WASHINGTON - General Motors plans to announce a $300 million investment at its Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan on Friday in an effort to assuage President Donald Trump, who has berated the company all week for shutting a factory in Ohio.
GM's announcement Friday will include investments the company has not previously publicized, according to two people familiar with it who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The company declined to confirm specifics of the announcement, and it would not say how much of the $300 million represented new commitments.
Trump has lashed out at GM for causing 5,400 job losses when it shuttered its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant this month. The people familiar with GM's plans did not say how many additional jobs GM's new investments were expected to create.
Trump, who traveled to Ohio on Wednesday to visit a tank factory, spent part of his speech slamming GM and the United Automobile Workers union for dragging their feet on reopening the Lordstown facility.
"What's going with General Motors? Get that plant open or sell it to somebody and they'll open it. Everybody wants it," Trump said to applause. "(GM and the UAW) say they have discussions coming up in September, October. I said, 'Why not tomorrow?' "
Trump was fuming when he called GM CEO Mary Barra on Sunday and demanded that she reopen the Lordstown plant or sell it quickly to another manufacturer, according to two people familiar with the call.
Barra tried to tell Trump that she can't do anything right away because GM and the UAW will enter intense negotiations later this year over a new union contract. The fate of the Lordstown plant will be part of that discussion.
Trump said he "didn't care at all about the union rules," according to the people familiar with the call, and that he wouldn't be happy with "token" things.
Barra tried to emphasize to Trump that the company has been working to relocate workers at Lordstown to other GM factories across the country. About 800 have transferred, according to the union, but Trump wasn't satisfied with that, according to people familiar with the conversation.
GM has hired lobbyist Brian Ballard, who helped fundraise for Trump's campaign, to try to contact the administration and lower the tension.
"Any time GM makes a big investment like this, it's a commitment they plan to be making cars in that plant for a while," said Kristin Dziczek, a vice president at the Center for Automotive Research. "This is really a good sign for Orion."
The Orion plant outside Detroit has more than 880 hourly workers, according to the company's website.
The plant mainly produces an electric car, the Chevy Bolt, and a self-driving vehicle, which GM leaders say are key to the company's future. Friday's announcement comes after GM in 2018 announced it would invest a total of $100 million to build electric and autonomous vehicles at the Orion factory and at another Michigan facility.
Barr said it would cost about $100 million to retool the Lordstown plant to produce larger vehicles, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in December.
On the call and in tweets, Trump has told GM to start producing a different vehicle in Lordstown, which is located in a county in eastern Ohio that voted heavily for Barack Obama but swung to Trump in the past presidential election.
The Lordstown factory made the Chevy Cruze, a small sedan that sold well after the Great Recession, when gas prices were high and people were hesitant to spend much on big-ticket items. But sales have declined in recent years and GM doesn't want to make small cars in the United States anymore, preferring to focus on trucks, SUVs and electric vehicles in the country.
The Lordstown factory opened in 1966 and has been a bedrock of the local community, providing middle-class jobs for thousands of families over the years. But auto plants "tend to last 50 or 60 years," Dziczek said, meaning that Lordstown was "nearing the end of its useful life."
Trump did not mention GM at the Business Roundtable meeting Thursday, when dozens of CEOs met with the president, according to a person with direct knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door gathering. Barra is part of the group.
The union has also been a recipient of Trump's ire this week. Trump blamed David Green, president of UAW Local 1112 in Lordstown, for not doing enough to keep the plant open. Green has written Trump two letters and spearheaded a grassroots "Drive It Home" campaign to save the facility.
At the tank factory on Wednesday, Trump said union leaders are "not honest people," and he claimed the GM Lordstown workers could have been saved if the UAW had lower dues, which many have pointed out is not true because union dues aren't paid by the company.
Green shrugged off the president's criticism, saying he welcomes attention on his beloved hometown and the factory that has been at the heart of it for years.
"I'm staying focused on our members and our facility here, and trying to just put all the noise out," Green said.
When asked about GM pumping more money into another facility, Green said he welcomed any expansion in the United States but was quick to add, "We would like to see GM make announcements for investment in Lordstown."
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The Washington Post’s Damian Paletta contributed to this report.