How Many Cars Are Made In America? Trump Pushes Automakers To Increase Production In US

President Donald Trump encouraged American automakers to open new plants in the United States during a meeting with the CEOs of three auto companies Tuesday morning. Trump’s ambition to create more jobs on American soil was a major sticking point of his campaign -- in fact, he brought up a plan to tag Mexican-built cars with a 35 percent tariff when he ran for president.

“It used to be the cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now the cars are built in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint,” Trump said during a visit to Flint, Michigan, in September.

But exactly how many cars are made in the U.S.?

It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. Just about every car produced today will have some sort of foreign-made part. In other words, no one car is completely made in the U.S.

And even the question, “How much of a vehicle was produced in America?” doesn’t have a clear-cut answer.

That’s where certain automobile indices come into play, which calculate how “American” a given car is based on different criteria. One well-known list is Cars.com’s American Made Index, which is released once a year. American University’s Kogod School of Business publishes another list, called the Kogod Made In America Auto Index.

The 2016 American Made Index listed the Toyota Camry -- a car made by a Japanese company -- as the car that was “most” American-made. The Camry has a total domestic content of 75 percent, but it was sold more than any other car in the U.S. Since this index uses sales figures rather than production numbers as a barometer for assembly-line employment, the Camry tops the list.

In contrast, listed at the top of the Kogod Made In America Index are the Buick Enclave, the Chevrolet Traverse, and the GMC Acadia, all made by American company General Motors. Each type of car has a total domestic content of 90 percent, according to the index.

About 17.5 million vehicles were sold in the U.S. in 2015, and approximately 65 percent of those cars were produced on American soil.

In December, American automobile manufacturing employed 934,000 workers, according to the data from Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 3.3 million people worked in automobile retail, including both dealers of cars and car parts.