Unfortunately for Trump, while Toyota’s efforts make a good headline, they won’t help the President much with his fortunes in 2020.
U. S. President Donald Trump speaks before the swearing in of Judge Neil Gorsuch as an Associate Supreme Court Justice in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington Thomson Reuters
President Donald Trump called a planned $1.33-billion investment by Toyota in a Kentucky factory” further evidence that manufacturers are now confident that the economic climate has greatly improved under my administration,” in a statement issued by the carmaker.
According to Toyota, $10 billion will be invested in US operations over the next five years.
Unfortunately for Trump, while Toyota’s efforts make a good headline, they likely won’t help the President much with his fortunes in 2020.
The Japanese carmakers in the US have factories and employ workers overwhelmingly in the US South, a region that Trump carried convincingly in the election — no surprise, as the South has been reliably Republican for decades. Trump won 63% of the vote in Kentucky last November and Mitt Romney won the state by a wide margin when he ran against Obama in 2012.
Trump doesn’t need jobs, investment, or votes in Kentucky — he needs all those things in Michigan and Ohio, redoubts of the domestic US auto industry and states that are either election battleground territory or that have gone for Democratic presidential candidates in previous elections.
