June 11, 2025 • 10 mins
General Motors plans to invest $4 billion in its US plants over the next two years in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs, which will expand factories in Michigan, Kansas, and Tennessee. He is joined by Bloomberg's Matt Miller.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Paul, we're talking to you. I'm normally focused on automaking
as a business. It's now very close, closely related to
the kind of stuff that Joe and Kyley talk about
every day because of the tariffs. You've announced a four
billion dollar investment or plans to invest four billion dollars
over the next two years bringing production back to America.
This is essentially what Donald Trump is pushing for. This
(00:27):
is what he wants companies to do, and now you're
actually making it work. How much is this going to
offset the five billion dollars worth of hits GM is
expected to take from the tariffs.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, Matt, first of all, thanks for having us so,
I think you know this announcement that we made is
worth much more than just the tariff side of it,
and tariffs are obviously a piece of it. Is we're
reacting to the new dynamic that's going to be out there,
and it'll offset a good bit of it. So we'll
move about three hundred thousand units of production. Some of
it is new production and incremental some of it is
a sh shift, but reoptimizing our manufacturing footprint and taking
(01:03):
advantage of some underutilized capacity in the US. But it's
also about, you know, creating security for our people. You
look at the Orient plant, we would tailor that to
produce and scale evs really fast. The market is obviously
changed and pivoted a little bit. This gives us an
opportunity to reallocate that plant better utilize it for internal
combustion engines on trucks and full size SUVs where we
(01:27):
know the demand is really strong for them, and that's
great for our utilization, our efficiency as well as for
our consumers and our people as well. So it's about
more than just tariffs. But with this will be about
two million vehicles produced in the US for the US,
and we're continuing to make those investments.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I bought Silverado ZR two a couple of years ago.
Mine came out of Mexico. You're going to be moving
most of that production, I guess to the US, right,
most Sierra production to the US. Equinox production does that
come mostly the US? To What are we seeing in
terms of the model that are hanging out of miss.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, we'll have equinox ice production in spring Hill, I'm sorry,
in Fairfax. Spring Hill is going to be the Blazer,
but Fairfax is going to be another great implementation of
where we're going to be able to produce ice and
evs on the same production line, creating that flexibility for
us to be able to respond to consumer demand as
it continues to grow.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Have you changed sourcing for any of the parts, because
it's not obviously just about the final assembly with these vehicles.
There's a ton of content and you want to have that,
I guess is as much domestically sourced as possible as
well to save.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
On costs, well, I think you know, with what the
administration is set up here with the MSRP offsets is
giving us time to help retool our supply chain, so
incentivizing growth and production in the US. Recognizing that the
supply chain taps time to shift. So we're going to
continue to work with our supply base to try to
maximize the efficiencies across the entire value chain and utilize
(02:57):
those off sets where we need to and shift production
that makes sense and where we're able to.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I should say, to save on tariff costs because you
obviously source a lot of these parts outside of the
US because the actual production costs are lower. How much
higher is it. How much more expensive is it to
build a part like an engine or a transmission to
assemble a truck in the US than it is, say
(03:22):
in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well, it's far more complex than that, Matt, because I
mean there's obviously the hourly labor differential, and that's a
big piece of it. But we can save money and logistics.
We can save money and plant utilization and filling up capacity.
So when you when you fill up a plan, it
actually makes it more efficient for every vehicle out there,
not just the ones that you're moving production into. So
(03:43):
we look at that as an enterprise wide calculation and
think we can get to an equivalency where ultimately we
can be competitive with producing in the US as well.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
One of the things that you can produce fewer of
in the US is magnets, the rare earth minerals that
we've all learned much more about than we ever expected
to in the last week or so. How is your
access to those rare earths right now? Because there's concern
that production and a lot of US factories could.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Slow Yeah, we haven't experienced any slowdown as of yet.
It's clearly a risk that everybody is watching from that standpoint,
But what I would say is our supply chain team
does an excellent job. Similar to what they did through
the supply the chip crisis semiconductor shortage that we had
a few years ago. Our team did a great job
of responding, maintaining agility, working with our suppliers to try
(04:34):
to balance production as best we can, and they've done
a great job so far with this situation as well.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
What is your thought on any kind of vertical integration.
I mean, the concern or the problem I guess with
rarest isn't just the mining, but also the refining of
them is mostly done in China. Have you tried to
convince suppliers to do more of that here? Are you
trying to get your own supply here?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We've done a number of initial whether it's with Lithium
Americas or a joint venture with Pastco around a lot
of battery raw materials, particularly the lithium side, which is
a little bit easier to do and a little bit
less capital intensive. But we've helped fund that, We've taken
equity positions, we've helped to fund products and projects across
the board. But we've been working on this for a
(05:20):
long time, really since Covid is trying to increase the
resiliency of our supply chain both you know, from a pandemic,
from just a de risking perspective, and we're in a
pretty good situation with where we are. We still have
some work to do, but there's a lot of things
that we can do thinking creatively with our partners.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
What are you thinking about prices right now? You obviously
raise prices on a regular basis. Right if we're not
experiencing deflation, you're going to try and stick with the pack.
