The number of cars made in America will take a sharp decline as Tesla just started quietly shifting production abroad.

Germans through all of 2025 bought less than 20K cars made by the Tesla factory in Germany, a resounding economic and political disaster. Sales dropped a whopping 56% compared to the prior year.

The factory meanwhile claims success. The huge design, wiping out a forest, was to produce 250,000 cars a year. That should give perspective on just how bad Tesla sales have been. Honestly, they should have sold tours of the forest instead of cutting it down to fail at selling cars.

Data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority shows that in the first 11 months of the year, 17358 new Tesla cars were registered.

Pundits might have laughed at this miscalculation, but Tesla says a loophole in Canadian tariffs against American made cars is about to make the idle factory very useful. The Eastern Europeans who run the factory probably don’t care who buys or from where.

“I live in Frankfurt (Oder) [on the Polish border], and I’ve never even been to town,” admitted one of the few Tesla workers who agreed to speak…

The policy outcome inverts the xenophobic nationalist “American-made” rhetoric entirely: American car production declines because American tariffs make American cars uncompetitive in neighboring markets. The German factory Musk poisoned politically by campaigning for Germany’s Nazi party (AfD) becomes his loophole.

Canadians can now order Teslas directly from Grünheide at a significantly lower price, rather than buying from the US and paying Canada’s retaliatory 25% import duties on US-made cars in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.