Major automakers General Motors, Ford, and Toyota have all promised to donate $1 million each toward President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next month.
The car companies joined a growing group of executives and corporate giants to shell out funds for Trump’s inauguration. Toyota, a Japanese-based company, became the latest to promise to pitch in for Trump’s ceremony in a statement to the New York Post.
Ford and General Motors confirmed their support in statements earlier this week, according to Reuters. All three automakers are at varying degrees of risk to take financial hits from tariffs, which Trump has threatened against a host of countries to drive American interests.
“(Given) Ford’s employment profile and importance in the U.S. economy and manufacturing, you can imagine the administration will be very interested in Ford’s point of view,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told reporters this month when asked about Trump’s tariff threats.
The carmakers’ support for Trump’s inauguration comes alongside a flood of other corporate donations, including nearly a dozen companies that denounced challenges to the 2020 election and Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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General Motors, Ford, and Toyota all fall within the category of those companies that boycotted groups that supported 2020 election challenges. Other major companies within that group include AT&T, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Intuit, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and Stanley Black & Decker.
Trump’s 2017 inauguration received donations of $1 million or more from 18 companies. Trump’s inauguration next month is on track to receive more megadonors than that, WSJ reported. Trump’s 2017 inauguration received a total of $107 million in donations, another mark on track to be passed.
Trump’s team has offered perks to those donors who donate at least $1 million or who raise $2 million from others, including six tickets to a reception with cabinet picks and a dinner with Trump and his wife, Melania.
In a press conference last week, Trump commented on the line of CEOs and business leaders who have come to meet with him after his election victory. Trump noted that “everybody wants to be my friend,” a shift from his first administration when “everybody was fighting me.”
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich attributed the attachment to Trump to “panic” among some of the business elite.
“I think the term is ‘panic.’ These guys were all anti-Trump, and they all know he has a great memory, an enormous amount of energy and is quite prepared to go after people who he thinks are a problem,” Gingrich told Bloomberg.
