US President-elect Donald Trump targeted Toyota Motor Corp on Thursday, threatening to impose a hefty fee on the world's largest automaker if it builds its Corolla cars for the US market at a plant in Mexico.

"Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for US. NO WAY! Build plant in US or pay big border tax," Trump said in a post on Twitter.

It was Trump's latest broadside against automakers building cars in Mexico and the first against a foreign automaker. The president-elect's attacks on investments by companies in Mexico have cast a shadow over cross-border production networks central to more than $583 billion a year in trade between the two countries.