Toyota Motor North America will spend $3.6 billion on a second assembly line at its San Antonio plant, adding 2.5 million square feet and 2,000 jobs to build the Tacoma pickup. Over roughly four years, Toyota will transition Tacoma volume from its Tijuana plant (TMMBC) to the expanded Texas campus. Its Guanajuato plant will continue building Tacomas.
The move brings a full pickup line from Mexico into the US as USMCA auto content rules move toward renegotiation.
The build: San Antonio’s total investment since 2003 now reaches $8.3 billion, and the local workforce will grow to about 6,000 across 23 on-site suppliers. Tijuana built 166,653 Tacomas last year, all of which need a new home in Texas or a backfill plan in Baja once the four-year transition wraps.
Toyota’s announcement calls the move a “transition,” not an exit. It also reaffirms its operations across Mexico, the US and Canada.
Why now: Vehicles shipped from Mexico face US tariffs of up to 25%. The production shift is meant to protect Toyota from those costs and “shield [Toyota] itself from the impact of tariffs on Mexican imports,” according to Transport Topics.
The announcement also comes days after USTR confirmed USMCA won't renew in its current 16-year form, instead shifting to annual reviews. The regional value threshold that automakers must meet for duty-free treatment is still being negotiated, and the next US-Mexico round on auto rules is coming up.
The stranded-capacity question: Toyota has not said what will replace Tacoma production at the Tijuana plant. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tatsuo Yoshida called the move “strategically sound if current US trade policies and tariff levels remain in place.” But he said any replacement vehicle built in Baja would likely need to target markets outside the US and reach enough scale to keep the plant profitable.
Toyota is moving Tacoma production closer to the US market while GM is moving in the opposite direction, adding roughly $1 billion to its Mexico operations to build vehicles it currently imports from China. That lets it avoid Mexico’s 50% tariff on non-FTA-built cars. Both companies face the same tariff pressure but are making very different bets on their regional manufacturing footprint.
The San Antonio campus is set to double in size by 2030. The next concrete marker is the upcoming Mexico City round on auto content rules, which will determine the regional value threshold that Tijuana’s remaining supplier base must meet to keep shipping duty-free.
