LOS ANGELES — The threat of new international tariffs was the elephant in the room, as BMW of North America presented a couple of its newest South Carolina-built models, the BMW X5 and the bigger BMW X7.
“The is the fourth-generation of our X5,” said Bernhard Kuhnt, president and CEO BMW of North America, at this week’s press preview for the L.A. Auto Show. “All have been made right here in the U.S., at Plant Spartanburg,” he said.
Also at the L.A. Auto Show, BMW debuted the convertible version of the BMW 8 Series Convertible. Both the 8 Series Convertible and the new X7 were already shown at earlier auto shows in near-production form.
BMW opened its U.S. assembly plant in 1994. Since then, it has built more than 2.2 million X5s, half of a total output of 4.4 million cars and trucks. More than 70% of the South Carolina plant’s output has been exported, Kuhnt said. According to BMW, that makes the German automaker the nation’s biggest exporter of U.S.-built vehicles in terms of dollar value.
That’s great in terms of building products close to the market, one of the Spartanburg plant’s original reasons for being.
The U.S. market pioneered the luxury truck segment, which continues to boom to this day. Year to date through October, BMW’s U.S. light-truck sales were up 20% to 125,001, while its car sales were down 11% to 123,326, according to the Automotive News Data Center. Overall, BMW-brand sales were up 2% year to date.
The South Carolina plant has built car models such as the BMW 3 Series and the BMW Z4 roadster over the years but today, the Spartanburg plant builds all crossovers and SUVs: the BMW X3, X4, X5, and X6. It’s also building the top-of-the-line BMW X7, which is just reaching the market.
Originally, the U.S. plant was also built as a hedge against fluctuations in currency exchange, and it continues to fill that role.
However, in the Trump era the fact that Plant Spartanburg imports a lot of content and exports so much of its production makes parent BMW AG just about uniquely vulnerable to U.S. tariffs on imports, and to any retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports on the part of overseas trading partners, such as the European Union and China.
So BMW never misses an opportunity to mention its status as the nation’s biggest automotive exporter, or the fact that it has created more than 10,000 U.S. jobs, including direct and indirect employment, such as suppliers and dealerships.
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