By Mike Colias 

YPSILANTI, Mich. -- General Motors Co. handed President Donald Trump a welcome-back gift Wednesday, announcing plans to hire and retain employees in Michigan just hours before his first visit back to the state since voters there helped carry him to the White House.

GM, in the process of laying off workers in the Midwest in response to slumping passenger-car demand, said it would add 220 new jobs to one Michigan plant and eventually hire back 680 of the laid-off workers at another factory in the state.

Before his inauguration, Mr. Trump criticized the Detroit auto giant's strategy of shipping certain products from Mexico to the U.S., but changed his tone after GM made a separate jobs announcement in mid-January.

Mr. Trump will travel to Michigan Wednesday afternoon to announce the reopening of a review of fuel-economy standards, which many auto executives argue are unattainable in an era of cheap gasoline. The Trump administration is also moving to make adjustments to trade, including revisiting the North American Free Trade Agreement, and that move is also expected to affect auto makers.

GM's new announcement and Mr. Trump's focus on auto manufacturing and emissions rules underscores the public role the car business is playing in the new administration's early days. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra is on a CEO panel advising Mr. Trump on economic matters and she is expected to be among about a dozen automotive executives who will meet with him Wednesday before he delivers his speech.

The speech will be given at a former assembly plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., and thousands of auto workers are expected to attend.

The central topic Mr. Trump will address is emissions regulation, announcing the resumption of a review of more-stringent fuel economy targets that the Obama administration had decided to finalize a week before Inauguration Day. The president is also likely to highlight the U.S. job commitments that GM, Ford Motor Co. and Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles NV have recently made following his public pressure on the companies to create U.S. jobs.

Thanking Detroit's three auto makers has become a common theme in Mr. Trump's public remarks.

The 220 jobs GM said Wednesday that it will add are at a transmission plant in Romulus, Mich., just a few miles from the site of Mr. Trump's speech. GM also said it would eventually bring back about 680 of the 1,100 workers that it said last week would be laid off at a plant in Lansing, Mich.

Some of those reinstated jobs will be directed to factory in Flint, Mich., which assembles large pickup trucks. The bulk will be rehired at the Lansing plant in the first quarter of 2018, GM said.

"The job commitments announced today demonstrate the confidence we have in our products, our people and an overall positive outlook for the auto industry and the U.S. economy," Ms. Barra said.

This follows separately announced plans in January by GM, Ford and Chrysler to add or retain thousands of factory jobs -- commitments that came in the wake of critical Twitter messages from Mr. Trump vowing to tax the Mexican imports that each of those companies rely on to boost U.S. sales and pad profits in North America.

The companies have said the job moves were long planned and not a direct response to the political climate. There have been bumps along the way, however.

GM in recent months has disclosed plans to lay off about 4,400 workers across factories in Ohio and Michigan, including the Lansing plant. The redeployment of those 680 workers from the Lansing factory brings the tally of job losses to about 3,800 people.

Fiat Chrysler has been idling workers in certain U.S. locations as it scrambles to rejigger its product portfolio to better match customer trends.

Write to Mike Colias at Mike.Colias@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 15, 2017 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)

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