The German car manufacturer Audi wants to build a new factory in the USA for four billion dollars (3.6 billion euros). The Volkswagen subsidiary plans to produce 200,000 sports off-road vehicles (SUVs) annually in the state of Georgia, creating around 4,500 jobs. US President Donald Trump surprisingly announced the project at a campaign event in Perry, Georgia. Audi CEO Gernot Döllner came on stage. He thanked Trump for his support.
The construction of the new US plant still needs to be approved by the Volkswagen supervisory board. The decision should be seen against the background of VW's sales crisis and the discussion about job cuts and possible factory closures in Germany. Audi has locations in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm.
Prime Minister Olaf Lies, who sits on the VW supervisory board as the representative of the state of Lower Saxony, said that the USA is an important market for Volkswagen and that it is strategically right to develop it even better. "More production there is an opportunity if the factories and employees in Germany also benefit from it. Growth in America must secure work and added value here and must not displace them," the SPD politician made clear. The upcoming decisions should be measured against this.
An Audi statement said that construction of the plant is scheduled to begin in 2027. Production is scheduled to start in the early 2030s. The factory will build premium SUVs that are tailored to the requirements of North American customers.
Since the beginning of his second term in office in January 2025, Trump has been demanding that foreign companies relocate production to the USA with the threat of high tariffs. He offered such companies the prospect of waiving tariffs on imports into the USA. Trump wants to stimulate the domestic economy and create industrial jobs.
Audi boss Döllner is not the first German industrial manager to seek proximity to Trump under sensitive circumstances. During Trump's first term in office in 2018, the then Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess, his Daimler colleague Dieter Zetsche and the BMW representative Oliver Zipse visited the White House with the request to talk Trump out of his plans for punitive tariffs on German cars. The greeting of Trump at a meeting of European managers by the then Siemens boss Joe Kaeser, which was perceived by many as excessively submissive, also became almost legendary.
Trump's Republican Party faces general elections on November 3rd. The Americans vote on the seats in the House of Representatives and some of the seats in the Senate. The Republicans want to defend their razor-thin majorities in both chambers of the US Congress. According to recent polls, the Democratic Party has at least a good chance of winning the majority in the House of Representatives.
IG Metall was generally positive about the plant plans, but also combined this with a warning. “It is right and necessary to better develop the US market through a new plant,” said First Chairwoman Christiane Benner in a statement. “However, binding perspectives for employees at all locations, especially at local locations, must be clearly defined and recorded.” The board of directors has a debt to pay.
Benner also pointed out that the final decision on a possible new factory building in the USA was subject to committee approval. “The final vote will be taken with a holistic view, correctly and importantly, in the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG.” Benner is deputy chairwoman there.
The VW Group works council emphasized that additional production in new locations must always ensure that the existing locations in the global production network also benefit at the end of the day. “In this respect, there are a number of open questions that need to be answered internally in our committees,” said a spokesman.
VW boss Oliver Blume emphasized in a statement that the entire Volkswagen Group benefits from its success in North America. “We see the region as an important market for profitable growth,” said the group’s CEO. “A possible factory for Audi in the USA would create further conditions for this: localized products from the USA for the USA.”
VW Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch said Volkswagen wants to further strengthen its position in the US in the coming years. The prospect of an Audi plant in the USA “basically fits in very well with this strategic orientation”. And: “We see this as an attractive perspective for Audi, for our activities in North America and for the Volkswagen Group as a whole.”
