The top-selling imported vehicle from China? The Buick Envision
The Buick Envision comes with a peculiar label for a foreign-made car: Designed in the United States. The midsize luxury SUV, a product of General Motors, is the top-selling vehicle imported from China in the United States.
This alarms union leaders, who call for American companies to build cars in America, and could make General Motors a target for President Donald Trump’s tirades on trade.
The Envision, which made its debut last year, was the first Chinese import from any of the United States’ Big Three automakers. “The Invasion,” United Auto Workers president Dennis Williams called it.
Now, as Trump gears up for a fight with China over auto imports, the model could become a symbol of the administration’s efforts to discourage American companies from moving more business out there.
The Envision accounts for about 44,000 of an estimated 55,000 imports from China this year, according to IHS Automotive, a global analytics firm. That’s a fraction of the number of cars im- ported from Mexico last year, which accounted for 1.8 million vehicles, mostly small cars.
But White House officials have signaled Trump will try to renegotiate how China treats U.S. automakers when he meets next month with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to an Axios report. They don’t think American companies should pay 25 percent import taxes to reach Chinese consumers, while foreign automakers pay just 2.5 percent to access the U.S. market.
GM sells most of its Envision models in China, but U.S. sales have been steadily climbing — from 89 in May 2016 to 3,139 last month.
The automaker says consumer appetite in the United States isn’t large enough to sustain a local factory for the SUV, which has a suggested retail price of $34,000.
“This is a product that is primarily for the Chinese market,” General Motors spokesman Patrick Morrissey said.
The imports were intended to meet an uptick in demand, he said. The Envision, he added, was designed and engineered in Michigan, and that effort created 500 jobs.
Kristen Dziczek, director of labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research, said the Envision probably ended up in China because the desire for the SUV was greater in Beijing than, say, Detroit.
“As a brand, Buick would not have survived were it not for demand in China,” she said. “If they can make a few more and sell them here and fill out their lineup in Buick dealerships, then that’s all the better.”
But auto imports have become a target for Trump who has warned American companies against outsourcing work — and been especially tough on trade with China.