In a decision to position for long-term tariff avoidance, Mercedes Benz will shift production of their GLC (compact SUV) to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, away from Bremen, Germany.
Previously, the German automaker had shifted manufacturing of large SUV lines to the USA to avoid the pre-existing 25% ‘chicken tax.’ However, the smaller and less expensive crossover types were still made in Germany and shipped to the USA. As the shipping vessels returned to Germany, they would take some of the SUV inventory back with them. It was the most cost-effective solution, given the nature of the tariff situation.
Now, with larger import tariffs against all vehicles, Mercedes has shifted their business model to essentially an outcome where all USA marketed/sold vehicles will be manufactured in the USA, and all EU marketed/sold vehicles will be manufactured in Germany.
(Via Daily Mail) – Mercedes-Benz will shift production of one of its vehicles to Tuscaloosa, Alabama by 2027. The German luxury carmaker’s move is the latest response from an industry caught in the expensive crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s 25 percent tariffs.
The decision marks a potential win for Trump’s protectionist trade agenda, which aims to boost US manufacturing by slapping steep tariffs on foreign-made goods. But there are many complicating factors.
The company didn’t say which model would move to America. Instead, it said the production of a ‘core segment vehicle’ will move stateside.
Many experts predict the move will impact the production of the GLC, the company’s best-selling car in the US.
The compact SUV is built in Bremen, Germany.
Mercedes reported selling 64,163 units in the US in 2024, up 58 percent from the year before. (read more)
On the other hand, BMW is still screwed because it made the prior decision to build all their new fancy auto plants in Mexico.
Within the U.S. market, Mercedes Benz now has a strategic advantage over their German rival, BMW.
S-class owners will pay the extra 25%, because MB will continue to make those in the Fatherland.
Or … they can buy a Caddy or Lincoln, like their grandparents did!
Caddies are no longer like what my grandpa and father owned. Today’s Caddies are just like a Lexus. Not even a hood ornament…
Someone snapped the Mustang hood ornament off of my ’72 Mustang…they are valuable in some areas…
Rig the ornament and connect it to the battery like folks rig bicycles. Grab the hood ornament, complete the circuit, and get a dose of 12 volt.
Nerve Agent is more effective and less McGuyvery.
The blacks like them for their necklaces.
Until we rid the country of the people who steal hood ornaments then we cannot have hood ornaments. These people are why we cannot have nice things.
Yeah. Lexus wins in longevity.
How many can afford a MB?
Under the old Uniparty economy where rampant looting of the Treasury was common?
Probably not many.
Under a new America First economy?
In 9 months to a year, likely more than you would think.
Every politician can.
How fantastic (and unique) to have a president who puts his country and his citizens first!
God bless you, the most extraordinary President ever, Donald John Trump! 🙏🇺🇲
BMW does have a factory in the USA.
https://www.bmwgroup-werke.com/spartanburg/en.html/
Not sure where the parts come from.
The Germans make really nice autos and motorcycles. They have gone a bit too green and dumbed down the motors and added too much electronics to run all the processes, and that has taken that typical German feel and made their car just like Honda’s and Toyota’s…
I had bad luck with them…never again….many of the aftermarket parts came from chyna.
When it ran, it was great…coordinating with my ‘need’ for it to run was the challenge…always in for a new part…
Be it First On Race Day or Found On Road Dead….I am a Ford girl forever more.
Two Mustangs, one T-Bird, one Explorer, one Taurus, one Escape…well over a million miles driven.
Buy American.
2000-2007 vintage Taurus were the absolute best, great kid cars.
Honda, any Honda.
I just bought a perfect running Honda HRA214 21 inch push gas mower made in the 1980s for $90. All the basic gas push mowers are now made in China as far as I can tell? I’ve been reading lawn mower reviews and what I’m reading is absolutely disheartening!
My recently deceased lawn mower was Walmart’s cheapest 20 inch gas push mower from circa 2000 AD. It sat outside under a porch all winter and was sometimes snow covered but always started in the spring using the gas that I last put in the previous fall.
