French Presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen is throwing her weight behind Donald Trump’s drive to tax vehicle manufacturers into relocating production back to the US from low-cost economies as she advocates a similar move for France.
Trump – whose Presidential inauguration took place last Friday (20 January) in Washington – has criticised a number of high-profile companies such as Ford and General Motors for producing cars in Mexico and has threatened a 35% border tax for imports into the US.
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In a move with significant echoes of his Presidential campaign which targeted rustbelt States such as Michigan and Ohio, Trump is pushing a protectionist agenda that has already sent some automakers such as Ford scrambling to announce it would scrap plans to build a new plant at San Luis Potosi in Mexico.
At the same time, the American manufacturer announced a strategy to invest more heavily in electric vehicles and to add related jobs at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant.
In France, some candidates on the left of the political spectrum have also been reported as supporting similar moves to shifting manufacture away from low-cost auto centres as Presidential elections loom large in May this year.
With the current incumbent, Francois Hollande deciding not even to contest the French left primaries and his Socialist Party widely thought not to make it through the first round, the field looks largely left to the Republicain, Francois Fillon and Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, with the latter firmly attaching herself to a Trumpian vision of automobile production.
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By GlobalData“I have been asking for this for years; economic patriotism, intelligent patriotism,” said Le Pen on television station, France 2. “He [Trump] is saying to American manufacturers if you want to go and make your cars abroad, well, you will pay a tax in reimporting them into the US.
“French businesses – they cannot escape without impunity from taxes they should pay in France – they can’t delocalise without impunity in creating conditions or aggravating mass unemployment. You will have to make a choice – the choice of economic patriotism. You [consumers] won’t pay any more [for cars].”
The issue of sourcing as much as possible close to home has come under fierce scrutiny of late, both during Trump’s campaign and now in France, with the newly-installed American President referring to it again recently, threatening to impose a 35% border tax on the free trade arrangements which exist for shipments of vehicles from Mexican plants for sale in the US.
While that 35% has been talked about but not firmed up, Trump called a meeting of American CEO’s at which he said he would place a ‘very major’ border tax on companies which moved production overseas and export products back into the US.
“A company that wants to fire all of its people in the US, and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the US – that’s not going to happen,” Trump said.
He added he was prepared to slash regulations by up to 75% if they agree not to move jobs outside the US.
France’s primaries of the left have resulted in former Prime Minister, Manuel Valls and Benoît Hamon now in a straight shoot out to secure the Presidential nomination, running against Fillon, whose party did not immediately return calls from just-auto.
