Trump Admin Guts Vehicle Fuel Efficiency Standards
NEWS & RESEARCH
Claiming it would lower the price of new vehicles, the Transportation Department announced a final rule on September 29, 2026, cutting car and light truck fuel efficiency standards from 50.4, set by President Biden, to 34.5 miles per gallon, effective in 2031. The mileage standards were created by Congress in 1975 in response to a Middle East oil embargo. Known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards, the Biden standard would have saved 64 billion gallons of gasoline. The US is now the world’s biggest oil producer but also its biggest guzzler, consuming 20 million barrels (840 million gallons) per day — 20% of the world’s oil use. As of the date of the new rule, Trump’s war in Iran had driven up gasoline prices to an average of $4.48 per gallon nationally, diesel at $6.50. Transportation is largest source of greenhouse emissions, like carbon dioxide, driving global warming, which President Trump calls a “hoax.” In 2025, Congress, with the president’s support, repealed tax credits for purchases of electric vehicles, even as the global market for E.V. sales has grown rapidly. The administration previously weakened vehicle tailpipe-output rules.
SOURCES: New York Times | Center for Biological Diversity | The Independent | Politico | The Verge | NPR
ANALYSIS & OPINION
The actual impact of the change may be negligible since in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress already had eliminated fines for automakers that fail to meet the Biden standards. But Dan Becker of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign warned that “Consumers will pay the price for these reckless rollbacks while Trump’s Big Oil and Big Auto buddies reap the short-term profits. This move spells short- and long-term disaster for people’s health, the planet, and even U.S. automakers who’ll sit on the sidelines while clean cars advance around the world.” The administration maintains that the Biden CAFE standards were driving up the price of new cars. But a Consumer Reports analysis found that between model years 2003 and 2021, while vehicles got about 30% more fuel efficient, prices rose. But the analysis attributed the rise in prices to a shift toward expensive SUVs, rather than from using more fuel-efficient technologies. While the weakening of the CAFE standards was welcomed by a trde group fo cars and light-truck manufacturers, Ford's former chief global economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick said it is bad for the long-term interests of US automakers: “The rest of the world is marching on in this transition to EVs. We have a very powerful competitor in terms of the Chinese electric vehicle industry." Given the global market and the assumption a future Democratic administration would revert to the Biden standard or an even stricter one, manufacturers are not expected to race to reverse their progress toward achieving the 50.4 standard.
SOURCES: New York Times | Center for Biological Diversity | The Independent | Politico | The Verge | NPR
HOW TO FIX IT
Federal action:
The public should push Congress to enforce the Biden CAFE standards, which effectively require that an increasing share of the US auto market be E.V.s, which will help keep the US auto industry competitive globally in E.V. production and protecting the environment and climate.
Litigation:
Support lawsuits by environmental organizations and state attorneys general arguing that relaxing the standards violates statutory requirements to set maximum feasible fuel efficiency improvements.
Support a September 2, 2026 preliminary injunction upholding California’s stricter-than-federal emissions standards for passenger cars and small off-road engines. The federal court ruled that California has a high likelihood of proving the EPA's reclassification tactic is unlawful. Under the Clean Air Act, California may set stricter standards and other states may choose to follow California’s lead. However, under Trump and Lee Zeldin, EPA reclassified previously granted California waivers as "rules" to allow the Republican-led Congress to strike down the waiver.
