A car parts manufacturing company in Metro Detroit is shifting gears on plans to build a new plant, and the CEO says tariffs are partially to blame.
Auburn Hills-based Lucerne International makes car and truck parts for companies like Stellantis. Right now, a lot of its manufacturing is done overseas in places like China.
“Quite a while ago, we said, OK, you know, we need to onshore, and we need to start producing here in the U.S., bring some manufacturing back home,” Buchzeiger said. “Our equipment, roughly, originally, it was somewhere between an $8-9 million investment in the equipment alone, and that’s went up so far, from what we can tell, close to $3 million in the business plan, which is a lot.”
Plans started to greenfield a new forging plant in Detroit. It is estimated that the project would have created more than 300 jobs in the area. Now, Lucerne is actively looking at locations in the U.S. where they don’t have to build the facility from the ground up.
“We’re looking at a location that’s already there, has the infrastructure or something that we can move into,” Buchzeiger said. “We are chasing down a couple of real, viable opportunities. One is still in Michigan, just not in Detroit.”
Buchzeiger believes companies should rebuild a manufacturing footprint at home, but she says tariffs are creating more challenges than support.
“Taking this broad approach of just spraying, you know, tariffs everywhere, I think, is detrimental, quite frankly, to businesses, and at the end of the day, it’s the American consumer that pays those tariffs,” Buchzeiger said. “This really isn’t just a Lucerne story. This is an everybody story, right? These tariffs and all of these changes, they impact everybody, far and wide.”