Ford Motor Co. said it will invest $1.6 billion on a new small-car factory in Mexico, angering its U.S. union and reviving an election-year controversy.
Construction will begin this summer, and the plant in San Luis Potosi state will create 2,800 jobs by 2020, Ford said Tuesday. Production is slated to start in 2018. The automaker, which is moving output of slow-selling, lower-priced small cars out of a Michigan factory, didn't specify which vehicles will be built at the Mexico site.
Ford wants "improve the profitability of our small-car lineup," said Joe Hinrichs, its president of the Americas.
United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams called the company's plan "very troubling" and said the investment means creating jobs that "should have been available right here in the U.S.A." The UAW response echoes criticisms directed at the automaker since last year by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.