Dialing Back On U.S. Emissions Standards

Published March 16, 2017 at 9:00 AM CDT

In this June 22, 2015 file photo, a Buick Verano is assembled at General Motors' Orion Assembly plant in Orion Township, Mich. (Carlos Osorio/AP)

With guest host Jane Clayson.

President Trump takes aim at federal auto-emission regulations. We’ll look at what’s on the line for the US auto industry, cars and climate change.

President Trump took aim at fuel-economy standards yesterday, promising to roll back Obama-era regulations and make U.S. the car capital of the world again. Automakers are celebrating. Environmentalists are biting their nails. All this as the administration targets other regulations meant to protect against climate change. This hour On Point, auto emissions and the environment, in the Trump era.

Guests

John Stoll, Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. ( @johndstoll)

Robert Stavins, professor of environmental economics and director of the Environmental Economics program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. ( @RobertStavins)

Vicki Arroyo, executive director of Georgetown University’s Climate Center, where she oversees climate and energy policy.

From The Reading List

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Heads to Detroit as EPA Reviews Fuel-Economy Targets — “Auto makers asked the Environmental Protection Agency to undo the Obama administration’s decision to lock in future stringent fuel-economy and emissions standards, as the companies seek to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s pledge to roll back regulations.”

Detroit Free Press: Trump visit puts UAW politics in crosshairs — “The Detroit Three are offering to bus workers from auto plants across southeast Michigan to President Donald Trump’s rally in Ypsilanti on Wednesday — a move that is drawing criticism from at least two union officials who say the president doesn’t really support American workers, and that they don’t want UAW members to become political props.”

New York Times: Trump Using Detroit as Stage for Loosening Obama’s Fuel Economy Rules — “The rules have been widely praised by environmentalists and energy economists for reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and its greenhouse pollution. If put fully into effect, the fuel efficiency standards would have cut oil consumption by about 12 billion barrels and reduced carbon dioxide pollution by about six billion tons over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations.”

Presidents Trump And Jackson

Jon Meacham, author and historian. Trustee of the Andrew Jackson foundation. ( @jmeacham)

Tennessean: Jon Meacham To Doanld Trump: ‘Lead all of us. Jackson did. You can, too’ — “Compromise was thus an essential, if little-remarked, Jacksonian virtue. No other president fulminated more passionately or threatened his foes more vividly, but Jackson believed in the union with all his heart. His mother and his brothers had died in the American Revolution; to him, the nation was a sacred thing, hallowed by their blood. We were then, and are now, what Jackson called ‘one great family.'”