WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Donald J Trump, on December 3, announced a major rollback of the Biden administration’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, terminating the aggressive fuel-efficiency requirements and returning the program to levels achievable with conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles.
The Biden-era standards, Trump called a “scam” during the Wednesday’s presser, were finalized in 2022 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for model years 2024–2026 and required fleet-wide fuel efficiency averages on new vehicles to rise to approximately 52–55 mpg for passenger cars and 42–45 mpg for light trucks by 2026 — a roughly 10 mpg increase from 2021 levels. Administration officials contend those targets effectively functioned as a backdoor electric-vehicle mandate because they could only be met through massive EV and hybrid adoption.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy praised President Trump’s rollback of Biden-era CAFE standards, arguing that the Biden administration deliberately set unattainable fuel-economy targets to force a shift to electric and hybrid vehicles, in violation of existing law.
“Biden and Buttigieg actually did an analysis using EVs and hybrids to come up with a 62 mile an hour per gallon standard, which the car companies will tell you is completely unattainable,” said Sec Duffy. “So they spent a lot of money on technology trying to meet the unattainable standard, driving up the cost of a car, number one. And then number two, if they couldn’t meet the unattainable standard, they had to trade for carbon, costing billions of dollars and again driving up the price of the car.”
The White House maintains that retaining the Biden standards would have increased the average new-vehicle price by nearly $1,000 and that Wednesday’s action will save American families $109 billion over the next five years. Officials also argue the prior rule exceeded NHTSA’s statutory authority under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act by relying on EV penetration rather than regulating conventional liquid-fuel vehicles.
While automakers including General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis welcomed the change, describing it as relief from unrealistic “market realities,” environmental groups, clean energy advocates, and some economists—have decried it as a dangerous step backward.
In response to Trump’s announcement, Sierra Club Clean Transportation for All Director Katherine García released the following statement:
“Gutting the CAFE program will make cars burn more gas and American families burn more cash. The current standards save drivers thousands of dollars each year by requiring manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient cars. Weakening them further hurts our economic well-being at a time when families are already burdened by rising costs. This rollback would move the auto industry backwards, keeping polluting cars on our roads for years to come and threatening the health of millions of Americans, particularly children and the elderly. This dangerous proposal adds to the long list of ways the Trump administration is dismantling our clean air and public health protections. The Sierra Club will continue to push back against this administration’s egregious attacks on clean transportation.”
The move follows President Trump’s June signing of a joint resolution ending California’s EV sales mandate and builds on provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that made up to $10,000 in auto-loan interest deductible for new U.S.-assembled vehicles.
Author: Mario Lotmore
