Audi has sold cars in the United States for decades without building any of them here. Every Audi in an American showroom came off a line in Europe or Mexico.
That's about to change.
On Saturday, at a rally in Perry, Georgia, President Trump announced that Audi will build its first American factory on the Middle Georgia Megasite near Macon. The German automaker is putting $4.2 billion into the plant, which is expected to employ about 4,500 people and turn out up to 200,000 vehicles a year.
"Think about that — 200,000 cars a year," Trump told the crowd. "That's incredible."
Audi CEO Gernot Döllner flew in to stand next to him. "We are planning to bring our biggest and most premium SUVs and produce them here in Macon," he said. That means the Q7, the Q8, and the new Q9, the top-dollar models that until now have crossed an ocean to get here. Döllner called the plant "a long-term investment because we believe in the American market."
Trump was clear about what changed Audi's mind. He told the crowd the plant would not have happened without tariffs. A company that imports every car it sells here was paying the price at the border, and building in Georgia makes that bill go away.
Audi's parent company is betting on the move, too. Volkswagen is also adding room for another 25,000 vehicles a year at its Scout Motors plant going up in South Carolina.
Trump credited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick with helping close the deal. He folded Audi into a bigger tally, saying the auto industry has committed $40 billion and 30,000 new jobs to America on his watch.
Gov. Brian Kemp's team deserves credit for its part. The state bought the megasite in 2022, and Bibb, Houston, and Peach counties each chipped in $7 million to get it ready for a big automaker. Kemp said the site was improved "for just this purpose."
But the land had been sitting there for four years. Every Southern state has a megasite and an incentive package, and Audi spent decades turning all of them down. What changed was the cost of shipping cars into the United States.
Meanwhile, the company is leaving its home country behind. Germany has some of the highest industrial energy costs in the developed world, and its automakers have spent the last two years cutting jobs at home. Audi's answer is to put its biggest new investment in Peach County.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, and the first SUVs are expected to roll off the line in the early 2030s. Once it's fully built, 4,500 Georgians will be building the cars Audi used to import.