The Signal Interview
It takes about 30,000 parts to make the typical General Motors car, and most of them cross a border. President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on cars and automotive parts, coupled with triple-digit levies on any components from China, pose a singular challenge for Mary Barra, who — after more than a decade as GM’s CEO — is leading her industry’s efforts to cushion the potential blow.
In March, she helped persuade the president to give automakers a monthlong reprieve. Onstage at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday, she said their conversations in recent weeks have been “very productive.” Hours later, reports emerged that Trump may pull back on some of his most onerous auto tariffs.
To be sure of a smoother road ahead, though, her task is to persuade the administration that what’s good for GM is good for America. She’s starting by emphasizing where her agenda and the president’s agenda converge.
Wheel alignment
“First of all, I need clarity, and then I need consistency,” Barra says. It can take five or six years to bring out a new vehicle, and to make such long-term investments without gambling its shareholders’ capital, “I need to understand what the policy is.” Automotive supply chains can’t be redesigned overnight, she warns. “Everything can be moved over time, but we also have to do it effectively, and we have to do it in a manner where we’re still competitive globally.”
But she’s mingling that message with praise for the White House, and stressing that GM is listening as well as lobbying. “I think there’s been a lot of effort to really understand our industry — and for us to understand what they’re trying to achieve.”
Her task is not to change the president’s mind, she implies — “I don’t think I would use the term persuadable.” Instead, she points to “the goals he stated all along, of wanting to have a strong manufacturing base in this country and a strong auto industry.” From that perspective, she says, “We’re very much aligned.”
Government Motors
The US government sold the stake it acquired in GM’s bankruptcy before Barra took the wheel, but she is keen to remind Washington of her industry’s importance in the country’s wider geostrategic contest with China.
“Our message is making sure they understand what the auto industry is [and] how it operates, so we can be competitive and not be put at a disadvantage to our foreign competitors,” she says.
Chinese rivals including BYD and Geely have seized a majority of their domestic market — the world’s largest — and are posing a greater challenge internationally. “Component to component, technology to technology… I would say we stack up quite well,” Barra says. “I definitely believe that the US can still win.”
But she notes the progress she has seen on her regular visits to China — which is “a formidable competitor.”
The efficiency drive
Barra noted that GM has already overhauled its supply chain to be more resilient after the pandemic and the ensuing semiconductor shortage. It is responding now by using its production capacity in different markets to the most rational effect. But she is also using this moment of pressure to push her company to tighten up, by getting rid of bureaucracy and making sure “what we’re spending money on is really going to lead to our longer-term vision.”
One of her priorities “is to really be challenging the whole organization to be efficient,” she says. “And that’s always a great message.”
Electric dreams
Not long ago, former President Joe Biden hailed Barra’s leadership in bringing Detroit into the EV era, telling her, “You electrified the entire automobile industry.” That comment reportedly infuriated Tesla’s Elon Musk. More importantly, Biden’s successor has shown little love for electric cars: Trump signed an executive order to eliminate Biden’s tax credits for consumers buying EVs.
Barra has bet billions on GM’s electric transition. But as domestic demand for EVs has disappointed, her pitch has become one of consumer choice. She still thinks drivers are going to prefer EVs “over the longer period of time,” but GM isn’t abandoning the internal combustion engine.
For most people, she notes, a car is the second-biggest thing they buy after a house, so “giving that customer choice is what will lead to our success.”
New drivers at the wheel
Barra started at GM in 1980, inspecting the fenders of Pontiacs for quality defects. But she is not just counting on her lifelong auto industry colleagues to position it for a future of electric — and autonomous — vehicles. She has brought in a head of software from Apple, a chief AI officer from Cisco, and a new battery lead from Tesla.
“You have to have the best talent,” she says, and “you can’t afford to get it wrong.” Nor can a company like GM afford to have new arrivals rejected by the culture of the organization they are joining. So while she notes how much longstanding team members have learned from the tech industry alumni, she adds how much the newcomers have learned from the people who know how to make great vehicles. There’s a shared mission, she says: “They just want to win.”