Lincoln will begin manufacturing cars in China in 2019 in a bid to grab a larger slice of the luxury car sector of world's largest auto market.
The Ford (NYSE: Ford Motor Company [F]) unit will make use of an existing plant in the western Chinese city of Chongqing, where they already have a presence through a partnership with partnership with Changan Automobile Group.
The move is unlikely to go down well in the White House given Donald Trump's repeated denunciations of US companies that take their manufacturing operations abroad.
In a recent speech to Congress the president lamented that the US had lost "60,000 factories" to China.
A Ford spokeswoman said the Chinese venture was in line with the automaker's longstanding philosophy to "build where we sell." She added that Lincoln would continue to export US-made vehicle to China to keep up with growing demand, even after the first locally-produced models roll off production lines.
Last year 33,000 Lincolns were imported into China, a threefold increase on 2015.
China's luxury car market is currently dominated by Germany's Audi, BMW and Daimler-owned Mercedes-Benz.