← Videos · Economy, Tariffs & Trade

Duffy, Greer, and Zeldin Speak with the Press at the Stellantis Toledo Plant, Jan. 17, 2026

January 17, 2026 · US Department of Transportation · 0:28:15

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke with the press at the Stellantis Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio — the home of Jeep, where Wranglers and Gladiators are built — alongside U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, in the Department of Transportation’s January 17, 2026 upload. The plant’s manufacturing director, Grant Robinson, opened the event by noting the complex’s roughly 4,700 employees and a planned all-new midsize Ram truck for Toledo in 2028, as part of what he described as a $13 billion investment in America including $400 million in Toledo and 900 jobs, as he stated the figures.

Duffy laid out the Transportation Department’s piece of the affordability agenda: rolling back the prior administration’s CAFE fuel-economy standard, which he put at almost 60 miles per gallon — a level he said no combustion engine can reach, and one he said was set by counting electric vehicles in a calculation the law reserves for combustion engines — to about 35 miles per gallon, as he stated the figures. He said the earlier standard had forced car companies to pay billions in taxes or buy carbon credits, driving up car prices, and pointed to the One Big Beautiful Bill’s provision allowing a write-off of up to $10,000 on a loan for a new American-made car, as he described it. He noted the average vehicle on American roads is 13 years old and that the country loses 40,000 lives a year on its roads, as he stated the figures. Greer then took up the trade side of the agenda, as he stated his part at the event.

Why it matters

The Toledo stop is the third leg of the January 2026 affordable-cars swing this chronicle pages in full — the Ford Ohio Assembly Plant on January 16 and the Detroit Auto Show on January 18 — with the same three officials presenting the same three-agency package at each stop: CAFE standards at Transportation, trade at USTR, and emissions rules at EPA. Toledo adds the Stellantis investment figures stated by the plant’s own director to that record.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the CAFE standards restructuring — from almost 60 mpg to about 35 mpg — as stated by Secretary Duffy on January 17, 2026. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, “Secretary Duffy Speaks with the Press at the Stellantis Stickney Plant” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks and figures as delivered by the officials and the plant’s director at the event.