Tesla Gigafactory Mexico and its future are absolutely in limbo now that President-Elect Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the Presidential Election.
However, the country’s economy chief, Marcelo Ebrard, is still hopeful he can strike a deal with CEO Elon Musk, whom he plans to meet with soon.
Ebrard spoke on local radio in Mexico on Thursday and said he will try to meet with Musk soon. The meeting should bring more clarity to the situation now that the election has ended.
Tesla planned to take a look at the factory after the election, and it remains unclear if the automaker is still planning on building.
Musk said during the Q3 2023 Earnings Call that Tesla would “definitely” build Giga Mexico. It was just concerned about the high interest rate environment at the time:
“No, we’re definitely making the factory in Mexico. We feel very good about that. We put a lot of effort into looking at different locations, and we feel very good about that location, and we are going to build a factory there. And it’s going to be great.”
However, Trump says he will impose tariffs of 200 percent on vehicles imported from Mexico, which would potentially be an issue for Tesla and might interfere with the point of the plant.
Musk said earlier this year:
“We’re currently on pause on Giga Mexico. I think we need to see just where things stand after the election…Trump has said that he will put heavy tariffs on vehicles produced in Mexico, so it doesn’t make sense to invest a lot in Mexico if that is going to be the case. So we will kind of need to see how things play out politically.”
Tesla would likely not use the factory for only Mexico and South America. It would increase production for the United States and support deliveries, as well.
So this makes things difficult, and justifying a new factory would be a hard argument to make.
In July, Mexico said Tesla never registered a crucial investment application for the factory. Raquel Buenrostro, the Secretary of the Economy, said Tesla had not put any official documentation together that it would be building a plant there. Tesla had made official announcements confirming its intention to build.
Now that the election has ended, Tesla’s plans might have changed.
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