Plans for Ford to manufacture its Focus model in Mexico have been completely abandoned, the company announced on Tuesday.
Speaking on a conference call with reporters, president of global operations for Ford, Joe Hinrichs, said “we’ve done a lot of research and consumers care a lot more about the quality and the value than they do about the sourcing location.” He added that “iPhones are produced in China, for example, and people don’t really talk about it.”
In response to a question regarding how Trump might react to the move, Hinrichs said “China gets a lot of attention. We’ll see how this plays out. But we believe this is a much better plan for our business globally, and it frees up from the original plan about US$1 billion of capital that we can reinvest in business.”