My name is Gabor Steingart. Today on the Pioneer One media ship I spoke with Ola Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group. It was a lively conversation about the future of mobility, China, and his expectations for politics. Subscribe to this YouTube channel for more. The full version is on our website. And now the interview begins. Ola Källenius, welcome aboard. Good evening, Ola Källenius.
Mr. Källenius, let's not start in Stuttgart or Beijing, but in New York. About a year ago, in January of last year, you met the then future Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and he made you, I would say, an immoral offer. The Commerce Secretary of the Trump administration makes you an offer at breakfast. Tell us what happened.
Last year, yes. We met in New York to discuss trade policy. It was no surprise that the new president and administration would use tariffs as a tool to optimize the US trade balance. Howard Lutnick met with various people, including me, to discuss what that means. As a global company like Mercedes, we have a large footprint in the US. I wanted to explain the impact of tariffs and advocate for considering both imports and exports, since we are one of the largest industrial exporters from the US. He said, 'Doing business in the United States is great and it's going to get even greater.' He explained that the new administration would improve entrepreneurship in all dimensions: energy, taxes, regulations, simplifying doing business. And with such considerations, there could only be one goal for Mercedes: move to America. He promoted that we should do more in the US, even possibly shift our focus there. That's how he sold it.
The star has been a global company for over 100 years, but we are deeply rooted in Swabia. You can't and don't want to pull those roots out. We will invest in the US anytime; it's the largest economy in the world. But moving the headquarters from Stuttgart to the US would be a bit too much of a good thing.
Tax freedom, energy freedom, no employee rights. When you run an industrial company, it comes down to classic factor costs: energy, labor, taxes, and also speed—how fast can I build a factory, planning procedures, etc. My point was, we are in competition, Europe is in competition, Germany is in competition. If other large economies offer attractive conditions, capital is more likely to flow there. We Europeans, the EU, Germany, must work on our competitiveness so that our business case is at least as good or better.
Not one-to-one, but German industry and the automotive industry are in good exchange with politics, with this government and the previous one. Our message is that we need to shift towards growth policy, and that includes factor costs and framework conditions.
Dear Pioneers, before we continue, a quick note: The Pioneer Briefing is not only available as an interview here on YouTube, but also as a daily newsletter. Free, ad-free, politically independent. Use the link in the show notes. Now back to the conversation. I looked at your new S-Class today, sat in it. Fascinating, but it's still a car as we know it, optimized in a thousand ways, but it doesn't fly yet. Can't the car fly someday? These so-called electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles will come, they must come, I say.
12 more exchanges in this transcript
Sign in free to read the rest of this interview. No card required.
Källenius, O. (2026, January 30). Mercedes-CEO Ola Källenius im Gespräch mit Gabor Steingart | The Pioneer Briefing [Interview transcript]. The Pioneer. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1004509/
MLA
Ola Källenius. "Mercedes-CEO Ola Källenius im Gespräch mit Gabor Steingart | The Pioneer Briefing." The Pioneer, 30 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1004509/.
BibTeX
@misc{kllenius2026_1004509,
author = {Ola Källenius},
title = {Mercedes-CEO Ola Källenius im Gespräch mit Gabor Steingart | The Pioneer Briefing},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Pioneer. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1004509/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
