Hey, this is Daily Drive Executive Producer Jake Neer here in Detroit. Thanks for joining me for this bonus episode of the show. Earlier this week, we played you part of Ford CEO Jim Farley's fireside chat with Automotive News Publisher KC Crane at the 50th Automotive News Congress, the part where Farley talked about Ford's quality turnaround. If you haven't heard that one yet, go back and check out Wednesday's show. It's worth your time. Today, we're bringing you more from that conversation, and I'll tell you, Farley sounds especially fired up in this excerpt. You can hear it in his voice. The first part is about what Farley calls the essential economy, the skilled trades workers America needs to data centers, reshore manufacturing, and chase its AI ambitions. And why he says none of that works without fixing a massive labor shortage. After the break, Farley will pivot to China and lays out in some of his most candid language, I think, how close he thinks the global industry is to a tipping point, and what he thinks the US needs to do about it. That's a topic our own Michael Martinez got into on this week's Weekend Drive edition of the show. He referenced this exact excerpt of the conversation between Jim Farley and our own KC Crane on stage at Automotive News Congress.
Let's talk a little bit about the essential economy.
And for the people in the room that don't know, you've got an event kicking off tonight. You're very kind to be here with us today. I know you're going to be at it all day tomorrow, but really the argument is that the essential economy, the people who build and repair things, it's being ignored at a moment in time where our country is betting on AI, reshoring, a new infrastructure. So, for the people in the room, let's connect some of those ideas. Why can none of those ambitions succeed without solving the workforce problem?
Because today we have a 1.7 million job shortage in skilled trades in the United States. 1.7 billion, it's going to go to 2 billion in 3 years. We are in a complete crisis when it comes to skilled trades. You want to run a dealership, you know. If you're building something in America, you know. We have a complete full-blown crisis. And we got together last year and we agreed that we're going to do three things. First, we're going to produce a data book by state on all the skilled trade gaps in America. Number two, we're going to get after the perception issue. Like my kids, everyone in their life told them to go get a four-year degree.
Everyone in their life. No bueno, that does not work for our society anymore. And we've offshored so many things that we're onshoring, we have to get serious. And so, the data book is really interesting and we'll publish that. I hope everyone reads it because it's very sobering, but it's also very encouraging. We are working with the Ad Council to come up with a Got Milk type program to start convincing Americans that going into skilled trades is a great livelihood. It's a great future. You don't have to go to a four-year degree school to have a great career. And number three, we're building an alliance of like-minded companies to work on the problem beyond our own problems in our company. That's Larry Fink from BlackRock. It's Linda Hubbard from Carhartt. It's Meta. It's, you know, some of the biggest companies in the world are coming together because they need electricians to build data centers. Everyone has this problem. Each company can solve it for themselves, but what we're not doing is solving for America. And so that's the ambition for this accelerate is to work on this not for Ford, but for our customers, the small mom and pop electrician who doesn't have any succession for their business. We don't have a plan for them. And it's interesting. High school advisors, do you know only 3% of high school advisors recommend to graduating high schoolers to go to a trade school? 3%.
I don't know why European countries are so much better at this than we are.
They have apprentice programs. They're serious. The apprentice programs work like Ford in Germany. But we don't have them in our own country. We have some. The best work really well, but all the trade schools in America, if they graduated everyone, only 55% of our needs. We are like we have a problem. And everyone is talking about this problem. I was with Jamie Dimon this morning. It's a major issue for him as a bank because all his customers need this. I'm more interested in getting everyone together and making progress.
That's what I want to see.
Well, thank you for doing that. It's a big deal.
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This business rewards the effort that you put into it.
The Chinese model is truly a threat.
We've gone too far with the technology.
We work and give to the communities locally, and I think that's really important.
I think dealers are the most adaptive species on the planet Earth.
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I need your opinion on a couple of things before we get out of here.
Yeah, we need some good news out of you. Can't let you go until. But you know, when you think about regardless of your politics, it's sometimes hard to watch politicians get in the way of policy that's hurting industry so badly.
We've got, you know, an issue there. You know, forget USMCA, forget all the things going on there. But you've been pretty outspoken about China. And I know Jose Munoz is going to speak this afternoon. He's going to say, "I'll compete against anybody as long as it's a fair playing field." Give us your opinion. You've said before Ford loses
That's nice when you have a South Korean cost base. And the South Korean won behind you.
We're going to call Jim back to have a chat with Jose this afternoon.
