Toyota’s Tijuana Line Stays, but the Tacoma Still Goes

Baja California’s government said on November 2 that Toyota will keep its Tijuana plant running after the Tacoma moves to Texas, pushing back on rumors that Chinese automakers would take the site over.

The dispute is over what happens to the factory once the truck leaves. Toyota said in July that Tacoma production would shift from Baja California to San Antonio over about four years, and that left a plant with no announced product to replace it. The state now says the assembly line itself will remain, while Toyota’s other Mexican plant in Guanajuato, which also builds the Tacoma, is staying out of the move altogether.

The Tijuana comments come from Kurt Honold Morales, who heads the state’s Ministry of Economy and Innovation, and were reported by MEXICONOW on November 2. "Toyota isn’t leaving; it has committed to expanding its plant in Texas," he said. "The production line stays here; what leaves is the product being manufactured." He said the facility will not be dismantled, that the state has spent five years working on projects tied to the plant’s future, and that "neither the Chinese, nor the French, nor anyone else will take that place." He did not say which vehicle or product could be built there next, and Toyota has not confirmed any plan for Tijuana after the Tacoma.

Guanajuato is on firmer ground. Toyota confirmed that its plant in Apaseo el Grande will keep operating normally and that its operations are not being relocated, MEXICONOW reported in a separate story the same day. The outlet puts Toyota’s investment in the state at $2.3 billion and its direct jobs there at 3,027. Governor Libia Dennise García Muñoz Ledo said the state "continues to offer the conditions of competitiveness, certainty, and confidence" needed for long-term investment.

That matches what Toyota’s communications agency told Mexico Business News in July, when it said the restructuring "does not involve Guanajuato in any way." The same report said the Guanajuato and Tijuana plants have held exclusive global production of the Tacoma platform since 2024, and quoted a union official saying the Guanajuato plant can build all nine Tacoma variants.

For US buyers, nothing changes soon. Toyota’s July 6 announcement named only the Baja California plant as the one handing over production, and the $3.6 billion project adds a second assembly line, 2.5 million square feet and 2,000 jobs in San Antonio by 2030. Toyota Texas said on October 29 that hiring for that line is expected to begin in 2029, so the Tacomas sold here will keep coming from Mexico for now. Toyota has also said it remains committed to its operations in the US, Canada and Mexico, and it urged a quick resolution to the USMCA.

The Toyota Report Take

A state economy minister’s reassurance is not a product plan, and that is the gap in this story. Saying the line stays while the product leaves only means something once Toyota names what comes next, and five years of state work on the question have not yet produced an answer anyone will say out loud.

The Guanajuato news is the part that matters to Tacoma buyers. If that plant keeps building trucks after San Antonio comes online, Toyota will have two sources for the Tacoma on either side of the border, which is a sensible hedge with USMCA unresolved. Toyota hasn’t said that is the plan, but it’s the question I would most like answered, because it decides whether the Tacoma ever really becomes a Texas truck.

More on the Tacoma

• A 23-Year-Old Tacoma Just Sold for Nearly the Price of a New One