Donald Trump's US presidential election campaign rally in Georgia last month was strangely familiar, with the Republican candidate telling supporters: "I want German car companies to become American car companies."

Subject to his winning a second term in the White House, Trump promised that any foreign automaker that chooses to increase production in the United States would receive the lowest taxes, energy costs and red tape. But then came a new threat of "very substantial tariffs" on vehicles not made in the United States. The rhetoric had strong echoes of Trump's 2016 election campaign pledge to Make America Great Again by bringing back manufacturing from abroad.

For some, like Detroit-based automotive analyst John McElroy, the new remarks were nothing more than typical Trump hyperbole that they think he will struggle to enact. "It's hard to parse what is Trump bombast and what will be Trump policy," McElroy told DW. "He says a lot of crazy things. If he wins, we'll get a clearer idea of what he intends to do."

Despite criticism from Trump during his first election campaign in 2016, German automakers avoided a threatened 35% tariff by negotiating new investments in US production, including Volkswagen's electric vehicle (EV) expansion in Tennessee, $1 billion (€930 million) promised by Mercedes Benz in Alabama and BMW's ramping up of........

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