I worked for 2 different Mercedes Benz dealerships as a service advisor. Every customer had a blue manilla folder that went to the next dealership if the owner moved. (As manilla folders went, they were the Mercedes Benz of manilla folders!) When I scheduled a customer for service or repair work I had to go through the customer’s file to make sure the car was in warranty or if a repair was done under warranty and then came undone which could make it coverable under another repair warranty.
I routinely asked every single customer how they liked their 300D, 240D, 280E or 450SL … etc.
What I learned was that MB vehicles were marginally better than American cars in some respects insofar as engineering might be concerned. When it came to longevity … absolutely NOT! MB owners would never admit that their cars were equal or inferior to American cars … over their dead bodies!
I had their repair records right in my hands! 2 valve jobs before 100K, a rebuilt engine at 85K, rebuilt transmission at 65K … all on the same car … etc. etc. etc.
What I really learned was that the person who spent $60K on their German car would never, ever admit that the neighbor’s 20K Chevy Caprice or Mercury Marquis was a better car. I asked these people right to their face about their car and they routinely lied.
So … if you polled the owners you’d find the vast majority of MB owners praising their cars where they didn’t deserve it and American car owners were probably swayed by the lying MB, BMW and Audi owners into thinking the Germans were building something that American cars could not match. If you read Consumers Reports at the time, CR’s opinions were largely based on owner’s feedback. So, guess what!
If American car owners had serviced their cars as loyally as MB owners (“If you can’t pay, you can’t play!”) they would have probably seen their cars routinely get twice as many trouble free miles as the average MB owner.
I mistakenly thought that MB would never incorporate anything into their cars without triple checking it under every conceivable condition.
For about a decade, a common fault in MB cars was the turn signal stalk. Many cars I drove had an operating turn signal stalk, but it hung down by the wires and you needed 2 hands to operate it. MB PAINTED their aluminum wheels and when Florida MB owners would drive up to North Carolina in wintertime, for instance, the snow and ice would peel the paint off the wheels! Customer after customer would ask, “Why are you painting an aluminum wheel?” Why don’t you just clear coat it?” “How come American cars don’t have this problem?” Many MB cars had ash trays that would not open if the car was in “Park” because the shifter was an inch away!!! The 2 seater MB sports car was slow. So slow that owners would complain about stock Pintos or Vegas blowing their doors off. There would be not a thing wrong with the MB, it just was not a fast car, period. Many automotive marques have 2 door sports cars as their halo cars and high performance should be a given.
I drove every model MB and many Jaguars, BMWs, and Audis that were traded in and were therefore dealer warrantied. I was allowed to take cars home overnight on occasion. I absolutely loved the MB car interiors. I loved the way that even the big MB cars handled.
A popular sport here at The Treehouse is conspiracy theories. I have one. I believe that American car magazines, starting in the 60s were inundated with leftist car enthusiasts who truly knew their cars but worked every angle to make American cars look like garbage and foreign cars look great.
They would routinely compare a European or Japanese car with a straight 4 or straight six, manual transmission and 4 doors to American 2 door cars with a big V8 and an automatic. Their “reasoning” was that they were comparing the most common version of each car. If you couldn’t buy that Japanese or European car with 2 doors or a big V8, aren’t you comparing apples to oranges?
Typically, these American cars offered a straight six, manual transmissions and 4 doors so a much more direct comparison was available. These American car hating car reviewers would harp endlessly about the better gas mileage of the European or Japanese cars when an American straight six with a manual could match them in fuel economy but the American car was equipped with a big V8 and a 2 speed automatic. They’d complain about how hard it was to get into the back seat of a 2 door American car when 4 door models were available. America built some great straight six motors. The Chrysler Slant Six, the Chevy Stovebolt Six and Ford’s 240/300 straight six come to mind. Pontiac offered a 230/250 overhead cam straight six from the mid 60s into the 70s that was usually passed over for the 326 – 350 – 389 – 400 V8s.
