Trump, auto executives expect struggle over climate rules

Executives from car companies visited the White House amid a looming legal conflict over auto-efficiency standards.

WASHINGTON — Executives from top car companies visited the White House on Friday amid a looming legal conflict between the Trump administration and Democratic-led states over climate rules for automobiles.

The Trump administration is readying a proposal to freeze auto-efficiency standards beginning in 2021, rather than continuing to strengthen them as originally outlined by the Obama administration.

That proposal would challenge the ability of California, long a national leader when it comes to vehicle standards, to set its own rules. California and other states supportive of stronger standards have already sued the EPA over its move to change course.

At the meeting, President Donald Trump referred to a prior meeting with the executives from early 2017 and noted his administration’s efforts to roll back the Obama-era rules.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last year and a half,” Trump said as he sat in the Roosevelt Room at the White House with the chief executives of major auto companies before the meeting, saying he planned to discuss with them “environmental control, CAFE standards and manufacturing millions of new cars within the United States.”

CAFE standards are federal regulations that seek to improve vehicles’ average fuel efficiency.

But the sweeping nature of such moves has caused concern in the auto industry.

After the meeting, the industry released a statement suggesting that they had discussed with the president a possibility of some form of negotiation with California.

“The Administration will soon issue a range of proposals for future fuel economy and greenhouse gas regulations, and we look forward to reviewing their notice of rulemaking and providing comments along with other stakeholders,” said the statement from Auto Alliance president Mitch Bainwol, and Global Automakers president John Bozzella.

“We also appreciate the President’s openness to a discussion with California on an expedited basis.”

Prior to their meeting with Trump, the executives — whose industry had previously asked for regulatory relief from the incoming Trump administration — stressed their desire for a uniform national standard, saying a patchwork of state standards would create an untenable regulatory tangle.

“We are not asking the administration for a rollback,” said Bill Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Co., at a recent automaker meeting, according to Bloomberg News. “We want California at the table, and we want one national standard.”

Bainwol, the president and chief executive of the Auto Alliance, had struck a similar note before Congress this week, citing a “regulatory nightmare” if California and allied states wind up with one regulatory system for vehicles while many other states have another.

Bainwol called for the Trump administration to keep up annual increases in fuel economy standards and “incorporate California.”

The standards were created under a 2011 agreement reached among the Obama administration, California officials and automakers. If enacted, they would avert 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles sold between 2012 and 2025.