Trump Told American Cars Need To Be Better If Germans Are Actually Going To Buy Them

Donald Trump isn’t even in the White House yet, but already he seems to be having a profound effect on the car industry. We’ve already seen Ford can its plans to build a new plant in Mexico following criticism from the President Elect, and he’s talked of slapping massive import taxes on cars built outside of the USA more than once.

His latest target is BMW, via an interview with The Times and Bild. While blasting German chancellor Angela Merkel for her handling of the refugee crisis, Trump also proposed the idea of a 35 per cent import tariff on German-built BMWs. The mere talk of such a tax dropped BMW’s shares by 0.85 per cent, Daimler’s by 1.54 per cent and VW’s by 1.07 per cent, The Guardian reports.

Trump also criticised what he called the “one-way street” of German cars in the US vs American cars in Germany. “If you go down Fifth Avenue everyone has a Mercedes Benz in front of his house, isn’t that the case? How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not very many, maybe none at all,” he said.

This morning though, German deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (above) hit back at Trump’s Merkel criticisms. Most amusing was what he had to say about that “one-way street”. When asked what Trump should do to get more Germans buying American cars, his answer was: “Build better cars”. If that doesn’t qualify as a mic drop, I’m not sure what does.

Responding to the tariff threats, Gabriel pointed out that BMW’s largest factory is actually in South Carolina. He added:

“The US car industry would have a bad awakening if all the supply parts that aren’t being built in the US were to suddenly come with a 35 per cent tariff. I believe it would make the US car industry weaker, worse and above all more expensive. I would wait and see what the Congress has to say about that, which is mostly full of people who want the opposite of Trump.”