I’d bet the proverbial farm that there was a concerted effort to tear down the American car industry.
Little tiny Pittsburg, Texas is honoring auto racer and Mustang car designer Carroll Shelby with plans to unveil his statue during Pittsburg’s Texas Hotlink Festival this Saturday. (fun trivia for Aggiegirl and others)
Engines and Transmissions for BMW are flown in daily. Almost everything else is made pretty close by. They do all body stamping, welding, coating, and painting on site.
What is the point of the ZF transmission plant south of Greenville? They still flying in transmissions from Germany?
ZF Gray Court SC makes transmissions for a lot of different cars. Some of the X Series transmissions do still get flown in. The 747 cargo planes go right over my house.
My former neighbor worked for a VW dealer and told me not to buy one. He said they look and feel good, but need a lot of maintenance and have expensive parts. The turbo can be a nightmare scenario, as they burn out trying to compensate for the lack of power the smaller engines do not provide. I took his advice.
Your neighbor has sage advice. Unfortunately its true for all makes. No one makes a reliable turbo. My sis had turbos go out on her F650 Ford truck. The fix was to remove the body from the chassis for access. Stick with a normally aspirated 4, 6 or 8 cylinder. Dont be fooled by 25+ mpg or fast 0-60 times. There is a cost.
Don’t fall for the deception of MPG, focus instead on what really matters to you; $ per month.
How many $’s are you spending, per month for transportation?
Cause THATS how you budget works.
I had a neighbor who had me beat, hands down on MPG.
But, on $ per month, I had him beat.
And every month, the last week of the month he had no $ to spend, whereas I had plenty.
Amen. If for some reason you go browsing for a used Explorer Sport your first question should be “did you do the turbos?” This is just not something, for some reason, that Americans seem to execute well.
I have been running Dodge diesel trucks since I bought my first one in 1997.
Over 200, 000 miles with zero turbo problems.
Second? 360,000 before something else caused the engine to blow. Likely lack of good maintenance since I was no longer driving it.
My third is over 291,000 miles and still pulls strong.
Zero turbo problems on any of them.
You’re talking straight six diesels?
Turbos are great on aircraft engines and diesels but I believe are an overly complicated option for a car gasoline engine. All the extra piping and wiring complicate repair work. You’re saddled with many additional sensors and switches which complicates diagnostic work. Usually turbos are mounted where you have to R&R them for routine repair work. This will drive up labor costs on repairs that have nothing to do with the turbo itself.
“Any socket you drop underneath an automobile will roll to the exact, dead center, of that automobile.”
I bought a used 1990 VW Cabriolet (Rabbit Convertible) in 2014. It is a 5 speed stick and surprise of surprises, it came from the factory without air conditioning. It also was the last year with the manual top. It’s only 93 horsepower but weighs just 2,200 pounds so with the 5 speed it’s surprisingly quick. It is about as simple of an automobile as you could buy in 1990. The less there, the less likely it is for things to break down.
Mercedes and BMW aren’t what they used to be quality-wise. I was in the market for a new car a few years ago, and learned how poor the quality is now on Mercedes and BMW. The consensus from people who owned them was don’t buy one, lease one and get rid of it at 30k miles because that’s when they start breaking down, and definitely don’t buy a used one.
2 luxury brands that are so far outside of my wheelhouse that I couldn’t care less.
You make a very salient point…they are catering to a specific slice of the American car market.
When I visited Germany years ago I was surprised that many taxis were MBenz models. They
are not considered luxury there, more like our Chevrolet sedans are to us, a dime a dozen.
Here they have that luxury aura because they were jacking up prices and ripping us off for years!
I finally retired my ‘05 Silverado & replaced it with a ‘14 Ram. Even “American” cars & trucks, regardless of where they’re built are priced beyond the cost of my 1st house. They’re far out of my wheelhouse too.
Like many Americans, I’ve retrained for 3 careers & my wages haven’t kept up with prices.
