Could GM's Barra Be Trump's NHTSA Pick?

DETROIT, MI — General Motors CEO Mary Barra as National Highway Traffic Safety administrator? That’s one car-safety advocacy group leader is speculating. Rosemary Shahan, president of the California-based Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety group, says Barra would fit with other appointments made by President Donald Trump.

“He seems to be very friendly with her,” Shahan said of Trump’s relationship with GM’s chief in a recent Detroit News report. “He has a penchant of appointing people who have been regulated and allowing them to dismantle agencies. You have all these companies who have been under investigations for safety violations recently.”

The NHTSA administrator’s seat has sat vacant since Trump took office. The White House declined to comment on the president’s plans for filling the vacancy, the Detroit News reported. GM would not comment on whether Barra would be interested in the regulatory job, the newspaper reported.

Still, Shahan isn’t comforted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he appointed somebody from one of them,” she said. “It would be consistent with his other appointments.”

Shahan noted that Trump has named Barra to a Strategic and Policy Forum that advises him on economic issues and jobs growth, and met with her in Washington on at least two occasions, the Detroit News reported. No names for the slot appear to be circulating among industry and government insiders in Washington, the newspaper added. Shahan doesn’t believe an industry insider like Barra would target regulations that address auto safety.

“He’s on a deregulation kick,” she told the Detroit News. “That’s not comforting. That’s worrisome. Is the new administrator at NHTSA going to deregulate auto safety? He’s so fixated on threats from outside the U.S. that he doesn’t consider that there are threats to us domestically like auto crashes. When he talks about threats to our safety, he’s talking about ISIS.”

Trump has appointed other high-level business executives to serve in his Cabinet: Former Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson is U.S. secretary of state, the newspaper reported. Trump also picked school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos, a West Michigan GOP mega-donor and philanthropist, to be his education secretary.

“If he appoints someone from the auto industry, there is going to be a lot of concern on the Hill and among groups like ours,” said former Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook, who was National Highway Traffic Safety administrator during the Carter administration in the late 1970s. He told the Detroit News: “That’s a real conflict of interest. You need someone who is more even-minded about what needs to be done.”

Historically speaking, the delay in picking a NHTSA leader isn’t unusual. Jeff Davis, senior fellow with the independent Eno Center for Transportation think tank in Washington, noted that President Barack Obama did not nominate his first NHTSA administrator until nearly 11 months after taking office. President George W. Bush did not nominate his first until five months after moving into the White House. And President Bill Clinton did not nominate his first NHTSA administrator until 13 months after taking office, the Detroit News reported.

Davis told the newspaper the NHTSA vacancy is not impeding the Trump administration’s ability to police safety regulations. “Legally, the authority to issue and revise motor vehicle safety standards ... is vested in the secretary of transportation,” he said. “The secretary can delegate or un-delegate that authority to the NHTSA administrator as they see fit, but the important thing is that the regulation-and-recall process can be carried out by the career staff of NHTSA and put into legal effect by the secretary in the absence of a confirmed NHTSA administrator.”

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