Trump Proposes Weakening Fuel Economy Rules for Vehicles

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

At the White House today, President Donald Trump announced his administration would “reset” vehicle fuel economy standards. Trump said the administration plans to revoke tightened standards, also known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, set by President Joe Biden in 2024.

“We’re bringing back the car industry that was stolen from us.”

“We are officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome—horrible, actually—CAFE standards that imposed expensive restrictions and all sorts of problems, all sorts of problems, to automakers,” Trump said. “We’re bringing back the car industry that was stolen from us.”

Automobile executives from Ford, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis joined federal officials, including Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, at the announcement. The administration said, without providing evidence during today’s announcement, that the current CAFE standards have increased vehicle prices and estimated that changing those standards would save American families $109 billion in total.

Vehicle fuel efficiency standards, which set the average gas mileage that vehicles must achieve, have been in place since 1975. The standards were most recently tightened in June 2024 by the Biden administration, and required automakers to ensure vehicles achieved an average fuel efficiency of about 50.4 miles per gallon by model year 2031. The Biden administration estimated that the rule would lower fuel costs by $23 billion and prevent the emission of more than 710 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. 

Fuel economy standards have significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, which are one of the largest sources of carbon emissions in the United States. According to one estimate, fuel economy improvements spurred by the standards have avoided 14 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions since 1975. 

However, Duffy said, the current standards are “completely unattainable” for automakers.

The announcement did not specify the degree to which the administration would lower the standards.

Weakening fuel economy rules for vehicles is the latest step in President Trump’s continued efforts to slow the adoption of electric vehicles and boost the fossil fuel industry. 

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the omnibus spending bill that became law in July, also eliminated fines for automakers that did not comply with fuel economy standards. The Environmental Protection Agency is also expected to weaken limits of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by finalizing the repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which underpins important federal climate regulations, early next year. 

Policy advocates said weakening the standards would slow the transition to electric vehicles and make the U.S. vehicle market less competitive. “While Trump tells G.M., Ford and others that they needn’t make gas-saving cars, China is telling its carmakers to take advantage of the lack of U.S. competition and accelerate their efforts to grab the world’s burgeoning clean car market,” Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The New York Times. 

However, automakers supported the proposal. “As America’s largest auto producer, we appreciate President Trump’s leadership in aligning fuel economy standards with market realities,” Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, told Fox News.

“Today is a victory of common sense and affordability,” Farley, who attended the announcement, said. 

The Transportation Department will solicit public comments about the rule and is expected to finalize it next year.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

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