If it employs my fellow citizens in a job they’re happy doing & a lifestyle that they’re happy living then I’m for the benefit of making them here.
Otherwise, I couldn’t care less.
Maybe with more and more cars competing right here at home, the prices will come down substantially.
Also, if they remove a lot of the tech, monitors, sensors, GPS, you name it, that will cut prices dramatically.
Yes on the jobs for Americans first and anyone else who wants to legally work and live in the USA.
Out of the wheelhouse of the majority. The only rapidly advancing thing I see here at the moment is, the power of the tech giants is getting greater, and greater.
Price of product isn’t as important as US jobs and economic impact of that salary dollar turning over in the local economy, e.g., Tuscaloosa or someplace similar.
Jobs for Americans and American manufacturing we all care about.
Audi
Dad purchased a couple of these while in Germany and was able to use it for the summer for transportation before having it shipped to the US. He’s gone, but even he would have heartily approved the shift to American manufacturing.
I had two VWs while in Germany, the first was a GTI made in Mexico that broke down all the time.
The second was initially built in Mexico, brought to Germany by VW and totally stripped down, replacing the subframes and all the running gear, everything really, building a brand new Mk IV R32 that never had a single hiccup.
Outsourcing production has a cost.
Glad to know that the business Bosch are investing in their access to the American consumer automobile market.
Nonetheless, I do not ever expect again to spend a penny within the sector of the German economy: exclusion on the basis of whether I ingested the bioweapon AND rejection for supporting of President Trump were a bridge too far.
Bye bye to 6 week vacations, enjoy your conflict with the Russian Bear and congratulations on your submission to the WEFers and Caliphate, les Bosches.
+ I will NOT tolerate aspersions cast by Bosches toward President Trump and his supporters, myself included.
Just because the German people could not handle a nationalist movement without being bamboozled, cowed and terrorized by socialists, National Socialists, NAZIS, in no way invalidates present day sovereign nationalist movements across the world, including in Germany.
No 2nd Holocaust transpired during the first President Trump administration.
For any present day German who kavetches about President Trump and his MAGA base, what were your parents and grandparents doing during WW2?
This is really going to impact the Turkish GDP.
More Mercedes made for American market? Are they going to put running boards on them?
That’s just silly.
We prefer longhorns on the hood.
Where the heck are you posting from not to know that?
<chuckles>
Not Texas 🙂
Slide our border South by fifty miles and those Maquilladoras are ours and the Cartels are cut off.
We can offer great and fair terms to the original owners to operate those plants.
Next year we could be celebrating the Quincuagésimo de Mine-O!!
Puedo hablar un poco 😎 me gusta sus palabras Maquisador! 😂
Las palabras inventadas son las mejores palabras!
“marks a potential win for Trump” ya think?
We are so winning !!!! Keep up the pressure. MAGA
What about the component parts – still imported from foreign countries or required to be manufactured in the U.S.? The automobile assembly plant feeder business greatly multiplies the positive economic impact of the assembly plant itself.
Content Counts!!
The entire automotive supply chain exists in a JIT environment so parts HAVE to come from close by. Typically under 100 miles from final assembly.
Warehouses. As an example, ALL Mercedes engines are built in Germany, warehoused in Tuscaloosa at the plant to be delivered to the line JIT. Other part manufacturing processes are too “dirty” for US, so China and Mexico step up. The major warehouses in Bremerhauffen (sp) (all European and Asian suppliers ship here first) are always loading a ship, with one in transit to, one returning from and one being off loaded. Hence, all parts come from Germany.
Most likely an eventual shift, as with everything else. People need to understand that we’ll never have 100% manufacturing here. But the closest we get to it, the better.
BMW can change gears (pun intended).
They have a factory footprint of 756.53 acres in Greer, SC. The land is listed as the SC STATE PORTS AUTHORITY – BMW Plant.
The land adjoins the GREENVILLE SPARTANBURG AIRPORT, and BMW might be able to acquire some of the empty land across the road if they needed to expand.
