico. 

Honda had initially planned to manufacture the next-generation Civic in Guanajuato, Mexico, starting in November 2027, Reuters wrote. But it now plans to build the new Civic at an existing plant in Greensburg, Indiana, beginning in May 2028, with an expected annual production of 210,000, according to Reuters’ reporting. 

Stellantis. In late January, the Dutch company that owns Chrysler, Jeep, Fiat and other car brands announced that it would invest $5 billion in the U.S., including reopening an assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, that once produced Jeep Cherokees and had been shuttered since February 2023. The company now plans to make midsize trucks there starting in 2027.

A closer look at the three companies’ announcements highlights differences with Trump's framing.

First, they are announcements of plans set to occur several years from now, which means that the companies could modify the plans before they come to fruition.

Second, none of the moves involve "automobile plants being built," as Trump put it, but ramping up production at existing plants or reopening a closed plant. Hyundai’s planned Louisiana steel plant will provide materials for EVs.

Greig Mordue, a manufacturing policy professor at McMaster University, said companies like Hyundai, Honda and Stellantis are likely preparing to accelerate already decided launches to adapt to political realities. 

"They will be looking at models that will be coming to the end of their natural cycle, something that occurs at five or so year intervals, and getting ready to announce ‘investments’ to continue the new version of the model at those plants," Mordue said. "Those launches can be positioned as ‘wins’" for Trump. 

We did not find any long-term data to put the scope of the three recent carmaker announcements into a historical context, but the past few years have seen something of a renaissance in new automobile manufacturing investment, much of it in electric vehicles.

From 2000 to the end of September 2024, companies announced $208.8 billion of investments in electric vehicle manufacturing and the creation of about 240,000 jobs, according to Atlas Public Policy, a research and consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

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stated on March 11, 2025 in a White House press briefing

“Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.”

A big factor in this build-out, experts said, are two laws signed by President Joe Biden, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided federal incentives to redouble the U.S. manufacturing base. 

Of the $208.8 billion of investments tracked by Atlas, more than half was announced since Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. About three-quarters of that investment was under construction or operational by October 2024, the group said.

"It's clear that this is part of an ongoing, multi-year trend upwards," said Atlas’ founder, Nick Nigro.

Other types of manufacturing have also seen a distinct uptick since the passage of those laws; according to the Treasury Department, overall manufacturing construction spending, adjusted for inflation, has doubled since the end of 2021.

The Trump White House downplayed the value of Biden-era investments, pointing to a Financial Times analysis that found roughly 40% of the investments funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and another Biden-signed bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, were paused or delayed, totaling $84 billion. 

The White House also cited news reports of auto manufacturers that abandoned electric vehicle goals in 2024, including Volvo, Ford and Mercedes-Benz.

Trump said, "We have automobile plants being built at levels we've never seen … and they're going up fast."

The White House pointed to announcements of major U.S. investments by Hyundai, Honda and Stellantis since Trump took office. 

With one exception, these were reallocations of investments at existing facilities, rather than new plants. Building a plant, or even increasing production at an existing plant, can take years, and it remains to be seen whether these plans will come to fruition.

Trump came into office after several years of automotive manufacturing construction investments under Biden. Two months into Trump’s administration, it’s too early to say whether his policies have generated additional industry growth. We found no data to support his statement that the current growth plans are unprecedented.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

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