There are you facing pushback from consumers when you try
and raise prices.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, you know, our portfolio has performed really, really well,
and we've adopted a strategy of being very disciplined in
our production, not overproducing like some of the challenges of
the past, and that's a strategy that's worked for us.
We announced on our earnings call about six weeks ago
that we don't need to take any price to help
with the offset initiatives that we've targeted going forward, because
(06:13):
we want to be in the position where we're responding
to demand from our customers and being more stable. We
don't want to raise prices because of tariffs and then
when tariffs come down, expect that prices are going to
come back down. We want to be more consistent with
our customer base and that's a strategy that's worked really
well for us.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Can you do it in other ways through MSRP? I
mean some manufacturers are raising maybe delivery price, you can
also raise the price of options packages and still keep
MSRP level. Well.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Again, we haven't done anything specific to respond to tariffs.
We've looked at where packages are for options, where our
logistics costs are, etc. And we try to price what
we can. But that's irrespective of tariffs, and it's something
that we've done. I think when you look at our
pricing model over the last few years, it's been more
consistent than many of our competitors, with less volatility and discounting,
(07:04):
and that's good for our customers as well. So we're
going to continue to do that across the board where
we can and make sure that we're delivering value for
our customers.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The being counters at Bloomberg Intelligence, So I want me
to ask questions about cash flow here and how that
looks right now with the tariff effect. You've had obviously
great sales, as I guess some demand is pulled forward.
Do you have to divert some cash though to deal
with teriffs from anything else?
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, I mean, clearly, in the short and intermediate term,
tariffs are going to be a drain on our cash flow.
We announced about four to five billion dollars of impact
this year, and we think we can offset about thirty
percent of it going forward, but that is going to
be a cash hit. Now, when you look at the
performance of the company, our cash flow generation has been
really strong. It'll continue to be really strong even after
(07:52):
the tariffs, and we're going to work to continue to
drive that efficiency. But we've got to create that stable
cash flow across the board because this is still a
cyclical industry and we need to be able to absorb
these shocks. And I think the team's done a really
good job of managing and being disciplined in order to
continue to drive strong cash flow even in the face
of some of these short intermediate term hits.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
What are you expecting in terms of SAR because we've
had pretty strong sales numbers over the past couple of months,
I think upwards of seventeen point three million. Does that
continue through the rest of the year.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
No, we don't expect it to. We would love to
see that happen, But what we said about six weeks
ago is we're planning for a year of about sixteen
million units, which is similar to last year. In April
and the first half of May, we were trending much
closer to eighteen million as we saw a lot of
customers trying to get ahead of what they expected to
be price increases. We've seen that come out over the
(08:46):
last couple of weeks, but it's really retreated back to
where it was before that pull ahead demand. So we're
encouraged by the fact that that consistent demand is still there,
and that's going to be important for us as we
continue to push forward. If we see a slow down,
we'll have to adjust to it and make sure that
we create that agility that we have really come to
(09:06):
be known for over the last few years. But right now,
the customer seeds pretty stable. Even though we've seen that
pool ahead demand.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Come out, You've had the best margins of the big
three enjoyed I think eight and a half percent margins
are thereabouts. Does it hang at that level through twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Well, obviously the tariffs are going to be an operating
hit to us going forward, which is why we're focused
on making sure we take actions quickly. There were a
number of actions that we already took, we called them
no regrets actions where we increased the line rate in
Fort Wayne, to build more trucks in the US, etc. Here,
we're taking the next step of deploying capital to increase
(09:46):
that production. These are steps that we think are necessary
for us for the long term to be able to
drive that type of consistent margin performance that we want
to be known for.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I want to ask about the shares as well as
your free float. It's gotten pretty small. How much further
can you go with buybacks?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Well, I mean, we're going to continue to follow our
discipline capital allocation policy. The first thing we do is
reinvest in the business. That's a capital budget of about
ten to eleven billion dollars. We just announced last night
that that'll be ten to twelve billion dollars for twenty
six and twenty seven, reflecting a little bit of additional
spend for what we're doing. The second is we prioritize
the balance sheet. The balance sheet's been as strong as
(10:24):
it's been in decades with a pension fund that's nearly
fully funded, and debt that's very manageable. And then the
third leg of that still was returning cash to shareholders.
