Trump to meet with auto CEOs in jobs push

US President Donald Trump will have breakfast on Tuesday with the chief executives of General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV as he pressures automakers to boost American employment.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump "looks forward to hearing their ideas about how we can work together to bring more jobs back to this industry."

Trump has criticized automakers for building cars in Mexico and elsewhere and has threatened to impose 35 percent tariffs on imported vehicles.

It will be the first time the CEOs of the big three automakers meet jointly with a US president since a July 2011 session with President Barack Obama to tout a deal to nearly double fuel efficiency standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Fiat Chrysler is the Italian-American parent of the former Michigan-based Chrysler.

US and foreign automakers have been touting plans to boost American jobs and investments in the face of Trump's comments. Automakers have praised Trump's policies, but emphasized that the recent employment moves were the result of business, not political decisions, that had mostly been in the works for a long period.

Early this month, Ford scrapped plans to build a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico and said it would invest $700 million in a factory in Michigan. Ford will still move production of Focus small cars to Mexico but will cut total production of the cars by consolidating their assembly in an existing Mexican plant.

Last week, GM confirmed it would invest an additional $1 billion in its US factories this year and would move some parts production from Mexico to the United States that was previously handled by a supplier. The investments are in addition to $2.9 billion the automaker announced last year, GM said.

GM said the $1 billion investment would create or retain 1,500 jobs. GM CEO Mary Barra joined a Trump economic issue advisory panel last month. Earlier this month, Fiat Chrysler said it would invest $1 billion to modernize two plants in the US Midwest and create 2,000 jobs, and possibly move production of a Ram heavy-duty pickup truck to Michigan from Mexico.

Trump met with a dozen prominent American manufacturers at the White House on Monday, promising them he would slash regulations and cut corporate taxes, but warning them of penalties if they moved production outside the country.

Trump promised to bring manufacturing plants back to the US during his campaign and has not hesitated to call out by name companies that he thinks should bring outsourced production back home.

He told the chief executives of Ford, Dow Chemical, Dell Technologies, Tesla and others that he would like to cut corporate taxes to the 15 percent to 20 percent range, down from current statutory levels of 35 percent - a pledge that will require cooperation from the Republican-led Congress.

But he said business leaders have told him that reducing regulations is even more important.

"We think we can cut regulations by 75 percent. Maybe more," Trump told business leaders in the Roosevelt Room.

He told companies that they were welcome to negotiate with governors to move production between states, but said those businesses that choose to move factories outside the country would pay a price.

"We are going to be imposing a very major border tax on the product when it comes in," Trump said.

"A company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States, and build some factory someplace else, and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States - that's not going to happen," he said.