Volkswagen to Build $4 Billion Audi Plant in Georgia
Seven Lights
Audi said it would spend $4 billion to build its first factory in the United States, in Macon, Georgia, an announcement its chief executive made on stage beside President Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday night.
Gernot Dollner said Audi planned “to bring our biggest and most premium SUVs, and produce them here in Macon, Georgia,” and called the plant “a long-term investment because we believe in the American market.” He said he accepted the invitation to the rally out of respect for the United States.
The decision reflects demand in the United States for large sport-utility vehicles. The group is planning its largest-ever SUV, the Q9, with the American market in mind, a category of petrol-powered vehicles that has figured prominently in global carbon emissions.
The investment comes as Audi’s parent, Volkswagen, contends with the cost of American import tariffs. Chief executive Oliver Blume told investors in July that “US tariffs create a significant burden and restrict international trade,” and the group said this month that it remained under “continued high pressure from import tariffs.” Volkswagen has also shifted production of its cheapest models, the Jetta saloon and the Taos SUV, from Mexico to the United States.
The Georgia plant may add to friction at home. Volkswagen has begun cutting as many as 100,000 jobs and closing factories in Germany, blaming competition from Chinese carmakers, tariffs and the cost of investing in electric vehicles for markets outside the United States. Building premium SUVs in the American market, where the group sells them at a tariff-free price, answers the first two of those pressures by moving output inside the barrier.
The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported the Macon decision as Audi’s first United States factory, part of Volkswagen’s effort to build around tariff barriers that have raised the cost of importing vehicles and components.
The plant’s construction timetable and employment figures were not announced. Volkswagen’s next test will be reconciling American expansion with a German works council already mobilised against the closures.