Mercedes-Benz has hand-built the Vatican's Popemobiles for almost a century, and in December 2024 its chief executive personally delivered its first all-electric one to Pope Francis.[1][2] The same company builds most of the world's GLE and GLS luxury SUVs not in Stuttgart but in Vance, Alabama, exporting roughly 60 percent of them, which quietly makes a German automaker one of the largest car exporters in the United States.[3][4] The brand behind the three pointed star is a foreign owned multinational whose two largest shareholders are Chinese, and whose deepest American roots run through one of the reddest states in the country.[5]
- Mercedes has built the Vatican's Popemobiles since 1930, delivering its first electric one in 2024.
- Most of its GLE and GLS SUVs are built in Alabama, then largely exported.
- Its two largest shareholders are Chinese; Kuwait's sovereign fund has held Mercedes stock since 1974.
- Federal campaign giving from its employees splits almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans since 1990.
- Its federal lobbying centers on the Inflation Reduction Act's electric-vehicle and clean-energy tax credits.
Quick Take
Mercedes-Benz's documented politics do not line up neatly. For a company its size, its partisan money footprint is small and does not point clearly left or right: the federal giving tied to Mercedes-Benz USA, its US sales arm, is modest and comes overwhelmingly from individual employees rather than from a corporate PAC, and across every election cycle since 1990 it has split nearly evenly between the two parties.[6] Where it spends real money is lobbying, about 1.57 million dollars in 2024, much of it on the federal electric vehicle and clean energy tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, plus EV charging, battery supply chains, and a proposed AM radio mandate.[7][8] The Stuttgart parent maintains a public slate of diversity and inclusion commitments, including a target of 30 percent women in senior management by 2030, even as several US automakers pulled such programs back in 2024 and 2025.[9][10] And its American base runs through deep-red Alabama, where its workers rejected a 2024 United Auto Workers drive that the state's Republican leaders also fought, and where the company is now pouring billions into local production to sidestep the Trump administration's auto tariffs.[11][12]
Where the Federal Money Goes
For a company this size, Mercedes-Benz puts strikingly little into federal campaigns, and what it does put in does not point clearly left or right. Because the parent is a foreign company, US law bars it from making federal political contributions directly, so the money that appears in the record comes from American employees and a modest company connected PAC.[8] Looking at the affiliate that maps to the passenger car business, donors who reported Mercedes-Benz USA as their employer have given about 134,756 dollars across all cycles tracked since 1990, split almost down the middle: roughly 48.7 percent to Democrats and 50.2 percent to Republicans.[6] Nearly all of that, about 125,756 dollars, came from individual employees; only about 8,500 dollars came from a PAC over that entire period.[6]
A broader organization total that OpenSecrets reports for the Mercedes-Benz Group parent runs higher and leans somewhat more Democratic in recent cycles (about 63,709 dollars in the 2024 cycle, roughly 57 percent to Democrats). That figure, though, folds in commercial truck affiliates that OpenSecrets still groups under the parent, including Daimler Trucks North America, Detroit Diesel, and Freightliner, businesses that were separated into the independently listed Daimler Truck company in December 2021.[6] For the brand a car buyer would recognize, the cleaner read is the near even, employee driven split, with no meaningful corporate PAC behind it.
The Lobbying Footprint
Lobbying is where Mercedes-Benz actually engages Washington. Its US subsidiary, Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, registers and files under the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act, and its filings note plainly that it and its affiliates are wholly owned US subsidiaries of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, headquartered in Germany.[8] Federal lobbying ran to about 1.57 million dollars in calendar year 2024, and roughly 1.8 million dollars through the first three quarters of 2025.[7]
The issues it reports lobbying on read like the priorities of a manufacturer betting on electrification. Recent filings list the Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy and manufacturing tax credits (including sections 48C and 30C), electric vehicle battery technology, EV charging, and EV supply chains, alongside vehicle data privacy, the CHIPS Act and domestic semiconductor supply, industry recommendations after the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse, and auto recycling legislation.[8] It also lobbied on the proposed federal AM radio mandate, a bill that would require automakers to keep AM receivers in new vehicles.[8] The company is investing billions of dollars in US electric vehicle and battery production, which gives it a direct commercial stake in whether those federal incentives survive; the disclosures record the issues it engaged, not a stated position on each.
