President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that General Motors Co (GM), the largest automaker in the United States, should begin returning operations to the United States.
In the midst of the trade dispute with Beijing, Trump recalled that “large plants” of General Motors were taken to China before he assumed the presidency.
“General Motors, once the Detroit Giant, is now one of the smallest car manufacturers there,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“They took large plants to China (…) That despite the saving aid that the US gave them Now they should start moving back to America again?” he questioned.
The Bloomberg News agency has reported that the GM hourly workforce of 46,000 American workers had lagged behind Fiat Chrysler and that it was now the smallest among Detroit automakers.
Over the past four decades, GM has drastically reduced the size of its general workforce in the United States, which in 1979 reached almost 620,000 employees.
Trump’s allusion to GM comes amid the labor talks of the United Auto Workers union with the three major automakers in Detroit before the deadline on September 1.
The president had also criticized GM for putting together vehicles in Mexico and for ending production at plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Maryland.
