GM Lobbying Efforts Accelerate

Newly freed from the government’s controlling interest, GM is turning the tables back on the government by accelerating its lobbying efforts some 83 percent in the third quarter of this year. GM spent $2.72m on lobbying in the second quarter of this year, and $2.49m in the third quarter, a massive increase over the $1.36m GM spent in the third quarter of last year ( Chrysler spent $846k last quarter). Bloomberg reports

The Detroit automaker had nine registered lobbyists speaking with federal agencies and Congress on free trade agreements, distracted driver legislation, tax credits for electric vehicles, pension legislation, climate change bills [as well as] Wall Street reform; fuel economy regulations; U.S.-Asia trade; pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama; funding for renewable fuel research; defense spending; emergency response privacy regulation; event data recorders; pedestrian safety and other issues

But let’s be real about something: some of these issues are just a little more important than others….

As usual, the industry would like to keep its agenda safely away from prying eyes, instead allowing the Center for Automotive Research to lay out the game plan. CAR’s Sean McAlinden tells Forbes that increasing fuel-efficiency standards are the major concern facing the industry.

CAR warns that if that happens, the new standards could wind up having an unintended effect by putting the cost of a new vehicle out of reach for many Americans and encouraging them to keep their older, polluting cars longer. If cars are required to get an average of 60.1 miles per gallon by 2025, for instance, the average price of an automobile would rise about $8,000, CAR estimates. Add another $1,500 to $3,000 per vehicle for new mandated safety equipment like back-up cameras (proposed for 2014), brake override systems (a consequence of Toyota’s gas pedal crisis) and the price of a car quickly escalates.

That would have a devastating impact on sales and profits within the auto industry, predicts McAlinden. “The industry loses five million sales a year, three million units of production, and 222,000 jobs, while the U.S. economy loses 1.3 million jobs,” he says. “And we begin to look like the Cuban auto market, with people keeping their current cars for 20 years and more.”

Needless to say, this has all the highlights of the industry’s lobbying talking points, right down to scaring lawmakers with the specter of a US car market that resembles Cuba’s sanction-starved time capsule. Meanwhile, Detroit’s alleged “transformation” to the willing leaders of a green car revolution is looking even more suspect. Luckily the news isn’t all bad: according opensecrets.org, GM doesn’t seem to be using its political contributions to punish or reward lawmakers based on their bailout votes. Still, the administration that promised transformation from the US auto industry can’t be happy about its continued opposition to fuel economy standards. Perhaps this will be yet another prompt to bring back discussion of a gas tax hike, rather than continued reliance on the convoluted and ineffective CAFE system.