Trump has (as usual) no idea what he’s talking about.
Germans are not buying Chevrolets indeed, because Chevrolet makes horrible cars for German standards. They are big, unsafe, dirty fuel guzzlers (At least the US chevrolets). We do not want them.
I worked in a Opel and Chevrolet /CCH dealership in the Netherlands, where we sold some Chevrolets (mostly the former Daewoo cars) but also Cadillac, Corvette Hummer. That being said, we didn’t actually sell a lot of them. There were close to zero customers interested in buying a Cadillac instead of an Opel Antara or Insignia. The Chevrolet brand has been discontinued in Europe from 2015 because of the low demand.
What Europeans do buy however are SUVs. More importantly, SUVs from Mercedes (GL, ML, GLK) and BMW (X3, X4, X5, X6). They are incredibly popular here. And Mr Trump does not seem to realize where these cars are made: Alabama for Mercedes, and South Carolina for BMW.
We also buy lots of Teslas. If Trump wants more american cars to flow to Europe, let him focus on making american cars more competitive on a global level. He could start by leveling safety, fuel consumption and emission regulations with the EU. If Americans can make clean and fuel efficient cars, they could very well sell some cars here.
What Trump shouldn’t do is play Protectionist, he shouldn’t deregulate and help US automakers further in their bubble making gaz-guzzling trucks.
edit; I get some comments from ‘Muricans who are offended and think I’m attacking the US Auto Industry. That’s not my intention. I’m just giving my insight on why we don’t buy your cars. That is mostly because we just don’t want them, not because our governments are limiting us (there is a 10% tariff, but Asian cars have the same and we buy them in bulk).
Everybody buys German cars.
Why?
Because they’re good. Really good. They’re made to work for everybody, and for a long time. Most European cars were made that way. Korean, Japanese and Chinese cars too, but the success may vary=).
I myself look at American cars and wonder, how do they get so little performance out of so much fuel? How do they build such unsafe cars with such tremendous amounts of metal? Why does a really powerful car have brake discs the size of bottle caps? How come they’re still using the wildly inferior leaf springs on new cars? That’s something you’ll expect on a 70’s Fiat.
If you have a strong home market, and they’re ok with it, go ahead, but don’t expect to expand much.
There will always be a market for really good cars.
He should tell the american car manufacturers to get better instead. In Europe, it’s not enough with a chromed tail pipe to call a car good.
The biggest BMW manufacturing plant in the world is located at – Gulp! – Spartanburg, South Carolina. It produces 450,000 Beemers and generates $10 billion in export value a year. And it’s doing a $1 billion dollars worth of expansion.
It’s so not fair! Maybe BMW should relocate to other countries that are buying more BMWs than the U.S. Like EU, or China.
Duh.
Seriously, listening to Mr. Trump is not worth your time. He does not know the basic fact and does not wish to learn the basic fact either. Fact doesn’t matter to him, at all. He’s just going around, “shaking down the trees”, and see if somebody is going to get scared and give him free money.
BMW started investing in the South Carolina plant in 1994. 23 years, $7 billion investment, just so that the business is ripe for this gangsta-style shakedown. What kind of lesson Mr. Trump is trying to teach the rest of the global business community?
