Former President Donald Trump threatened to slap John Deere with a 200% tariff if the farm equipment supplier followed through on plans to move some production to Mexico.
“I love the company, but as you know, they’ve announced a few days ago that they’re gonna move a lot of their manufacturing business to Mexico,” Trump said at a roundtable in Pennsylvania with farmers and manufacturers Monday.
“I’m just notifying John Deere right now: If you do that, we’re putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States.”
Trump said the manufacturing shift to Mexico is hurting “our farmers” and “our manufacturing” as John Deere has laid off hundreds of workers this year across its Iowa and Illinois-based plants.
“They think they’re going to make products cheaper in Mexico and then sell it for the same price as they did before, make a lot of money by getting rid of our labor and our jobs,” the Republican presidential nominee said.
In June, the tractor giant – which was founded more than 150 years ago – announced it was acquiring land in Ramos, Mexico to build a new plant.
John Deere said it would move some of its production from its Dubuque Works plant in Iowa to the Ramos facility by the end of 2026.
John Deere shares climbed 1.2% Tuesday morning after falling about 1% on Monday.
The company has run operations in Mexico since the 1950s, a John Deere spokesperson told The Post.
A John Deere spokesperson directed The Post’s inquiries about the production shift to the company’s “Commitment to US Manufacturing.”
“In order to position our US factories to undertake these highly value-additive activities it is sometimes necessary to move less complex operations, such as cab assembly, to other locations,” the company’s pledge said.
Billionaire investor and “Shark Tank” personality Mark Cuban, a staunch supporter of Democratic presidential nominees Kamala Harris, trashed Trump’s threat of tariffs.
“Good way to destroy a legendary American company and increase costs to American buyers,” Cuban wrote on X.
During the Pennsylvania roundtable, Trump also vowed to hit automakers that manufacture their cars in Mexico with similarly high tariffs.
“We’re going to put big tariffs on those cars that are coming in here at 100[%] to 200%, and they’re no longer going to be competitive – so you better stay in Michigan,” he said.
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