Toyota Motor Corp., scolded by President-elect Donald Trump over a planned plant in Mexico, relied on the country for less than 7 percent of its record North American output last year.
The automaker built 2.12 million cars and trucks on the continent last year, assembling 65 percent of those in the U.S., according to a statement. A Tacoma midsize pickup factory near the California border and a Mazda Motor Corp. plant supplying Yaris and Yaris iA small cars together produced 6.6 percent of the total.
Toyota imported more than 1 in 4 vehicles sold in the U.S. last year from outside of North America, though most of those came from Japan, a report by researcher LMC Automotive showed Wednesday. The company ranks behind eight other major automakers by projected share of U.S. sales sourced from Mexico in 2020, trailing Volkswagen, Mazda and the Renault-Nissan alliance, LMC said.
"What Toyota builds in Mexico and ships here is de minimis," said Maryann Keller, an independent auto industry consultant in Stamford, Connecticut. "Even with their plans to make it bigger, the vast amount of their non-Japanese production is located here in the U.S. and in Canada already."
Trump earlier this month criticized a 20-month-old plan to construct a Corolla compact factory in Mexico that is scheduled to start production in 2019. He called for Toyota to build the plant in the U.S. or pay a "big border tax." The automaker already assembles Corollas from a plant in Mississippi.
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