By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — Toyota announced last week it would do something other automakers have been reluctant to do – shift some production from Mexico to the United States.

The Japanese automaker will soon build half of its best-selling midsize Tacoma pickups at an expanded plant in San Antonio, where it already builds the Tundra full-size pickup and Sequoia SUV. But it will also continue to build Tacomas in Mexico.

President Donald Trump heralded the shift to US soil, calling it “a really big deal” and proof of “Tariffs at work!”

Toyota didn’t cite tariff policy as the catalyst.

“While we are impacted by evolving trade policies, our investments are multi-decade decisions based on broader strategic goals,” the company told CNN.

And more than a year after the Trump administration announced sweeping auto tariffs to spur construction of new American factories, Toyota’s move is the exception, not the rule.

Moving production to US is difficult

Few automakers have announced plans to move production to the United States. Most automakers would rather pay tariffs than spend billions to build new facilities – and the product lines that are coming to the US are moving into existing factories.

Forty-six percent of the cars purchased by US consumers last year were imported, according to Mobility Global, down only slightly from 47.7% in 2024. Some of that drop was because automakers wound down the sale of imported vehicles with lower price tags, such as the Nissan Versa.

But there are too many costs and too much uncertainty for automakers to make widespread changes in their factory footprints.

“It’s a huge commitment (to build a factory) and to do it on a whim would be borderline crazy,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at car buying site Edmunds. “So the safest action is no action. Continue on, even with that increased (tariff) cost.”

And one way that automakers keep costs down is under threat – the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the trade agreement reached during Trump’s first term.

That deal is now up for renegotiation, and Trump suggested last month he’d walk away from it if there weren’t substantial changes in favor of American companies. That terrifies automakers that have come to depend on parts being able to move freely across US borders with Canada and Mexico.

“We urge a swift and durable resolution that ensures a level playing field and provides long-term certainty needed for capital-intensive automotive investments,” said a statement from the American Automakers Policy Council, a trade group representing General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Tariffs are taking a bite into earnings. Toyota paid $8.4 billion in duties in its most recent fiscal year, swinging its North American results from a profit to loss. General Motors paid $3.1 billion in tariffs in 2025, and Ford paid $1 billion.

Which isn’t to say that the tariffs have been completely ineffective in incentivizing companies to move production back to the US. In addition to the Toyota Tacoma, last year General Motors said it would shift the assembly of two SUVS from Mexico. It will also stop importing a Buick SUV from China and will build a replacement model in the US.

But those vehicles will go to an existing plant in Kansas and another plant in Tennessee. Those facilities had room after GM cut back on massive investment into EV production after Trump and Republicans in Congress ended government support for electric vehicles.

For Toyota, there are also business reasons beyond trade policy to shift production to San Antonio, said Patrick Ande

By Elise Haulund, CNN

Whitney Hand was in her laundry room when she heard her daughter scream from the kitchen.

“It was a sound I’d never heard her make before, and she just kept screaming, ‘Mom!,’ so I went in there, and I didn’t really understand what was going on at first, but she was clearly in a ton of pain,” said Hand, who lives in Atlanta.

Hand quickly realized what happened: Her fifth-grader had put a NeeDoh toy, a viral gel-filled sensory toy, in the microwave to soften it — something the toymaker explicitly warns against.

When she took the NeeDoh SplootSplat toy out of the microwave, it exploded, sending the scalding hot liquid inside the toy onto her face and arm.

“It’s so viscous, it’s like glue, and so for it to be boiling hot and on her skin, I started to try to wipe it off, but it was pulling her skin off with it,” Hand said.

The Hand family’s story is one of many popping up around the country as children have been microwaving the gel-filled sensory toys after seeing the trick on social media videos. Some people have experienced serious burns to their hands, arms, laps and faces.

Dr. Emily Werthman, the manager of the Johns Hopkins Burn Center in Baltimore and a Certified Burn Registered Nurse, estimates she has seen about a dozen such cases recently.

“We’ve seen a handful of these cases just in our burn center alone, and if you ask burn centers throughout the country, they will tell you the same thing,” Werthman said. “Unfortunately, those handfuls at every burn center add up to an unfortunately large number of kids who are getting injured.”

Hand had not heard of the NeeDoh trend and was not aware that her daughter had been microwaving the toys. The NeeDoh website displays a warning: “NeeDoh products are designed to stay sealed and should not be cut open, eaten, heated, frozen, or microwaved, as misuse can damage the toy and create safety risks.”

“I was like, ‘Why did you even think to do this?’ And she said that, you know, she’d seen it on YouTube and that that’s where she learned to do it,” Hand said. “She said other kids at school had talked about doing it, and so it just is a trend that she tried.”

The gel-filled toys can also pop and cause burns inadvertently after being left in hot cars or sitting out in the sun, Werthman said.

“We have to talk to kids about how unsafe it is to be microwaving these toys and how to be careful with them if you leave them in the car,” Werthman said. “We should be really teaching them not to leave them in the car, or on the pool deck, or wherever it’s going to be overheated.”

Last year, the nonprofit Consumer Reports sent a letter to the Consumer Product Safety Commission urging it to investigate the NeeDoh toys, which are produced by the company Schylling, after multiple reports of children sustaining burns from the products. In a response to CNN, CPSC did not comment on whether it plans to investigate.

“We are disappointed to see there has been a trend on social media demonstrating misuse of our NeeDoh® products,” Meghann Ellis, the chief financial officer of Schylling, said in a statement emailed to CNN.“Misusing a NeeDoh® product by microwaving, heating, or freezing is dangerous and could cause injury to the consumer.”

Ellis said NeeDoh packaging and online listings include safety warnings, and the company is working with social media companies, such as TikTok, to take down content encouraging misuse of its products.

CNN reached out to TikTok for comment and has not received a response. A search on TikTok for microwaving the NeeDoh toys now brings up a safety warning, not video content.

A YouTube spokesperson to

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