President Donald Trump said Monday that he wants an immediate start to talks between General Motors Co. and the United Auto Workers, extending to a third day his calls for the automaker and union to reopen an Ohio factory.
"Get that big, beautiful plant in Ohio open now," Trump said on Twitter, after sending a series of missives at GM and the UAW over the weekend. "Close a plant in China or Mexico, where you invested so heavily pre-Trump, but not in the U.S.A. Bring jobs home!"
Trump said Sunday that he'd asked GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra to sell the plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and he tried to shift blame to the Democratic leader of the local union.
"I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING," Trump said in a tweet Sunday after he mentioned he had just spoken to Barra about the plant. "I asked her to sell it or do something quickly."
Earlier on Sunday, Trump tweeted that "Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce." He added, "Stop complaining and get the job done!"
GM didn't address Trump's tweet directly and declined to comment on the notion that Barra blamed the UAW for the closure of the plant. The automaker did attempt to clarify its position that keeping open any of the plants that are scheduled to close would be subject to labor negotiations with the UAW for a new contract this year. The current deal expires in September.
"To be clear, under the terms of the UAW-GM National Agreement, the ultimate future of the unallocated plants will be resolved between GM and the UAW," GM said in a statement. "We remain open to talking with all affected stakeholders, but our main focus remains on our employees and offering them jobs in our plants where we have growth opportunities."
The carmaker said it has shifted more than 1,000 employees from so-called unallocated plants to other GM factories, adding that it has "opportunities available for virtually all impacted employees."
In an interview on Sunday, Green, the president of UAW Local 1112, responded, "We have produced, and my act is together. Come on down and have a look."
The president is scheduled to make a trip to Ohio this week, with a stop at a tank factory in Lima.
Green, who's been a critic of the president in the past, said Trump had pledged to preserve jobs in Trumbull County, where GM's Lordstown plant is located, but the unemployment rate there was 7.7 percent in January.
"They're like empty promises because, again, we've seen nothing but job loss in this area," Green said. "And he thinks that the economy is doing so well?"
Trump's criticism of Green was a change in focus from Saturday, when the president tweeted that "because the economy is so good, General Motors must get their Lordstown, Ohio, plant open, maybe in a different form or with a new owner, FAST!"
The president also cited Toyota Motor Corp.'s Thursday announcement of its plans to add to its U.S. investments, bringing the amount to almost $13 billion over the five years ending in 2021.
Toyota, Japan's largest automaker, has tried to work its way into Trump's good graces after being a target of his tweets when he was president-elect in January 2017. Days after drawing criticism for plans to build Corolla cars in Mexico, Toyota announced a $10 billion, five-year investment plan. In August of that year, it unveiled plans with Mazda Motor Corp. to jointly build a $1.6 billion factory in Alabama.
Green said he sent Trump two letters in the past year begging him to help stop the plant closure, adding that he never heard back.
Trumbull County voted for Trump in 2016 after voting Democratic in every presidential election since the 1970s.
GM is threatening to close plants that build sedans and compact cars because consumers have been moving toward SUVs for several years. The Lordstown plant had been used to produce the slow-selling Chevrolet Cruze compact car.
Besides Lordstown, the company plans to close car factories in Oshawa, Ontario, and Detroit-Hamtramck, Mich., by January 2020. Scheduled to close this year are transmission factories in Warren, Mich., and near Baltimore.
The automaker and its rivals see an overall car market that was flat in 2018 at 17.3 million cars and trucks sold. The number is predicted to fall this year.
That's still a relatively strong vehicle market, with sales hitting a record in 2016 at 17.6 million. For GM, its main problem is that even in a strong market, the company doesn't need all the factories it has been running. Sales of the Chevrolet Cruze that year fell 23 percent to just under 143,000 vehicles, according to GM's reported sales.
Carmakers aim to use at least 80 percent of the production capacity they have in place, otherwise the plants usually lose money. At the time GM announced that it was closing plants, Lordstown was only using about one-third of its production, according to researcher LMC Automotive.
The final Cruze rolled off the Lordstown production line on March 6. U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, called it a "sad day" and urged GM to use the site for future electric-vehicle production. A UAW spokesman said in a statement Sunday that the union's "focus is on our members and to leave no stone unturned to keep the GM plants open."
Elected officials from Ohio were quick to defend the union.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who has criticized Trump's inattention to the factory's troubles in the past, chided the president Sunday for "attacking workers." Green and Lordstown union members "have shown grit and determination in the face of adversity," Brown wrote on Twitter.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represents the area, wrote on Twitter that Trump's message about Green was "counterproductive and insulting." Ryan also noted Green's two unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with Trump in hopes of getting his help.
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Niquette, Ben Brody, Justin Blum, David Welch and Terrence Dopp of Bloomberg News; by Mike Householder of The Associated Press; by Heather Long of The Washington Post; and by Tiffany Hsu of The New York Times.
A Section on 03/19/2019