Trump says Tesla is going to ‘build a very big plant in the US.’ What is he talking about?

Today, Donald Trump commented on Elon Musk and Tesla’s recent success on the stock market, and the US president ended his comments by saying that Tesla is going to “build a very big plant in the US.”

What is he talking about?

In a CNBC interview released earlier today, Trump was asked what he thinks of the fact that Tesla is now worth more than GM and Ford combined.

Trump answered that he was happy about Musk’s success with both Tesla and SpaceX, and said that he “recently” talked to him.

He then made some strange comments about Tesla building a new factory in the US:

He’s going to be building a very big plant in the United States. He has to, because we help him, so he has to help us.

He didn’t elaborate on what he means by helping Tesla, or if he knows anything specific about a plan for a new factory in the US.

Tesla recently started production at Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, Tesla’s first vehicle factory outside the US, and also recently announced Gigafactory 4 in Germany.

Here’s the relevant part of the interview:

Electrek’s Take

I wouldn’t attribute too much importance to this comment. Whether you like Trump or not, you have to admit that he says a lot of crazy things that just aren’t true.

If you don’t agree, then you have to consider that he talked about Thomas Edison in the present tense in this very same comment — saying that we need to “protect” him. It’s a little late to protect Thomas Edison.

As far as his comment about a Tesla factory, I don’t think he knows anything we don’t, but he might be right.

Elon has talked about Tesla building another factory in the US on a few occasions before. He even specifically mentioned a tri-state area at one point.

We recently speculated that it could make sense to build a new factory in the US or Canada in order to build the Cybertruck and Tesla’s own battery cells.

However, I don’t know what Trump means by helping them. I assume he means subsidies that Tesla received over the years, but as we previously reported, this was only a fraction of the subsidies that fossil-fuel companies have received from the US government over the years.

Also, Trump apparently recently intervened to stop the EV tax credit reform, which would have made it a lot fairer to early proponents of electrification like Tesla.

Therefore, he hasn’t been helping Tesla much lately.

Maybe this opens the door to some changes. Who knows? What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.