Public Positions and Statements
On social and cultural questions, Mercedes-Benz speaks mostly in the language of corporate diversity and sustainability rather than partisan politics. On its own sustainability pages the company states a goal of filling 30 percent of senior management positions with qualified women by 2030, and reports the worldwide share at 26.7 percent as of December 31, 2025.[9] The same materials describe an inclusive posture that the company frames, in its own words, as independent of age, origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation.[9] Its US arm has continued to post public recognitions such as Juneteenth through its official channels.[10]
That posture is worth noting against the backdrop of 2024 and 2025, when a wave of US companies, including the automakers Ford, Toyota, and Harley-Davidson, scaled back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs under political and legal pressure.[14] As of this research, Mercedes-Benz had not announced a comparable rollback of its stated diversity goals. These are the company's own commitments; how much weight they carry as a political signal is a separate question from whether the company has made them.
On climate, Mercedes-Benz has committed under its "Ambition 2039" plan to a carbon neutral new vehicle fleet, with offsets, by 2039, and has said it aims to go fully electric by 2030 where market conditions allow.[15] Those are operational and product goals; the political edge shows up in the lobbying record above, where the company works to protect the federal subsidies that support that transition. The company also ties part of its board's variable pay to sustainability performance: since 2023 its executive remuneration has carried environmental, social, and governance targets, including a 20 percent ESG weighting in the long-term share-based plan and an ESG-linked penalty clause for board members.[25]
The Alabama Plant and the 2024 Union Vote
Mercedes-Benz opened Alabama's first automobile plant, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International in Vance, in 1997, and it has grown into one of the state's economic anchors: about 5,800 employees, more than 7 billion dollars invested, a further 4 billion dollars pledged through 2030, and roughly 260,000 vehicles built in 2024.[16][3] The plant builds the GLE, GLS, and related SUVs, exports about 60 percent of them, and stands as one of the nation's largest auto exporters.[3][4] Mercedes-Benz Group chairman Ola Kaellenius is himself a former head of the Alabama plant who worked on the original team there in the 1990s.[16]
In May 2024 that plant became the second major test of the United Auto Workers' drive into the historically nonunion South, weeks after the union won a first ever Southern victory at Volkswagen in Chattanooga. Across the Vance assembly plant and a nearby battery facility, about 5,075 workers were eligible, and they voted 2,642 to 2,045, roughly 56 percent, against joining the UAW.[11] The campaign pulled in state politics: six Republican governors, including Alabama's Kay Ivey, had jointly warned against the union drive, and Ivey welcomed the result afterward.[12] Mercedes stated during the campaign that it respected its workers' right to decide, while the UAW accused management of anti union tactics and filed federal labor charges.[17] The company later settled a National Labor Relations Board case, agreeing to post a notice on employees' organizing rights and not to threaten workers with closing or relocating the plant if they unionized.[18] These are labor and workplace matters, reported here as context; they describe how the company handled a union campaign, not a party affiliation.
