Exclusive: General Motors CEO Mary Barra

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
Fox News Podcasts presents The Bret Baier Podcasts with Fox News Chief Political Anchor, Bret Baier.

**Bret Baier** (0:15)
I have the right to do tariffs, and I've always had the right to do tariffs. We lost 50% of our car business. We used to make cars, we made all the cars.
And then Mexico came, Canada came, Japan and Germany. But they're all coming back now. We're having some fake inflation because of the fuel, the energy prices.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:34)
If you need more time, does that mean Americans should anticipate spending more on gasoline for the foreseeable future?

**Bret Baier** (0:41)
For a little while.

**Mary Barra** (0:41)
And you know what they get for that?

**Bret Baier** (0:43)
You know what they get for that?
Iran without a nuclear weapon. Tonight we look at the effects of the Iran conflict, the Trump tariffs, and the other issues on the American industry. Joining us, the CEO and Chair of General Motors, Mary Barra. Thanks so much for being here.

**Mary Barra** (0:57)
It's great to see you.

**Bret Baier** (0:58)
I want to talk about a lot of things with you, but first about that, about the impact of the war in Iran.
Obviously, we've seen the impact of tariffs and how that's affected the industry. But where you stand now, how do you look at it?

**Mary Barra** (1:12)
Well, from a tariff perspective, you know, one of the things that I've always been supportive of is a strong manufacturing base in the United States and also leveling the playing field. So I'm aligned with the president on what we want to do from increasing and strengthening manufacturing in this country. That's where I grew up, at General Motors. We'll have, in early 28, we'll be able to make two million vehicles in this country. We also have a very extensive supply chain, a lot of engines, stamp parts, and we've also worked with suppliers to bring them back to this country. From an Iran perspective, we are seeing some commodity pressure. We've seen some higher cost in logistics. So we're monitoring that. We had some adjustment and we projected that from our earnings that some of the benefits and the performance we saw in the first quarter, because General Motors had an excellent first quarter.
We remain the number one automaker in this country, Canada, number two in Mexico, number one in trucks. So just a really strong quarter. But we are starting to see a little bit higher cost. And so we're looking internally to reduce costs.

**Bret Baier** (2:14)
Just on the tariff thing, New York Post, GM expects a whopping 500 million tariff refund after the Supreme Court strikes down levies. So you're factoring that into your 500 million?

**Mary Barra** (2:25)
Well, we took that as an accounting adjustment that's consistent with our accounting policies to pull that forward. We did not change our cash because we're not exactly sure how that process is going to work. But I think the fact that ours is fairly low compared to others represents that we have a lot of parts we're already buying from this country.

**Bret Baier** (2:40)
You mentioned the investments. 830 million announced.

**Mary Barra** (2:44)
Absolutely, and we're really excited about the investment that we're actually announcing right now. So thank you for the opportunity. In Michigan and in Ohio, it can continue strengthening our plants there. And these are plants that will be contributing for our new generation truck that will be coming in the not too distant future.

**Bret Baier** (3:02)
You know, you made a big bet on electric vehicles, and you were going to go transition from gas to electric by 2035 I've talked to a lot of dealers, and they said, hey, listen, it's been tough, it hasn't been selling, and we'd love to make a jump to a hybrid. Is GM thinking about a hybrid?

**Mary Barra** (3:19)
Well, you know, first, we made the investment, and a lot of that was driven by the previous regulatory environment, so it was solid. We do think EVs are the end game.
We think, we know that four out of five people, once they buy an EV, they go back to it. We are evaluating hybrids. We'll look to add the right hybrids, but right now, we have an incredibly strong internal combustion engine portfolio, and then from an EV perspective, we still have over 12 EVs that we offer in market, and we actually grew share. Overall, demand is lower, but GM took a larger share of that demand.

**Bret Baier** (3:52)
Don't go anywhere. More of this interview coming right up. Obviously, you're not getting the rebates on those, so those customers are looking at other things. This dealer I'm just talking to says, the competition, Toyota, Nissan, why can't we offer both?