As expected, the Trump administration has ordered a rollback of federal fuel economy standards that are designed, in part, to reduce harmful tailpipe emissions.
The order is part of the new administration’s overall effort to undo programs and initiatives put in place during the Biden administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage increased use of electric vehicles.
It came from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just hours after his Jan. 28 Senate confirmation on a 77-22 vote.
Trump and other opponents of the plans have called the standards an “EV mandate” although they don’t require carmakers to build EVs – just to meet certain emissions goals that, with the state of emissions reduction technology today, can best be met by reducing the number of vehicles with internal combustion engines.
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions has the dual benefit of reducing the release of elements that cause heat to be trapped in the atmosphere, adversely impacting climate patterns, and reducing toxic emissions that adversely affect public health. Passenger and commercial vehicles with internal combustion engines are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Trump, however, has consistently maintained that climate change isn’t a real threat, and that the U.S. needs to pump more oil, not less. “Drill, baby, drill,” has long been a Trump battle cry.
The fuel efficiency standards put in place under the Biden administration would “impose large costs [to automakers] that render many new vehicle models unaffordable for the average American family and small business owner,” Duffy wrote in his memo directing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
That agency, commonly called NHTSA, is an arm of the Transportation Department that Duffy now runs and is charged with promulgating fuel efficiency standards in concert with the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Rejected Standards
The Biden-era standards would have boosted the real-world fleetwide fuel efficiency average of each individual carmaker to 38 mpg in 2031 from 29 mpg in 2024. It required passenger car fuel economy to increase by 2% a year starting with the 2027 model year and pickup truck, van and SUV fuel efficiency to improve by 2% a year starting with the 2029 model year.
The standards are tough, but don’t require automakers to build any specific types of vehicles. The EPA, however, said that the easiest way to meet the standards with known emissions technologies would be for electric vehicles (including a small portion of plug-in hybrids) to account for about 50% of new vehicle production in 2031.
[What NHTSA’s fuel economy rules are all about.]
‘Artificially High’
In his memo to NHTSA, Duffy called the standards “artificially high,” and said they may not have considered the vulnerability of the nation’s power grid or the national security issues posed by relying on foreign sources for energy materials including those used for EVs and EV batteries.
He told NHTSA to review and re-evaluate existing fuel economy standards for the 2022 model year through 2030 under Trump administration policy.
That policy, as it applies to the use of fuel economy standards to promote EVs is, according to Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, to promote “the production, distribution and use of reliable domestic energy supplies, including oil, natural gas, and biofuels” and to “eliminate the ‘electric vehicle (EV) mandate’ and promote true consumer choice…”
The Biden-era fuel economy standards, Duffy said in his memo “put coercive pressure on automakers to phase out of production various models of popular ICE [internal combustion engine] models…fundamentally distorting the market and destroying consumer choice at the dealership.”
Immediate Pushback
Duffy’s order drew criticism from environmental and public health groups and many noted that EPA analysts consistently have said that while stricter fuel efficiency rules will increase the purchase price of many ICE vehicles, the hikes will be offset, sometimes more than offset, but savings in fuel costs.
Supporters of the Biden-era standards also argue that not encouraging EV development in the U.S. puts domestic automakers at a disadvantage globally. That’s because China has taken such a strong stance on development of EVs – indeed, it is the world’s largest EV market and its carmakers are exporting their EVs to other countries in Asia and Europe. Most European automakers also are under social and government pressure to increase production of EVs.
U.S. automakers that slow down or drop EV and EV battery development will fall “further behind global competitors,” said Will Anderson, the EV policy advocate for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization.
Tried Before
While no lawsuits have yet been announced to block Duffy’s order – or Trump’s overall pro-oil energy policy –there are likely to be several.
Toward the end of his first presidential term in 2020, Trump rolled back emissions standards enacted during the Obama administration.
A coalition of 23 states plus the District of Columbia and four major cities – Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Denver – filed suit to block the rollback, but Trump lost his reelection bid and the new Biden administration moved quickly to reinstate the Obama standards and then went on to develop the even-stricter rules now under attack.