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| - In February 2025, as U.S. President Donald Trump moved to impose new tariffs on imported goods, rumors began to spread online that auto manufacturers Toyota and Honda were planning to shutter manufacturing plants in the U.S as a result.
For example, a Snopes reader sent a meme in an email, asking whether its claims were true:
(meme)
The meme appeared on a Feb. 17, 2025, Reddit post. "FAILURE," the meme said, with Trump's silhouette for the letter I. It read:
Honda and Toyota are preparing to execute plans to shut down assembly lines in the US because they are not willing to pay a 25% premium on materials. Tens of thousands of workers in plants in Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia will be sent home without pay. The effect on those workers and the communities they shop in will make the price of eggs seem completely insignificant.
The same claim appeared on Threads and Instagram.
It is true that Toyota owns plants in Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi. Further, Honda owns plants in Ohio, Alabama and Georgia.
It is also true that Trump imposed new tariffs on imported goods after he took office in 2025. On Feb. 1 he issued an executive order imposing 10% tariffs on Chinese goods and 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico. He later paused tariffs on the latter two nations. On Feb. 18 he proposed new 25% tariffs on automobiles, pharmaceuticals and semiconductor chips, saying he would provide more information on April 2.
However, the rumor about Honda and Toyota closing plants is false. Representatives denied the claims in emails.
The rumor may have stemmed from a Feb. 3, 2025, report by the Alabama Political Reporter, a local political news site, speculating about the potential fallout from Trump's tariffs. The report quoted David Adams, president of the Global Automakers of Canada trade group, which represents both Honda and Toyota. Adams said at the time that such tariffs may lead to plants pausing production both in the U.S. and in Canada, causing severe damage to the economy of Alabama, one state where both Toyota and Honda have plants.
A statement from the trade group quoted Adams as saying that the consequences of such tariffs would be dire both for the U.S. and Canada:
Our members are gravely concerned. This will have immediate negative impacts to jobs and consumers on both sides of the border. Tariffs only serve to increase costs, hinder trade, impact economic growth, and hurt consumers and workers.
After Trump announced the pause in implementing tariffs, Adams posted a statement on his LinkedIn page voicing relief. That statement read, in part:
In the end, tariffs increase cost, hinder trade, reduce economic efficiency, limit growth, and critically hurt consumers and workers. Canada and the United States should focus efforts on trying to make the North American automotive industry — which has been highly integrated between Canada and the United States for 60 years — as competitive as possible.
Neither Toyota nor Honda announced that they had decided to close manufacturing plants in the U.S.
In emails, spokespeople from the U.S. operations of both Honda and Toyota confirmed that their companies were not shuttering plants. "There is no truth to that rumor," the spokesperson for Toyota said. "It did not come from Honda and is inaccurate from our standpoint," said Chris Abbruzzese, a spokesperson for Honda.
In September 2024, Snopes published a primer on tariffs imposed by the first Trump administration and the expected consequences of tariffs proposed by Trump's reelection campaign in 2024.
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