WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump claimed credit on Thursday night for persuading Ford to keep an automaking plant in Kentucky rather than moving it to Mexico. The only wrinkle: Ford was not actually planning to move the plant.
Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after 9 p.m. that Ford’s chairman, William Clay Ford Jr., had just told him that Ford “will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky — no Mexico.”
Minutes later, Mr. Trump wrote in a second post: “I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!” Mr. Trump won 62.5 percent of the state’s popular vote in the presidential election.
During the campaign, he repeatedly criticized Ford for moving production to Mexico, and he threatened to impose a 35 percent tariff on vehicles made there.
Ford makes the Lincoln MKC, a sport utility vehicle, at a factory in Louisville. Last week, Ford said it planned to move production of the vehicle elsewhere. On Thursday night, after Mr. Trump’s Twitter messages, the company said that Mexico had been the intended destination and that it would now keep MKC production in Kentucky.
But Ford had not planned to close the Louisville factory. Instead, it had planned to expand production of another vehicle made in Louisville, the Ford Escape. And the change had not been expected to result in any job losses.
“Whatever happens in Louisville, it will not lose employment,” Jimmy Settles, a union official, told The Detroit Free Press. “They cannot make enough Escapes.”
Now, thanks to Mr. Trump, the plant will make fewer Escapes — and more MKCs.
“We are encouraged that President-elect Trump and the new Congress will pursue policies that will improve U.S. competitiveness and make it possible to keep production of this vehicle here in the United States,” Ford said in a statement.
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