Tag: People

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump, left, listens during a Strategic and Policy Forum meeting with business leaders and White House advisors in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017.

President Donald Trump criticized job cuts at General Motors as well as CEO Mary Barra again Thursday, saying the U.S. automaker isn't “going to be treated well.”

“I don't like what she did, it was nasty,” Trump said on Fox News.

The recent decision by the largest U.S. automaker to cut up to 14,000 jobs that span three states has brought the company controversy with lawmakers from the affected areas and drawn the president's ire.

Trump: General Motors won't be treated well
3 Hours Ago | 04:07

“To tell me a couple of weeks before Christmas that she's going to close in Ohio and Michigan, not acceptable to me,” Trump said Thursday on Fox News. “General Motors is not going to be treated well.”

Trump also criticized GM's use of Mexican labor and said the recently signed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement “really makes it uncomfortable for people to go out of the country, and I think it will be very uncomfortable for them.”

Trump is not the only U.S. politician who has been critical of the decision. Barra met with lawmakers from Ohio, Michigan and Maryland last week over the automaker's plans. Since then, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Sen. Rob Portman, both from Ohio, sent a letter to Barra seeking more information about the company's plans for its assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and asking Barra to consider retooling the plant for more popular vehicles.

“As we previously stated, our focus remains on our employees currently working at the impacted plants in Maryland, Michigan and Ohio,” GM said in a statement. “Our announcement was timed to enable interested employees job opportunities that are available at other GM plants beginning in early 2019.”

Mark Fields, Ford's former CEO, said GM is doing what's right for the business and investors, but closing factories always draws attention.

“Any time you close a plant or idle a plant around the world, you are going to get attention from the government because it's so important to the economy and jobs,” he said on CNBC's “Closing Bell.” “When you take these kind of actions, you need to make sure that you are doing it in a way that allows you to tell what the story is and at the same time make sure you have a narrative around why it's good for the business over the medium to long term, why you have to take these short-term painful actions.”

GM's shares closed down 1.6 percent Thursday.