Carter Considers a Gas Tax

Monday, Dec. 17, 1979

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Sales of cars would slide still farther. The biggest vehicles, which produce the fattest profits for manufacturers and dealers, would be the worst hurt. Small cars would increase their market share, which now is more than 50%. Among Detroit's Big Three, ailing Chrysler Corp. would fare the worst. Though 70% of its cars are compacts and downsized models, vs. 50% of Ford's and 30% of GM's, small vehicles are the least profitable, and the company would have to boost output sharply to remain competitive. That would be a difficult step for Chrysler to take. Not only is it experiencing bottlenecks but the company also would have trouble borrowing money to expand production.

Other automakers would be better off. The conversion to small models would bring forth a prolonged spurt in capital investment by the manufacturers and their suppliers for tools, dies, entire new plants. Eventually sales would surge because drivers would feel an increasing need to switch to gas-saving cars. As demand rose, particularly for the most economical vehicles, prices would ride up. Concludes Detroit Auto Analyst Arvid Jouppi: "We are awfully close to the $10,000 small car."

More immediately, large segments of the nation would suffer from the decline in driving and in demand for cars. The old manufacturing centers of the Midwest and East—steelmaking Pittsburgh and Youngstown, tiremaking Akron, glassmaking Toledo, many others—rise or decline along with the fortunes of autos. St. Louis, Kansas City, Wilmington, Del., and dozens more cities are automaking centers. In the Far West (where public transit is grossly inadequate) and the Plains states (where communities are separated by long distances), people must drive or suffer immobility. Of course, they can and must do more car pooling. That is difficult for many: the suburbanite who works the night shift, the construction laborer who moves from site to site, the marginal farmer who drives to a supplemental job in town. But food production would not be set back; to run their equipment, farmers long ago shifted largely from gasoline to diesel fuel, and they are almost certain to be exempted from any tax increases or tight rationing.

Fast food chains such as McDonald's, Wendy's and Howard Johnson's would suffer. Restaurants near population centers would surge. So would air travel, as people flew on vacation instead of driving. That would boost sales of more fuel-efficient jets, and Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas and other planemakers would benefit. But resorts in South Florida and New York's Catskills would be hit hard because most people go there by car. Roadside motels would suffer, but rents of apartments and values of houses close to city centers and public transit would climb.

In the event that gasoline prices were to increase sharply, growth in the economy as a whole would not necessarily slow, or unemployment rise, if the proceeds of the tax were recycled to consumers, as the various Administration proposals recommend. But the impact on consumer prices would be severe. A full 2.4 points of the nation's current 13.1% inflation rate is traceable directly to increases in gasoline prices this year. Tacking another 50¢ a gal. onto fuel costs by most estimates would add three or four points more to the consumer price index next year.