Tariffs and the Push to Localize
In April 2025 the Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles, and automakers split in their responses. Jaguar Land Rover and Audi paused US shipments, while Mercedes-Benz, like BMW, said it would absorb the tariff on its 2025 model year cars and hold US sticker prices steady.[19] Mercedes was better insulated than most importers because its Alabama plant already builds the GLE, GLS, and electric EQE and EQS SUVs, models that together make up roughly a third of its US sales.[19] The company leaned further into that hedge in early 2026, announcing a 4 billion dollar investment at the Tuscaloosa plant through 2030 and shifting production of its GLC SUV from Germany to Alabama; its North America chief told Reuters the move was driven in part by tariffs, and chairman Kaellenius framed it as a decades-long commitment rather than a short-term fix.[16][20] Mercedes has also said publicly that lower or even zero tariffs between the US and the European Union could lead it to invest still more in the country.[20]
Products and Services
Mercedes-Benz is a luxury vehicle maker, and in the US market it is largely an SUV brand. Mercedes-Benz USA distributes more than a dozen model lines, from the compact CLA to the flagship S-Class, along with the performance oriented Mercedes-AMG and ultra luxury Maybach variants.[21] The Vance plant supplies core SUV models for the US and export markets; a separate Mercedes-Benz Vans operation in Charleston, South Carolina, has assembled Sprinter vans for North America since 2006; and the company still hand-builds one-off ceremonial vehicles, most famously the Vatican Popemobiles it has supplied since 1930.[3][1] Globally the company sold about 2.4 million vehicles in 2024.[22]
Founding and Ownership
The company traces to 1926, when the firms founded by Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, credited with independently inventing the automobile in 1886, merged to form Daimler-Benz.[5] After the DaimlerChrysler era from 1998 to 2007 and years as Daimler AG, the company spun off its commercial truck division as the separately listed Daimler Truck in December 2021, then renamed the remaining car and van business Mercedes-Benz Group AG on February 1, 2022.[5][13] It is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and led by chairman and CEO Ola Kaellenius.[5]
Ownership is unusually global. Mercedes-Benz Group's own investor disclosures list its largest shareholders as China's BAIC Group at 9.98 percent, the Chinese investor Li Shufu (founder of Geely) at 9.69 percent through an investment vehicle, and the Kuwait Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund that has held Mercedes stock since 1974, at about 6.84 percent, with more than 70 percent of shares in free float and no single controlling owner; large foreign shareholders at these levels can influence votes at the annual meeting but do not by themselves amount to control.[5] Like other large German companies, its supervisory board is split evenly between shareholder and employee representatives under codetermination, giving labor a formal seat.[23] The company reported revenue of about 145.6 billion euros in 2024, down roughly 4.5 percent from the prior year, with net profit near 10.4 billion euros, amid a sharp sales decline in China.[22] Mercedes is not a US listed company; its predecessor left the New York Stock Exchange in 2010, and the shares now trade primarily in Frankfurt (ticker MBG).[5]
In the United States, Mercedes-Benz USA has been headquartered in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, Georgia, since 2018, when it moved from Montvale, New Jersey; in 2025 Georgia officials announced that the company would consolidate its North American headquarters functions in metro Atlanta, adding jobs at that same campus.[24]
Where to Find Them
Mercedes-Benz sells through franchised dealerships across the United States, with vehicle information and dealer locators at mbusa.com. Its cars reach buyers nationwide, many of them built in Alabama and sold under a German badge with a distinctly global set of owners.
