Audi boss under fire in Germany for Trump rally appearance

The head of the luxury carmaker Audi is under fire in Germany for appearing at a rally with Donald Trump just days before the US midterm elections, to announce billions of dollars of investment in battleground state Georgia.

Gernot Döllner joined Trump on stage after the US president gave a speech criticised by the head of an elected body of employees at Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen, as being full of “racism, sexism, transphobia [and] contempt for democracy”.

Daniela Cavallo, the head of the VW works council, added that anyone who heard Trump’s speech and then saw that Döllner had become an active participant in the event must “sink into the ground with shame”, according to internal company communications released to German media.

She said the investment deal and Döllner’s appearance showed VW’s management had allowed itself to be “turned into a puppet in the propaganda show of a highly dubious political figure”.

Isabel Cademartori, the transport spokesperson for Germany’s Social Democrats – part of the country’s ruling coalition – called Döllner’s actions a “disgrace”. She added this was particularly so “in view of the history of the Volkswagen Group”, in an apparent reference to VW’s founding as a showcase company under the Nazis.

A spokesperson for the German government declined to comment on the matter, calling it “a business decision regarding where the company invests and, in this case, where the company’s chief executive appears”.

Döllner and Trump announced to the crowd on Saturday that Audi would spend $4bn to build its first factory in the US and create 4,500 jobs, even as VW aims to slash tens of thousands of positions and close plants in Germany.

“We are planning to bring our ⁠biggest and most premium SUVs, and produce them here in Macon, Georgia,” Döllner said at the rally in Perry near Macon, in a highly unusual move for a European executive during a hard-fought US electoral campaign.

He called the plans, which foresee factory construction starting next year and car production beginning in the 2030s, “a long-term investment because we believe in the American market”.

Audi is the only premium car manufacturer without its own factory in the US, making it particularly vulnerable to Trump’s punishing 15% import tariffs, which cost it an estimated €1.2bn last year. The Macon plant would build 200,000 SUVs annually.

The head of the powerful German trade union IG Metall, Christiane Benner, called Döllner’s US appearance “extremely embarrassing, politically unacceptable and unworthy of the company, but above all of Audi’s employees”.

She accused Döllner of being in “flagrant breach” of the company’s code of conduct, “which expressly requires political neutrality in the run-up to elections”.

She warned that any major investment like the Macon plant would have to go before VW’s supervisory board. Benner is the board’s deputy chair.

Volkswagen is currently locked in a battle between management and labour over a push to cut as many as 100,000 jobs and close factories. It has blamed the downsizing on intense competition from Chinese carmakers, as well as US tariffs and the expensive transition to electric vehicles.

Its German ​factories are under particular pressure to drive down costs, with Audi’s facility in Neckarsulm, which employs 15,000 people, among four VW plants threatened with closure from early next decade.

“Each site must do its part in terms of competitiveness and the long-term strength of Audi,” a company spokesperson said.

Trump is deeply unpopular in Germany and has riled its political mainstream by vocally backing the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. The AfD is the country’s most popular party according to polls, and has actively courted Trump’s support.

The 3 November election in Georgia could be decisive in the Democrats’ battle to regain a majority in the Senate. The incumbent senator, Jon Ossoff, is fighting a tough re-election battle against Republican challenger Mike Collins, in a state Trump won in 2024.

Trump has argued ahead of the midterms that his tariffs on car imports are helping the US economy.