2024-09-25 10:16:25
Donald Trump promoted his economic plans during a campaign appearance. If he wins the election, he wants to ensure that the USA takes jobs away from Germany.
Donald Trump’s economic plans are likely to cause unrest in Berlin: “I want German car companies to become American car companies,” the Republican said on Tuesday at a campaign event in the hotly contested US state of Georgia. “I want them to build their factories here.”
But it’s not just German carmakers that are in focus: “The centerpiece of my economic plan is a manufacturing renaissance,” the Republican told his cheering supporters in Savannah, home to one of the country’s largest ports. “You’re going to see a mass exodus of manufacturing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to North Carolina, from Germany to here in Georgia,” Trump said.
An industry ambassador will convince foreign companies of the plans – with “lowest taxes, lowest energy costs and lowest regulatory burden” for companies that manufacture products in the USA.
At the same time, Trump again threatened companies that want to relocate their production to Mexico, for example, with high import tariffs of up to 100 percent. German car manufacturers have been producing in the USA for decades: BMW in South Carolina, Mercedes in Alabama and VW in Tennessee.
Trump has placed tariffs and tax cuts at the heart of his economic program during the election campaign. He is in a close race with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the November 5 election. She is expected to present her own economic program in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
Here you can read an overview of the former president’s proposals so far:
During his appearance, Trump also repeated his false claim that Germany had once again started building coal-fired power plants after a failed exit from fossil fuels. “Germany tried, but then they replaced Angela with someone else, and that other person is now building a coal-fired power plant in Germany every week,” Trump said, referring to former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and her successor Olaf Scholz (SPD).
Trump had already made this claim during the TV debate against his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris a few weeks ago. The Foreign Office responded to X: “Whether you like it or not: The German energy system is fully functional, with more than 50 percent renewables.” Coal and nuclear power plants are not being built, but rather shut down. “By 2038 at the latest, coal will be off the grid.”
Unfortunately, the Foreign Ministry’s statement was not entirely correct either, which is why the Ministry of Economic Affairs sent a thinly veiled correction in German: “Germany gets well over 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar and burns less coal than it has since the 1960s.”