One industry analyst, Ron Harbour of the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said Ford was under intense pressure to alter its Mexican plans ― or risk a constant drumbeat of criticism from Mr. Trump.
“It was an embarrassment for them, and they said, ‘Let’s turn this thing around,’” Mr. Harbour said.
Now Mr. Trump has turned his attention to G.M. In a Twitter post early Tuesday, he attacked the company for making a hatchback version of a Chevrolet in Mexico for sale in the American market.
“General Motors is sending Mexican made model Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers tax-free across the border,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!”
A central tenet of Mr. Trump’s economic platform has been to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows for the free flow of manufactured goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Instead, he favors tariffs of up to 35 percent on products made in Mexico and sold in America.
Industry analysts have questioned whether automakers like G.M. and Ford can profitably build smaller vehicles in the United States instead of in Mexico, where wages rarely cross $10 an hour, compared with the $29 an hour earned by a majority of unionized American workers.
For consumers, those higher wages could add up to higher sticker prices. And that could potentially reduce sales.
But Mr. Trump is hardly backing off on his vow to scrap Nafta, and has found an unlikely ally in the powerful United Automobile Workers union, which represents hourly employees at G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler in the United States.
While the U.A.W. leadership supported Mr. Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, in the presidential election, the union has consistently attacked Nafta for encouraging car companies to invest in Mexico.
“The U.A.W. has long believed that companies that sell in our country should build their products in our country,” the union’s president, Dennis Williams, said on Tuesday.
The hatchback made by G.M. in Mexico is a version of its Cruze compact car produced primarily at a factory in Lordstown, Ohio.
Sales of the Cruze, like many other passenger cars, have fallen in recent months because of low gas prices and shifting consumer demand toward more spacious sport utility vehicles. The Lordstown factory is among five American plants that G.M. will temporarily idle this month to reduce its growing inventories of slow-selling cars.
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