I bet the SC General Assembly would help them find a location if they followed Merc’s lead.
qPublic.net – Spartanburg County, SC – Map
6 million SqFt under roof.
Hooray for Alabama! And I would think the investment in shipbuilding will benefit Mobile –and Space Force in Huntsville. Things looking good for Bama!
Visited “Bama last year and found the people and scenery were just lovely. They deserve a renaissance in the Old South after decades of low wages and little industry.
Couple these car plants across the south, plus Gulf drilling and you will see a Southern rebirth that will lift all boats.
Can’t happen fast enough…Let’s go!
If you’re ever in Birmingham there is a nice museum at one of the old iron works. The iron/steel industry is gone, but they promote the medical industry now and UAB.
I visited B’ham and went to the Vulcan Iron Museum, it was amazing. Never knew the iron industry was so strong in Alabama. The men who made iron parts were some of the first real industrial Americans. B’ham was a flourishing place back in the 1800’s. Saw the zoo and then headed to Huntsville, another gem with the Aerospace industry and Mr. Von Braun’s history.
Passed thru Talladega and saw the Marksmanship Park. Only place I missed was the Race car museum and the Gulf region. Alabama is a beautiful state.
No problem finding Korean food in Montgomery, that’s for sure.
SHHHHH, don’t be telling everyone how polite and friendly Alabama. We visit my pilot son twice a year at Ft Rucker…bill
See now, Germany??
That wasn’t so hard, was it.
And lookie lookie here…no tariffs!!
(You can thank President Trump next time he’s in your area.)
Yes I’m sure they are thrilled…but…The elephant in the room will be the EU/German trade response to our cars and products sold in Europe. Also those non tariff barriers and retaliatory fines against American businesses.
Will they remove these restrictions so their people can buy our stuff too ? Our beef products are superior to any other country and that’s just one food item. They restrict many US products saying they are inferior, or sub-par for consumption which is total rubbish.
We will find out their game plan soon enough, but I’m not holding my breath.
Removal of trade barriers is an integral part of PDJT’s overall tariff policy overhaul.
Free access of American products to foreign markets is as important as them not being unfairly tariffed.
With the Germans, whoever knows. They’ve lost their minds, so…..
This is but one part. But it’s a start towards rectifying an extremely lopsided trading relationship. Step by step.
I agree, it is a process…the only way to eat that elephant is one bite at a time 🙂
Money talks louder than anything. The Krauts can run their country like the ’30s again but they still want money.
Well they’re not helping themselves, Johnny.
From Europe’s industrial giant, to dumping/banning the energy sources which made them so, to falling on their knees to worship Gaia, to paying for the millions of useless Moslem immigrants who are tearing up and overtaking their country….the list goes on.
They’re going broke, broker, brokest.
Germany is the poster child for how to commit national and cultural suicide. And I guarantee no money in that.
I don’t disagree one bit. My point was that Germany will be open to trade deals despite being retarded. This avoidance of the tariff is an example.
Non tariff barriers are part of the calculation and negotation
President Trump wins again-and I am NOT tired of winning.
All BMW X Series SUV’s are made in Spartanburg SC. For US and worldwide markets. They employ over 11,000 people here. Plant Spartanburg is BMW’s largest in the world. Come by for a visit.
I work for a German plastics company and a huge part of our business is in the automotive supply chain around the southeast, includingbut not just BMW and Mercedes. I’m actually in Alabama today and have a meeting with a supplier tomorrow morning. This topic comes up in every meeting. This is good news.
I’m praying that PDJT’s tariff effort works, just to prove the Left wrong.
And yet the hostile IC run mockingbird msm still prefers the not at all there demented pedo Joe Biden!!! They would go back to Biden lying horizontal on the beach asleep over President Trump in a heart beat!!! They would gladly return to the first in our history autopen run Presidency!! JMO
It was a miracle we survived four years of them propping him up….the political scam of “Weekend at Biden’s”
Another day, another “Trump was right” coin in the jar.
MAGA Fabulous !
Pass the Winnamins!!!
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