The writer, a Los Angeles freelancer and former Detroit News business reporter, writes a blog, Starkman Approved.
By Eric Starkman
Mary Barra and CBS's Tony Dokoupil’ at Auto Show
As automakers gather in Detroit this week to showcase the industry’s future, General Motors is offering a quieter — and more revealing — snapshot of its priorities.
President Trump says he wants to reshore U.S. manufacturing and make America great again. GM CEO Mary Barra has publicly supported tariffs and other measures the Trump administration says are intended to strengthen domestic production. Yet even as executives and politicians work the Detroit Auto Show floor, GM is permanently cutting jobs here while reaffirming major investment commitments abroad.
Reports out of Mexico say GM has committed $1 billion over the next two years to its operations there, where the company employs roughly 25,000 workers. In 2024, GM invested another $1 billion in its Ramos Arizpe complex, a dedicated electric-vehicle manufacturing hub producing the Equinox EV, Blazer EV, and Cadillac Optiq — vehicles built in Mexico and sold extensively in the United States.
That Mexico commitment follows a $300 million investment in South Korea, where GM operates a major export base and what executives there describe as the company’s second-largest technical center outside its Warren operations. GM Korea produced nearly 500,000 vehicles in 2024, most of them shipped to the U.S., even as GM’s domestic market share in South Korea has dwindled to roughly 1%, fueling periodic speculation about whether the company might eventually exit the country.
Cuts At Factory Zero
Taken together, that’s $1.3 billion in reaffirmed overseas investment — announced or emphasized as GM permanently cuts thousands of jobs in the U.S., including more than 1,000 workers at its Factory Zero plant on the Detroit–Hamtramck border, reducing the once-heralded flagship EV facility to a single shift.
Factory Zero
Factory Zero was billed as the cornerstone of GM’s all-electric future. For many of the workers who were promised that future, the transition has been swift — and final. GM has also eliminated hundreds of jobs tied to its battery operations in Ohio.
Asked for comment, GM spokesperson Kevin Kelly pointed to nearly $5.5 billion in announced U.S. manufacturing investments across plants in Kansas, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, and New York. Those projects, however, are largely tied to gasoline vehicles and engine production beginning in 2027. None reverse the EV job cuts already taken in metro Detroit — even as Barra continues to describe electric vehicles as GM’s “End Game.”
GM’s $5.5 billion in new investments requires some context. The company authorized roughly $25 billion in stock buybacks over the past three years. The imbalance underscores that GM under Mary Barra increasingly resembles a financial engineering play, not the cutting-edge technology company she claims to be.
Stock buybacks reduce the number of shares outstanding and lift share prices. Over the past two years, Barra disclosed sales of at least half her GM stock holdings, further highlighting how shareholder enrichment under her watch has taken precedence over long-term investment and execution.
The UAW did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But when GM announced a $1 billion Mexico EV investment shortly after President Joe Biden took office, Terry Dittes, then head of the union’s GM department, did not mince words:
“At a time when General Motors is asking for a significant investment by the U.S. government in subsidizing electric vehicles, this is a slap in the face for not only UAW members and their families but also for U.S. taxpayers and the American workforce.
“General Motors automobiles made in Mexico are sold in the United States and should be made right here, employing American workers. That is why our nation is investing in these companies. Taxpayer money should not go to companies that utilize labor outside the U.S. while benefiting from American government subsidies. This is not the America any of us signed on for. Frankly, it is unseemly.”
Tension Grows
That tension — between public subsidy and private capital allocation — has only grown sharper. At the Detroit Auto Show this week, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized Trump for flipping off a UAW worker during a Ford plant visit, saying it was something Trump had long done “figuratively” to autoworkers.
But it was the Biden administration that spearheaded $7,500 EV subsidies that applied to electric vehicles GM manufactured in Mexico — incentives that made Barra’s south-of-the-border EV strategy more economically advantageous. Indeed, GM announced it would build its electric Cadillac Optiq in June 2024.
Cadillac OPTIQ
Republicans insult autoworkers rhetorically. Democrats subsidize the vehicles that replace them. GM, meanwhile, remains largely insulated from both forms of political theater.
GM insists its global strategy strengthens North America as a whole. President Mark Reuss has said the region’s deeply integrated supply chains are “a major strength.” That may be true in the aggregate. But for Detroit workers absorbing the consequences of GM’s failed electric transition so far, integration increasingly feels like a one-way street.
Adding insult to injury, Barra and Reuss were recently named co-chairs of the Detroit Regional CEO Group, an informal group of business and foundation executives working on priorities to strengthen Southeast Michigan.
GM once had some 5,000 salaried workers at its former Renaissance Center headquarters. GM won’t disclose how many employees will be permanently based on the four floors it rents at Dan Gilbert’s Hudson’s Detroit building, which the company maintains is its global headquarters.
And while Barra maintains that electric vehicles are GM’s “End Game,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom has accused her of playing a front and center role in efforts to weaken his state’s aggressive EV mandates.
“Mary Barra sold us out,” Newsom said in September. “GM sold out to this administration. They sold out our leadership.”
California is by far the nation’s largest EV market. GM’s head of product development, Sterling Anderson, is based in the Bay Area, as is Lin-Hua Wu, GM’s head of marketing and PR.
