By Debbie Schlussel
I wrote long ago about how the Presidentator’s and the Governator’s new fuel efficiency rules are bad for the auto industry and the American economy and will cause a huge job loss.
Now there’s more to back that up.
Take this for what it’s worth given that it’s written by David Shepardson, a Detroit Newsistan “reporter” whom I caught fabricating an entire story, which the Newsistan had to remove from its site after I outed him and his lazy editors. (The guy regularly sided with Al-Qaeda terrorists on trial here and tailored his “reporting”–much of it fabricated–to fit that view. Should have been fired just like Jayson Blair was.)
Keith Hennessey, George W. Bush’s former chief economic advisor, says that about 50,000 jobs will be lost by the new fuel efficiency standards.

(Arnold Drawing from Schlussel Wacky Packs Collection)

Nearly 50,000 jobs could be lost in the auto sector as a result of President Barack Obama’s decision to approve fuel efficiency requirements for the nation’s cars and trucks, according to government documents and a former presidential adviser.
At the same time, the increased fuel rules could cause full-size truck sales to fall significantly without government help, a Wall Street analyst said.
Last month, the nation’s fuel efficiency requirements were increased to a fleetwide average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, a stricter standard than had been considered by the Bush administration, which was planning to propose an average of 31.6 mpg by 2015, according to a final regulation the former administration was going to publish and obtained The News.
That standard would have cost 11,127 jobs over a five-year period. An analysis of a proposal similar to what the Obama administration has called for would eliminate 48,847 jobs, said Keith Hennessey, who was President George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser.
“The Obama plan will increase costs enough to further suppress demand for new cars and trucks. This will cause significant job loss,” he wrote on his blog.
Detroit’s Big Three automakers and most major foreign automakers endorsed the new fuel rules, but Hennessey disagreed. “The auto manufacturers got rolled by the Governator,” Hennessey said, referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
JP Morgan Chase auto analyst Himanshu Patel said Tuesday the new regulations “may most severely hurt the size of the U.S. full-size pickup truck segment.”
Patel added that the price increases as a result of higher efficiency requirements may scare away many buyers of the most-profitable vehicles for domestic automakers.
Consumers may flee “if the pickup truck of tomorrow becomes either too expensive or sheds too much machismo in an effort to became fuel efficient,” Patel wrote.

Good luck, America. Welcome to Yugo country and the Yugo state of mind. We’re fast becoming a Western outpost Soviet satellite state even though there’s no longer a Soviet Union.