President Donald Trump took action on Wednesday to repeal the burdensome fuel standards imposed by the Biden Administration that, according to the White House, provided a backdoor to force an electric vehicle mandate.
[RELATED: Maine BEP Rejects Controversial EV Mandate…]
“Biden’s burdensome regulations helped cause the price of cars to soar more than 25 percent, and in one case, they went up 18 percent in one year. Today we’re taking one more step to kill the green new scam,” said President Donald Trump.
Trump announced the changes in the Oval Office while surrounded by officials and automotive executives, who were heavily impacted by the Biden-era Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
President Joe Biden’s 2024 alterations to the CAFE standards would require new passenger vehicles to achieve 50.4 miles per gallon in fuel efficiency by 2031. The 2024 changes build on a previous 2022 push for increased environmental standards.
According to the White House fact sheet, current technology does not allow auto manufacturers to meet the requirements set by President Biden with gasoline-powered vehicles, meaning that the standards would effectively lead to an electric vehicle mandate.
“The Biden Administration created extraordinarily stringent fuel economy standards for passenger cars and trucks, set at such aggressive levels that they were impossible to meet with available technologies for gas cars,” said the White House.
“The Biden standards would have compelled widespread shifts to EVs that American consumers did not ask for, accompanied by significant cost-of-living increases,” it continued.
According to the White House, Biden’s standards would have raised the cost of new cars by an average of $1,000, and Trump’s repeal will save Americans $109 billion over the next five years.
“Today’s action helps ensure that even if far-left Democrats return to power, the CAFE standards are sensible, so U.S. automakers are not held to infeasible standards,” said the White House.
As a result of the environmental changes, U.S. manufacturers will be able to build smaller, more affordable trucks produced by Honda and other manufacturers for other countries.
Under the Biden-era standards, those vehicles could not be sold in the U.S., but Trump directed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to immediately approve their manufacturing in the U.S.
Trump’s move strikes a blow against the push to phase out gas-powered vehicles altogether by Democrats at the state and federal levels.
Maine’s Democrat-controlled government has already tried and failed to mandate electric vehicles as part of the same push for “net zero” carbon emissions that has driven increasing energy costs for Mainers who cannot afford to install solar panels.
