But on Monday, Ford’s newly named chief executive officer distanced himself from an administration marred by a steady stream of self-inflicted scandals and a failure to enact key parts of its policy agenda. “I had nothing to do with the previous decisions on Mexico,” Jim Hackett, who previously served as a director on the board and led Ford’s autonomous car project, said at a press conference Monday morning. “We made that decision not for political reasons, but for business reasons, and those are still sound today.”Hackett, 62, spent over two decades as chief executive of the office furniture giant Steelcase Inc. In 2011, he oversaw the closure of three factories in Michigan, Texas and Canada, and moved production to the company’s two plants in Mexico. At Ford, he said Mexico ― where the company is already expanding two plants ― would remain a manufacturing hub.

Source: Huffington Post May 22, 2017 17:10 UTC