Kamala Harris, during a rally in Pennsylvania on November 4. Photo credit DAVID MUSE/EPA/MaxPPP.
Nothing is known about Carlos Tavares’ political opinions. On the other hand, if the boss of Stellantis was an American voter, we know that he would not vote for Donald Trump. Because the possibly planned relocations of Chrysler and Jeep factories are not to the taste of the Republican candidate.
According to the Reuters agency, the Republican candidate declared: “tell Stellantis that if they plan to move, we will slap them with 100% tariffs on every car…and they won’t move.” Simple threat or real economic ambition? Still, for Donald Trump, as for Kamala Harris, the American automobile industry is more than an anecdotal subject: it is a real political issue. Among other things because Michigan is one of these « swing states » that can swing the election one way or the other.
The Michigan and Motorcity issue
This corner of the northern United States has been the automobile state since the beginning of the 20th century. It is in Detroit, its largest city, but not its capital which is Lansing, that American manufacturers have their headquarters, from Chrysler to General Motors via Ford. Even though the latter is located in Dearborn, a stone’s throw from Motorcity.
Those who were called in glorious times the « big three » have experienced, and their hundreds of thousands of workers with them, major upheavals for forty years. And since 2016, Michigan, traditionally won by the Democrats, has been rather receptive to Trump’s populist speeches. So the latter tries to keep their vote, and Kamala Harris tries to win it back.
The latter scored a point, or rather, it was her predecessor to the supreme candidacy who obtained it. In the fall of 2023, the powerful, and almost unique, auto union UAW incited its members to go on strike for several weeks to obtain substantial raises. Joe Biden, unique in the history of the United States for a president, himself went to the picket lines to support them. Not only did the workers obtain a 25% increase a few weeks later, but Shawn Fain, the head of the UAW, who works at Stellantis, asked his troops to vote for Biden, then Kamala Harris.
Obviously, Trump did not admit defeat. To win the votes, he began by designating the devil and the person responsible for all the evils of the automobile: the electric car, a speech which appealed even to the members of the UAW, divided on the subject of the vote for years. month.
In a speech he gave in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state neighboring Michigan where, among other places, the headquarters of Harley-Davidson is located, the Republican candidate spoke “green scam” when talking about battery-powered cars. And to castigate the IRA, (the inflation reduction act) and its 300 billion dollars granted by the Biden administration to promote the energy transition, and the switch to electric cars.
A changing vision of the electric car
Obviously, Trump prefers the good old V8s to batteries, but his opinion is rather fluctuating about the transition that the automobile industry is experiencing. On the one hand, since the boss of Tesla placed tens of millions of dollars on the table for donations to the Republicans, their candidate has somewhat changed his speech on the electric car, going so far as to recognize, alongside Elon Musk, in a meeting in Georgia last August, “I’m for electric cars, I have to be because Elon has strongly supported me. »
Then, according to observers, and according to TotalEnergies officials, Trump will not call the Ira into question. Because many industrialists have taken advantage of it, and wish to take advantage of it again, to repatriate their factories to the United States, a desire for relocation defended by the Republican. On the other hand, because the Congress, through which this repeal should pass, remains (very slightly) Democratically dominant and will remain so at least until the mid-term elections in two years.
In the end, American manufacturers have little to fear from this election, as far as their small businesses are concerned. On the other hand, European brands, for their part, have everything to fear in the event of the election of Donald Trump. Luca de Meo is banking on the United States to reach the 150,000 Alpines he wants to sell within 5 years, without manufacturing them locally.
Same problem for the Volkswagen group which wants to land there with Cupra. As for Stellantis, in addition to the relocation of its American brands which could cause it problems, the galaxy is planning a return to the US of its Italian brand Alfa Romeo. But if the future Alpine A390 SUV, the Cupra Terramar or the replacement for the Alfa Stelvio are saddled with a 100% tax on entry into the country, we are not giving much of their tires.
