Ola Källenius, the strongman of Mercedes-Benz, revealed in an interview that a high-ranking official from the Trump administration tried to persuade him to move the company’s headquarters from Germany to the U.S., a possibility that the Swede, who has been at the helm of the Stuttgart brand since 2019, the year he succeeded Dieter Zetsche, immediately rejected. Donald Trump, since returning to the presidency of the U.S. in January 2025, has been leveraging tariffs both to influence trade with other countries and to try to entice brands to relocate production to North American territory. However, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, was even more ambitious, Källenius confided in the podcast of The Pioneer, and among the advantages for the star brand were substantial tax incentives!
“We have been a global company for over 100 years, but we have roots in Germany, and they cannot, and should not, be ripped from the ground,” argued the CEO of Mercedes-Benz. In 2023, the shareholders of the consortium extended the contract of the 56-year-old Swede until mid-2029. Mercedes-Benz, like BMW, has a factory in the U.S. – the first in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and the second in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
