If Donald Trump's pair of tweets from shortly after 9 PM on Thursday night are to be believed, he did a major solid for the automotive workers in Louisville, Kentucky.
The problem, unfortunately, is that the tweets aren't truthful.
As The New York Times explained on Friday morning, Ford was never actually planning on closing its Louisville plant, which manufactures the Lincoln MKC sport utility vehicle. Their plan had been to expand production of the Ford Escape, which is also made in Louisville, and move production of the Lincoln MKC to Mexico. No jobs were in danger of being lost at the Louisville plant.
Perhaps out of deference to the president-elect, Ford announced shortly after Trump's tweets that it would keep MKC production in Louisville.
"Our small Lincoln utility vehicle made at the Louisville Assembly plant will stay in Kentucky," Ford spokeswoman Christin Baker said in a statement. "We are encouraged that President-elect Trump and the new Congress will pursue policies that will improve U.S. competitiveness and make it possible to keep production of this vehicle here in the United States."
One of the defining issues of Trump's presidential campaign was his denunciation of American trade policies, which he claimed among other things allowed companies to move American jobs overseas. If elected, Trump vowed to flex his executive muscle to compel businesses to keep jobs in this country, frequently singling out Ford's exportation of jobs to Mexico as a prime example. He has even threatened to impose a 35 percent tariff on vehicles manufactured in that country.
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