President Donald Trump recently claimed he met the owner of Toyota in Japan, a 92-year-old he called “Mr. Toyoda,” who agreed to invest $10 billion in the United States. The issue? The man Trump was speaking about is dead.
In late March 2026, a clip of a recent Trump speech went viral in the car community. In it, Trump calls Mr. Toyoda “sharp as a tack.” The conversation is quite odd, actually, and does sound a bit like something you’d hear in an A24 time while a group of teens starts to vaguely communicate with a ghost rather than get any real answers. According to Trump, here is how it went:
Trump: You’re rich. You have anything to do with automobiles?
Mr. Toyoda: Yes!
Trump: What do you have to do with Toyota?
Mr. Toyoda: I own it.
Trump: Do you want to make an investment?
Mr. Toyoda: Yes, we’re going to spend $10 billion on building five plants.
“Everybody is. They’re all coming to America,” Trump added in the speech, part of his usual rhetoric about building up America’s auto industry by barring certain countries from selling their vehicles here and incentivizing others to move production to America by implementing high (and illegal) tariffs on imported vehicles. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of how this has worked out so far, but we can see how tariffs have damaged automakers across the world, including in the United States.
What is actually happening with Toyota’s $10 billion investment?
Anyway, Trump has shared this story about Mr. Toyoda multiple times, starting with a speech back in October 2025. The issue is that there is no owner known as “Mr. Toyoda.” The alive and well Toyoda, Akio Toyoda, is 69 years old. And he’s chairman of Toyota, not the owner — Akio Toyoda owns less than 1% of Toyota’s shares. And Akio’s father, Shoichiro, was also a chairman and not an owner, though he is part of the founding family. He died at 97 in 2023. No one matches Trump’s description.
Okay, well, maybe he met with another guy — the actual owner — and he just got everyone mixed up. Ignoring how possibly racist that would be if the president still has any coherent thoughts and isn’t just spouting nonsensical tales, it still doesn’t really help that Toyota has already denied that it has ever told Trump it would invest $10 billion into U.S.-based plants. In fact, Trump did meet with Akio Toyoda a few times in the past, but he was never in his ’90s, nor was he an owner of Toyota. And he never agreed to that investment.
“During the first Trump administration, I think the figure was roughly around $10 billion, so while we didn’t say the same scale, we did explain that we’ll keep investing and providing employment as before,” Hiroyuki Ueda told reporters at the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo. “So, probably because of that context, the figure of about $10 billion came up.
“We didn’t specifically say that we’ll invest $10 billion over the next few years.”
A month later, Toyota released a statement claiming it would invest up to $10 billion in U.S. operations over the next five years, starting with battery manufacturing. However, this investment was not due to any one meeting with President Trump. The press release explains that it’s just some additional funding on top of what Toyota has already been investing in its United States operations.
Tetsuo Ogawa, President and Chief Executive Officer of Toyota Motor North America, said: “Today’s launch of Toyota’s first U.S. battery plant and additional U.S. investment up to $10 billion marks a pivotal moment in our company’s history. Toyota is a pioneer in electrified vehicles, and the company’s significant manufacturing investment in the U.S. and North Carolina further solidifies our commitment to team members, customers, dealers, communities, and suppliers.”
Time to get out the ouji boards and see if we can make even more deals. Just start off the seance with: “You’re rich.” That should get the conversation going quite naturally.