So we reinstated the dividend a couple of years ago,
and we've been deploying that cash to return to our
shareholders to make sure that all the constituencies benefit from
the success that we've been having, our employees, our customers,
(10:47):
and our shareholders.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Paul, we're talking to you. I'm normally focused on automaking
as a business. It's now very close, closely related to
the kind of stuff that Joe and Kyley talk about
every day because of the tariffs. You've announced a four
billion dollar investment or plans to invest four billion dollars
over the next two years bringing production back to America.
This is essentially what Donald Trump is pushing for. This
(00:27):
is what he wants companies to do, and now you're
actually making it work. How much is this going to
offset the five billion dollars worth of hits GM is
expected to take from the tariffs.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, Matt, first of all, thanks for having us so,
I think you know this announcement that we made is
worth much more than just the tariff side of it,
and tariffs are obviously a piece of it. Is we're
reacting to the new dynamic that's going to be out there,
and it'll offset a good bit of it. So we'll
move about three hundred thousand units of production. Some of
it is new production and incremental some of it is
a sh shift, but reoptimizing our manufacturing footprint and taking
(01:03):
advantage of some underutilized capacity in the US. But it's
also about, you know, creating security for our people. You
look at the Orient plant, we would tailor that to
produce and scale evs really fast. The market is obviously
changed and pivoted a little bit. This gives us an
opportunity to reallocate that plant better utilize it for internal
combustion engines on trucks and full size SUVs where we
(01:27):
know the demand is really strong for them, and that's
great for our utilization, our efficiency as well as for
our consumers and our people as well. So it's about
more than just tariffs. But with this will be about
two million vehicles produced in the US for the US,
and we're continuing to make those investments.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I bought Silverado ZR two a couple of years ago.
Mine came out of Mexico. You're going to be moving
most of that production, I guess to the US, right,
most Sierra production to the US. Equinox production does that
come mostly the US? To What are we seeing in
terms of the model that are hanging out of miss.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, we'll have equinox ice production in spring Hill, I'm sorry,
in Fairfax. Spring Hill is going to be the Blazer,
but Fairfax is going to be another great implementation of
where we're going to be able to produce ice and
evs on the same production line, creating that flexibility for
us to be able to respond to consumer demand as
it continues to grow.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Have you changed sourcing for any of the parts, because
it's not obviously just about the final assembly with these vehicles.
There's a ton of content and you want to have that,
I guess is as much domestically sourced as possible as
well to save.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
On costs, well, I think you know, with what the
administration is set up here with the MSRP offsets is
giving us time to help retool our supply chain, so
incentivizing growth and production in the US. Recognizing that the
supply chain taps time to shift. So we're going to
continue to work with our supply base to try to
maximize the efficiencies across the entire value chain and utilize
(02:57):
those off sets where we need to and shift production
that makes sense and where we're able to.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I should say, to save on tariff costs because you
obviously source a lot of these parts outside of the
US because the actual production costs are lower. How much
higher is it. How much more expensive is it to
build a part like an engine or a transmission to
assemble a truck in the US than it is, say
(03:22):
in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well, it's far more complex than that, Matt, because I
mean there's obviously the hourly labor differential, and that's a
big piece of it. But we can save money and logistics.
We can save money and plant utilization and filling up capacity.
So when you when you fill up a plan, it
actually makes it more efficient for every vehicle out there,
not just the ones that you're moving production into. So
(03:43):
we look at that as an enterprise wide calculation and
think we can get to an equivalency where ultimately we
can be competitive with producing in the US as well.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
One of the things that you can produce fewer of
in the US is magnets, the rare earth minerals that
we've all learned much more about than we ever expected
to in the last week or so. How is your
access to those rare earths right now? Because there's concern
that production and a lot of US factories could.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Slow Yeah, we haven't experienced any slowdown as of yet.
It's clearly a risk that everybody is watching from that standpoint,
But what I would say is our supply chain team
does an excellent job. Similar to what they did through
the supply the chip crisis semiconductor shortage that we had
a few years ago. Our team did a great job
of responding, maintaining agility, working with our suppliers to try
(04:34):
to balance production as best we can, and they've done
a great job so far with this situation as well.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
What is your thought on any kind of vertical integration.
I mean, the concern or the problem I guess with
rarest isn't just the mining, but also the refining of
them is mostly done in China. Have you tried to
convince suppliers to do more of that here? Are you
trying to get your own supply here?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We've done a number of initial whether it's with Lithium
Americas or a joint venture with Pastco around a lot
of battery raw materials, particularly the lithium side, which is
a little bit easier to do and a little bit
less capital intensive. But we've helped fund that, We've taken
equity positions, we've helped to fund products and projects across
the board. But we've been working on this for a
(05:20):
long time, really since Covid is trying to increase the
resiliency of our supply chain both you know, from a pandemic,
from just a de risking perspective, and we're in a
pretty good situation with where we are. We still have
some work to do, but there's a lot of things
that we can do thinking creatively with our partners.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
What are you thinking about prices right now? You obviously
raise prices on a regular basis. Right if we're not
experiencing deflation, you're going to try and stick with the pack.
