(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump will meet on Thursday with Mary Barra, the chief executive officer of General Motors Co. -- days after he castigated the company for shrinking its U.S. workforce.
The White House meeting, scheduled for the afternoon, will take place as four other auto industry giants have defied his administration by reaching a compromise with California to bolster fuel efficiency.
A person familiar with the matter said that Barra hoped to use the get-together, which was reported earlier by Reuters, to talk about jobs, trade and fuel economy rules. The person requested anonymity to discuss the meeting, which was announced by the White House on Wednesday night.
“General Motors, which was once the Giant of Detroit, is now one of the smallest auto manufacturers there,” Trump tweeted on Aug. 30, a day after Bloomberg News reported GM employed fewer United Auto Workers-represented employees than Ford Motor Co. or Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. The president called for GM to “start moving back to America again.”
GM has about 46,000 UAW workers, about 2,000 fewer than it had in 2009, when the company emerged from a bankruptcy reorganization backed by the U.S. government.
Trump has criticized GM’s plans to close plants in Michigan and Ohio, states that are crucial to his re-election bid. That has put him at odds with Barra, who has said the closings were necessary for the business to thrive. GM is also embroiled in contract talks with the UAW.
The joint agreement involving California with Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co., Volkswagen AG and BMW AG had already been rejected by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency. The deal announced on July 25 alongside the California Air Resources Board -- eases the pace of annual efficiency improvements required under current Obama administration rules but is tougher than the Trump administration’s proposal to cap mileage requirements at 2020 levels.
GM was not part of that accord, and is seeking what it calls “a 50-state solution.”
“In California, they have a standard where the cars are going to have to be much more expensive and won’t be as good,” Trump said earlier Wednesday. “If we can build a less expensive car that’s better, we like that.”
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