San Francisco Frontiers - Trump to scrap Biden's fuel-economy standards, sparking climate outcry

Trump will be joined in the Oval Office on Wednesday by the CEOs of Ford and Stellantis, and a General Motors manager, to announce the rollback -- with the presence of the so-called "Big Three" automakers signaling critical industry buy-in.

"Joe Biden's fuel efficiency regulations would have raised the cost of a new vehicle by $1,000," the White House said on X, adding that Trump's reset would save Americans $109 billion.

"As America's largest auto producer, we appreciate President Trump's leadership in aligning fuel economy standards with market realities," Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.

Environmentalists quickly pushed back, saying the move stood out even among Trump's many anti-green actions because of its outsized impact on car-dependent America.

"Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the biggest single step any nation has ever taken to combat oil use, global warming pollution, and helping save consumers money at the gas pump," Dan Becker, an activist with the Center for Biological Diversity who has campaigned for green car policies since the 1980s, told AFP. "This is the big one."

At stake are the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, created in 1975 in response to the Arab oil embargo, which require vehicles to achieve the "maximum feasible" mileage per gallon.

The full extent of the rollback was not immediately clear.

But the Trump administration has repeatedly signaled its opposition to efficiency increases enacted under Biden's administration, which it boosted by eight percent for model years 2024–2025 and 10 percent for 2026, targeting more than 50 miles per gallon by 2031.

In a proposed rule issued in June, Trump's Department of Transport argued that Biden officials had improperly factored in electric and hybrid vehicles when devising those targets, saying the standards would be unattainable for gasoline-powered cars and would effectively force a shift in the market.

Becker called that argument "ludicrous" because it would force automakers to ignore that advanced technology exists.

- Trump EV fight -

Trump has railed against what he calls an EV "mandate" -- an issue that has put him at odds with his on-again, off-again billionaire ally Elon Musk, the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla, which still has the highest EV market share in the US even as other brands are gaining.

Republicans in Congress have repealed clean-energy tax credits in a major tax and spending bill, and targeted California's ability to set its own vehicle-emission limits.

Throughout 2025, GM and other US automakers have curtailed or pushed back new EV plant capacity.

But whether savings from reduced EV investment will filter through to consumers remains unclear.

While the shift away from EVs does allow automakers to delay or forgo billions of dollars in new investments, some of those funds are being steered into new initiatives to add US carbuilding capacity in light of Trump's tariffs.

GM, for example, announced in June $4 billion in spending to retool factories in Michigan, Kansas and Tennessee.

GM, which has said it expects a $3.5 billion -- $4.5 billion tariff hit in 2025, has also placed a heavy priority on returning excess cash to shareholders.

Gina McCarthy, a former senior official under Biden and Barack Obama, said the move would ultimately harm the auto industry by slowing its shift to electric vehicles and worsen climate change.

"The rest of the world will continue to innovate and create cleaner cars that people want to buy and drive, while we're forced to sit in our clunkers, paying more for gas, and pumping out more tailpipe emissions."

Z.Phillips--SFF