Tariff threat casts shadow over Hyundai’s plant-opening party in Bryan County

The White House has dubbed Wednesday — April 2 — “Liberation Day,” when President Donald Trump is due to announce tariffs on automobile imports. The shock to the global trade system has sparked inflation warnings for American consumers and economists also predicting steep slowdown in economic growth. 

Yet Hyundai’s top executives and some of Georgia’s top Republicans didn’t mention these growing economic storm clouds during the official grand opening of the Bryan County manufacturing plant last week. 

The Coastal Georgia economic development project — at $7.6 billion the largest in the state’s history — is supposed to help the South Korean car manufacturer corner the U.S. market in pragmatic, affordable cars and help define the next chapter in America’s love affair with automobiles. Originally, Hyundai was planning to make electronic vehicles on the futuristic factory floors there, but last year the company said it would pivot to build a hybrid model as well, given the slow consumer demand for EVs.

Tariffs will likely postpone those plans. That’s because the bulk of Hyundai’s cars for sale in the United States aren’t made in Ellabell. The Savannah-area facility is producing the Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIC 9 at a rate of around 200 vehicles per day — an annualized rate of 73,000 cars, according to an executive at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America. 

That compares to the more than 837,000 cars that the Korean company sold in the U.S. in 2024. The company’s most popular vehicles, like the Elantra and Sonata, aren’t EVs or hybrids, and a majority of those vehicles and car parts come from foreign supply chains, putting them under threat — along with dozens of other vehicle types — from the increased prices that tariffs will bring, Bank of America analyst John Murphy said in a research report published last week. 

(For a deeper dive on the car types and components that are made in the U.S. and abroad, check out this handy guide from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-02/MY2025-AALA-Alphabetical-2.4.25.pdf)

Last week, the Koreans worked all political angles to try to mitigate tariff threats. Hyundai’s top officials had an audience with Trump days before their splashy media tour at the Ellabell facility. 

They announced billions of dollars in new (and previously announced) investment in American manufacturing.  One of the new talking points: The car company would increase production at Ellabell from 300,000 per year to 500,000 per year. And they doubled down on plans to build a steel mill in Louisiana, something that will further the goal of bringing the company’s entire supply chain to American shores. 

But sometimes what company executives and politicians don’t say is more revealing than their public talking points. 

Jose Munoz, Hyundai Motors president and chief executive, declined to answer a question from The Current about when the Bryan County plan would be able to reach the company’s original output goal. Currently, the facility has hired enough workers for one shift a day — the plant needs three full shifts to come anywhere close to the 300,000 production target. 

Last year, local and regional officials were sounding alarm bells about the difficulties of recruiting enough workers to staff the plant, a situation that will need years to resolve. Meanwhile, many economists at America’s leading banks are predicting close to no macroeconomic growth this year because of tariffs and higher prices. When prices for all cars and car parts jump, and companies stop hiring workers, fewer Americans will be buying Hyundais, or any cars.

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, R-St. Simons Island, was among the VIPs who spoke at the Ellabell grand opening. At the microphone, he boasted about strong conservative Republican state leadership that induced Hyundai to invest in Georgia. When The Current asked him after the event was over whether he supported tariffs, he refused to give a direct answer. 

What Carter did say was that bright days are ahead “because we have a great president right now.”