President Donald Trump on Saturday cancelled a daunting Joe Biden environmental policy, reversing the former president’s stricter fuel economy rules aimed at promoting use of electric vehicles.
The new rollback is playing out like a game of policy ping pong, as it was Biden who negated Trump’s first set of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) reductions in his first term — rules that dictate the kind of mileage vehicles must get to be sold to consumers.
Since CAFE standards were established in 1975, they have been periodically revised to prompt automakers to make their vehicles more efficient.
In his first term, Trump had reduced Barack Obama’ standards that required a five percent annual increase in efficiency to a 1.5 percent annual increase.
Biden pounced on the Trump policy, his administration eager to promote the manufacture and sales of electric vehicles to purportedly reduce carbon emissions and address what Biden repeatedly called the “existential threat” of climate change.
“Under the standards Biden put in place after taking office automakers would have had to increase the fuel efficiency of their passenger cars and light trucks to roughly 50 miles per gallon by 2031,” CNBC reported.
Trump portrayed that standard as expensive and impractical, flagging his new policy change as a positive for both manufacturers and consumers, though the final standards are pending.
Announcing the rollback on Truth Social, Trump, took a shot at both Biden and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, writing:
BIG DAY FOR AMERICAN AUTO WORKERS AND CAR BUYERS! I have just approved new Fuel Economy Standards that TERMINATE Sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Boot-EDGE-EDGE’s ridiculous EV Mandate. The Dumocrats cost our Great Auto Manufacturers $Billions, forced Americans into cars they never wanted, and wasted Billions on Chargers that were never built.
These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car — Far better than the Environmental Monsters that we were building heretofore. Every Manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can!
Trump also wrote that more than $100 billion being invested by manufacturers in automobile production in America, promising that plants and jobs were coming back to the Midwest and the south.
Trump had promised in his 2024 campaign that he would rescind policies that encouraged or incentivized electric vehicles.
Analysts say less restrictive CAFE standards give consumers more choice and automakers more profit.
“Weaker fuel economy standards mean that automakers can produce more pickup trucks and SUVs, which are much more profitable than smaller cars but have worse gas mileage,” CNBC reported.
Electric vehicles also have not become the rage that promoters and environmentalists hoped for, despite the incessant fear campaigns generated by climate change alarmists.
Automakers now find them a much less attractive product, though electric car leader Tesla maintains a loyal customer base and other companies General Motors plans to still offer models.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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