There are you facing pushback from consumers when you try
and raise prices.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, you know, our portfolio has performed really, really well,
and we've adopted a strategy of being very disciplined in
our production, not overproducing like some of the challenges of
the past, and that's a strategy that's worked for us.
We announced on our earnings call about six weeks ago
that we don't need to take any price to help
with the offset initiatives that we've targeted going forward, because
(06:13):
we want to be in the position where we're responding
to demand from our customers and being more stable. We
don't want to raise prices because of tariffs and then
when tariffs come down, expect that prices are going to
come back down. We want to be more consistent with
our customer base and that's a strategy that's worked really
well for us.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Can you do it in other ways through MSRP? I
mean some manufacturers are raising maybe delivery price, you can
also raise the price of options packages and still keep
MSRP level. Well.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Again, we haven't done anything specific to respond to tariffs.
We've looked at where packages are for options, where our
logistics costs are, etc. And we try to price what
we can. But that's irrespective of tariffs, and it's something
that we've done. I think when you look at our
pricing model over the last few years, it's been more
consistent than many of our competitors, with less volatility and discounting,
(07:04):
and that's good for our customers as well. So we're
going to continue to do that across the board where
we can and make sure that we're delivering value for
our customers.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The being counters at Bloomberg Intelligence, So I want me
to ask questions about cash flow here and how that
looks right now with the tariff effect. You've had obviously
great sales, as I guess some demand is pulled forward.
Do you have to divert some cash though to deal
with teriffs from anything else?
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, I mean, clearly, in the short and intermediate term,
tariffs are going to be a drain on our cash flow.
We announced about four to five billion dollars of impact
this year, and we think we can offset about thirty
percent of it going forward, but that is going to
be a cash hit. Now, when you look at the
performance of the company, our cash flow generation has been
really strong. It'll continue to be really strong even after
(07:52):
the tariffs, and we're going to work to continue to
drive that efficiency. But we've got to create that stable
cash flow across the board because this is still a
cyclical industry and we need to be able to absorb
these shocks. And I think the team's done a really
good job of managing and being disciplined in order to
continue to drive strong cash flow even in the face
of some of these short intermediate term hits.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
What are you expecting in terms of SAR because we've
had pretty strong sales numbers over the past couple of months,
I think upwards of seventeen point three million. Does that
continue through the rest of the year.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
No, we don't expect it to. We would love to
see that happen, But what we said about six weeks
ago is we're planning for a year of about sixteen
million units, which is similar to last year. In April
and the first half of May, we were trending much
closer to eighteen million as we saw a lot of
customers trying to get ahead of what they expected to
be price increases. We've seen that come out over the
(08:46):
last couple of weeks, but it's really retreated back to
where it was before that pull ahead demand. So we're
encouraged by the fact that that consistent demand is still there,
and that's going to be important for us as we
continue to push forward. If we see a slow down,
we'll have to adjust to it and make sure that
we create that agility that we have really come to
(09:06):
be known for over the last few years. But right now,
the customer seeds pretty stable. Even though we've seen that
pool ahead demand.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Come out, You've had the best margins of the big
three enjoyed I think eight and a half percent margins
are thereabouts. Does it hang at that level through twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Well, obviously the tariffs are going to be an operating
hit to us going forward, which is why we're focused
on making sure we take actions quickly. There were a
number of actions that we already took, we called them
no regrets actions where we increased the line rate in
Fort Wayne, to build more trucks in the US, etc. Here,
we're taking the next step of deploying capital to increase
(09:46):
that production. These are steps that we think are necessary
for us for the long term to be able to
drive that type of consistent margin performance that we want
to be known for.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I want to ask about the shares as well as
your free float. It's gotten pretty small. How much further
can you go with buybacks?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Well, I mean, we're going to continue to follow our
discipline capital allocation policy. The first thing we do is
reinvest in the business. That's a capital budget of about
ten to eleven billion dollars. We just announced last night
that that'll be ten to twelve billion dollars for twenty
six and twenty seven, reflecting a little bit of additional
spend for what we're doing. The second is we prioritize
the balance sheet. The balance sheet's been as strong as
(10:24):
it's been in decades with a pension fund that's nearly
fully funded, and debt that's very manageable. And then the
third leg of that still was returning cash to shareholders.
So we reinstated the dividend a couple of years ago,
and we've been deploying that cash to return to our
shareholders to make sure that all the constituencies benefit from
the success that we've been having, our employees, our customers,
(10:47):
and our shareholders.
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