The company intends to slow production or temporarily stop 8 of its factories in the United States, Mexico and Canada, according to several American media.
It will suspend production at its plants in Michigan, Chicago and the Mexican city of Cuautitlan, while slowing it in Kansas City, Dearborn and Louisville. Workers at the Ford plant in Oakville, Canada, will be canceling overtime.
The company did not respond to a call Saturday for comment.
The scarcity of chips, key components of auto manufacturing mainly made in Asia, has slowed auto production sharply since the start of the Corona pandemic, driving up prices, and also causing a large share of the high inflation facing the United States.
US President Joe Biden is seeking to revive production in the United States and increase on the topic, in a rare intersection with what his predecessor, Donald Trump, put forward in the context of the trade war with China.
On Friday, the US House of Representatives approved a bill that strengthens the United States’ competitive position once morest Beijing by limiting the manufacture of electronic chips to American soil.
The bill provides, among a series of articles, on investments of $52 billion in semiconductors, which are used especially in the production of smart phones and cars.
At the end of January, the giant Intel Corporation announced that at the end of the year it would start building two semiconductor plants near Columbus, the capital of Ohio, to produce chips from 2025. Biden described the $20 billion investment as “historic.”
Ford announced Thursday that it achieved net profit of $17.9 billion last year, but its business is still turbulent due to supply chain problems.