Footnotes
[1] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, "First electric Popemobile from Mercedes-Benz," group.mercedes-benz.com, December 4, 2024. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/news/electric-popemobile.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [2] Sean O'Kane, "The pope gets his first electric popemobile from Mercedes-Benz," TechCrunch, December 4, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/04/the-pope-gets-his-first-electric-popemobile-from-mercedes-benz. Accessed August 2, 2026. [3] Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, "Mercedes-Benz to bring a core segment vehicle to Alabama," mbusi.com, May 6, 2025. https://mbusi.com/about/in-the-news/mercedes-benz-to-bring-a-core-segment-vehicle-to-alabama. Accessed August 2, 2026. [4] "Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama to exclusively build GLC model cars," CBS42 / WKRG, April 1, 2026. https://www.cbs42.com/news/local/mercedes-benz-plant-in-alabama-to-exclusively-build-glc-model-cars/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [5] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, "Shareholder Structure," group.mercedes-benz.com. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/investors/share/shareholder-structure/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [6] OpenSecrets, "Mercedes-Benz Group Profile: Totals" (all cycles), org id D000042631. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals?cycle=A&id=D000042631. Accessed August 2, 2026. [7] OpenSecrets, "Mercedes-Benz Group Lobbying Profile," org id D000042631. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000042631. Accessed August 2, 2026. [8] Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, LD-2 Lobbying Disclosure filing, U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database, 2024. https://lda.senate.gov/filings/public/filing/541fa0e0-b184-4d75-9b51-c98bde434086/print/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [9] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, "Women at Mercedes-Benz: More women in senior management positions," Sustainability, People, Diversity. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/sustainability/people/diversity/advancement-of-women.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [10] Mercedes-Benz USA, official LinkedIn account, Juneteenth recognition post, June 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/company/mercedes-benz-usa. Accessed August 2, 2026. [11] Chris Isidore, "Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama vote against unionizing in blow to big UAW push," CNN Business, May 17, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/17/business/uaw-mercedes-benz-rejected. Accessed August 2, 2026. [12] "UAW vote at Mercedes-Benz Alabama plant," CNBC, May 17, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/17/uaw-vote-mercedes-benz-alabama.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [13] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, "Daimler embarks on a new era as Mercedes-Benz Group," group.mercedes-benz.com, February 1, 2022. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/news/daimler-becomes-mercedes-benz-group.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [14] Conor Murray, "Here Are All The Companies Rolling Back DEI Programs," Forbes, April 11, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/04/11/ibm-reportedly-walks-back-diversity-policies-citing-inherent-tensions-here-are-all-the-companies-rolling-back-dei-programs/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [15] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, "Becoming one of us" employer campaign and Ambition 2039 statements, group.mercedes-benz.com, 2023. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/news/becoming-one-of-us.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [16] "Mercedes to invest $4 billion in Alabama plant, marks 5 millionth vehicle built in state," Made in Alabama, March 31, 2026. https://www.madeinalabama.com/2026/03/mercedes-to-invest-4-billion-in-alabama-plant/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [17] "Workers at Mercedes factories in Alabama to vote in May on UAW," CBS News Detroit, April 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/mercedes-factories-in-alabama-to-vote-in-may-on-uaw. Accessed August 2, 2026. [18] William Thornton, "Mercedes-Benz settles alleged Alabama union-busting case," AL.com (via Bloomberg reporting). https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mercedes-benz-settles-alleged-alabama-102345465.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [19] "Mercedes-Benz Won't Hike Prices on 2025 Models Over Trump Tariffs," Autoweek via AOL (statement to Automotive News, April 7, 2025). https://www.aol.com/mercedes-benz-wont-hike-prices-161100421.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [20] "Mercedes-Benz to pour $4B into Alabama plant as Trump tariffs reshape US auto strategy," Reuters via AOL, 2026. https://www.aol.com/articles/mercedes-benz-pour-4b-alabama-211206076.html. Accessed August 2, 2026. [21] Mercedes-Benz USA, "Mercedes-Benz USA Celebrates Grand Opening of New Headquarters," media.mbusa.com, March 15, 2018. https://media.mbusa.com/releases/release-e38709a1cc517079cb36cfdf371550de-mercedes-benz-usa-celebrates-grand-opening-of-new-headquarters. Accessed August 2, 2026. [22] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, full-year 2024 results (revenue, net profit, unit sales), Investor Relations. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/investors/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [23] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Corporate Governance (supervisory board and codetermination). https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/corporate-governance/. Accessed August 2, 2026. [24] Office of Governor Brian Kemp, "Mercedes-Benz Establishing North American Headquarters, new Research & Development Hub in Metro Atlanta," gov.georgia.gov, May 22, 2025. https://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2025-05-22/gov-kemp-mercedes-benz-establishing-north-american-headquarters-new. Accessed August 2, 2026. [25] Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Remuneration Report 2024 (ESG performance criteria in Board of Management remuneration), Investor Relations. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/documents/investors/reports/annual-report/mercedes-benz/mercedes-benz-remuneration-report-2024.pdf. Accessed August 2, 2026.
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