US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the repeal of federal fuel economy standards from his predecessor Joe Biden's era, significantly weakening fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new gasoline cars and light trucks, UNN reports with reference to The Guardian.
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This marks another step by the US president to roll back environmental pollution regulations and federal support for green vehicles and renewable energy sources. Burning gasoline contributes significantly to global warming, and transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the publication writes.
"We are officially repealing Joe Biden's ridiculously burdensome, in fact, terrible 'Cafe' standards, which set expensive restrictions," Trump said in a statement in the Oval Office, where he was surrounded by automotive executives, including the CEOs of Ford and Stellantis. "This put enormous pressure on rising car prices in conjunction with the insane electric vehicle mandate."
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, first established in 1975, set average fuel economy targets for new cars and have been tightened over the years to make cars more fuel-efficient, the publication notes.
The Biden administration proposed a modest increase in requirements for vehicles driven by most Americans, as part of an effort to promote electric vehicles and address the climate emergency. Joe Biden required automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to approximately 50 miles per gallon by 2031.
Trump is now reversing this, easing regulatory pressure on automakers to control pollution from gasoline cars and trucks. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, his proposed standards would require cars to travel about 34 miles per gallon by 2031.
Wednesday's announcement marks the latest action by the Trump administration to roll back Biden-era policies that encouraged the use of greener vehicles, including easing car emission rules, eliminating penalties for automakers that fail to meet federal mileage standards, and ending consumer credits of up to $7,500 for electric vehicle purchases.
Trump, who calls the climate crisis a "hoax" and whose administration is experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, said he aims to ease regulations to make new cars more affordable. "These rules will allow automakers to produce vehicles that Americans want to buy, not those that Joe Biden and [former Transportation Secretary Pete] Buttigieg want them to make," said his Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was also in the Oval Office. "This is important for American jobs. The more cars we sell, the more jobs we will have in this country."
The repeal of the "Cafe" program "will force cars to burn more gasoline, and American families to burn more money," said Katherine Garcia, director of the Clean Transportation for All program at the Sierra Club.
Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that current efficiency standards have motivated automakers to produce cars that use less gasoline, saving consumers money at the pump. "Trump's actions will promote America's destructive oil use, while holding us back in the green technology race against... foreign automakers," he added. "The auto industry will use this rule to drive itself back into the usual rut, failing to compete."