TRUMP LOSING GAS
Automakers push back against U.S. regulatory rollbacks,
WASHINGTON— The White House, blindsided by a pact between California and four automakers to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s auto emissions rollbacks, has mounted an effort to prevent any more from joining the other side.
Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and General Motors were all summoned by a senior Trump adviser to a White House meeting last month where he pressed them to stand by the president’s own initiative, according to four people familiar with the talks.
But even as the White House was working to do this, it was losing ground.
Yet, another company, Mercedes-Benz, is now preparing to join the California agreement, according to two people familiar with the German company’s plans.
Trump, described by three people as “enraged” by California’s deal, has also demanded that his staffers step up the pace to complete his plan. His proposal, however, is directly at odds with the wishes of many automakers, which fear that the aggressive rollbacks will spark a legal battle between California and the federal government that could split the United States car market in two.
The administration’s efforts to weaken the Obama-era pollution rules could be rendered irrelevant if too many automakers join California in opposition before the plan can be put into effect. That could imperil one of Trump’s most far-reaching rollbacks of climate-change policies.
In addition to MercedesBenz, a sixth prominent automaker — one of the three summoned last month to the White House — also intends to disregard the Trump proposal and stick to the current, stricter federal emissions standards for at least the next four years, according to executives at the company.
Together, the six manufacturers who plan not to adhere to the new Trump rules account for more than 40 per cent of all cars sold in the United States.
“You get to a point where, if enough companies are with California, then what the Trump administration is doing is moot,” said Alan Krupnick, an economist with Resources for the Future, a non-partisan energy and environment research organization.
A senior administration official said the California pact was an effort to force Americans to buy expensive vehicles that they don’t want or need.
The Trump administration’s proposal would drastically weaken the 2012 vehicle pollution standards put in place by former president Barack Obama, which remain the singlelargest policy enacted by the United States to reduce planetwarming carbon dioxide emissions. The Obama-era rules require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 mpg by 2025, cutting carbon dioxide pollution by about 6 billion tons over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations, about the same amount the United States produces in a year.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps the sun’s heat and is a major contributor to climate change.
Trump has billed his plan, which would freeze the standards at about 37 mpg, as a deregulatory win for automakers that will also keep down car prices for U.S. consumers. Trump’s plan would also revoke the legal authority of California and other states to impose their own emissions standards.
In an extraordinary move, automakers have balked at Trump’s proposal, mainly because California and 13 other states plan to continue enforcing their current, stricter rules, and to sue the Trump administration.