Brent Snavely and Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press

President Donald Trump is planning to hold an event at the American Center for Mobility at Willow Run on Wednesday to talk about jobs — specifically automotive jobs — and may announce a plan to roll back fuel efficiency standards.

Trump administration officials on Monday confirmed the visit but did not provide details.

The Free Press learned separately that the president plans to hold the event at Willow Run, a former bomber plant in Ypsilanti Township during WWII. Willow Run, also a former General Motors plant, is home to the American Center for Mobility, a testing center for self-driving vehicles.

Administration officials said the president also will meet with auto executives, union officials and hold a rally with workers.

The president has invited a number of automakers, including the Detroit Three, to attend the event, according to two people familiar with the president's plans.

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WWII bombers were once built on new Michigan driverless car test site

Reports of rolling back m.p.g. standards draw criticism

Both people also said they expect the president will talk about easing fuel economy and emissions standards set to take place between 2021 and 2025.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump plans to visit both Nashville, Tenn., and metro Detroit and said the visit will highlight "the need to eliminate burdensome regulation that needlessly hinders job growth."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began reviewing those standards last year as part of a planned "mid-term review."

The automotive industry has been lobbying hard for the standards, adopted by the Obama administration in 2011, to be relaxed because of unanticipated changes in the types of cars consumers are buying and lower than expected oil and gas prices.

The standards will require steep spending in the coming years. In addition to the fuel economy standards, the automotive industry also has been lobbying for the relaxation of standards for greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, several Democratic U.S. senators and environmental groups blasted plans said to be in the works to roll back tougher fuel-use standards for American vehicles, arguing that they will return automakers to pre-recession policies that led to the near-collapse of the domestic industry.

Sens. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Tom Carper of Delaware and Jeff Merkley of Oregon said rolling back fuel economy standards would hurt the country and the auto industry.

Markey and the others also said that while a change to future standards might give American automakers leeway to sell more profitable, larger vehicles, that's one of the practices that led to trouble for domestic automakers in the 1990s and 2000s.

At the time, GM, Ford and Chrysler devoted most of their resources to developing large pickups and SUVs and neglected small cars. When gas prices soared in 2008 demand for larger vehicles plummeted and the Detroit Three suffered because they did not have competitive small cars.

In 2011, automakers agreed to regulations that called for the industry to nearly double fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 m.p.g., which the Obama administration said would save motorists $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of the vehicles. But they would cost the auto industry about $200 billion to comply with over 13 years.

Automakers met stricter regulations through 2016 but have said that the standards scheduled to take place from 2021 to 2025 are much harder to meet.

Initially, the mid-term review process was expected to take well into this year and both agencies had until the middle of 2018 to make a final decision.

But last year, both EPA and NHTSA worked hard to try to speed up the process. In November, the EPA decided to leave the regulations unchanged — a move that generated criticism.

Related:

EPA decides to stick with strict auto emission rules

At the time, the agency said it sped up the time frame to reach its conclusion because of the vast amount of data it had been reviewing and the evidence it had revealed -- not because it is rushing the finalize the rule-making process before President-elect Donald Trump took office.

Contact Brent Snavely: 313-222-6512 or bsnavely@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrentSnavely.