{"id":863621,"date":"2026-09-28T14:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/863621\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T14:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:46:11","slug":"trump-administration-guts-mile-per-gallon-auto-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/863621\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration Guts Mile-Per-Gallon Auto Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u2014 President Trump\u2019s Department of Transportation today finalized a rule<\/a> gutting Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards, which conserve billions of gallons of gas and save consumers billions at the pump.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s action is illegal because the law requires that the fuel economy standards be set at the \u201cmaximum feasible\u201d level. The final rule ignores the feasibility of clean technology and the millions of fuel-efficient cars already on the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is tanking sensible mileage standards at the worst possible time for consumers, who\u2019re getting hit with sky-high prices at the pump,\u201d said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity<\/a>\u2019s Safe Climate Transport Campaign<\/a>. \u201cConsumers will pay the price for these reckless rollbacks while Trump\u2019s Big Oil and Big Auto buddies reap the short-term profits. This move spells short- and long-term disaster for people\u2019s health, the planet, and even U.S. automakers who\u2019ll sit on the sidelines while clean cars advance around the world. This standard was the biggest single step any nation has taken to save gas, money at the pump, and auto pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fuel economy rule would have saved<\/a> 64 billion gallons of gas. Even before the current rise in gas prices, it was set to deliver $35 billion in savings to consumers over the lifetimes of the vehicles covered. To do this, it would have required automakers to add gas-saving technology so new cars averaged 50.4 miles per gallon by model year 2031. The Trump rule will result in cars averaging a mere 34.9 mpg in 2031.<\/p>\n

The standards also would have slashed pollution that harms Americans\u2019 health and worsens the climate crisis. Transportation makes up the biggest share<\/a> of climate-heating pollution from the United States, the world\u2019s second biggest<\/a> carbon polluter.<\/p>\n

Gutting the fuel economy standards will allow automakers to make vehicles that guzzle more gas and pollute more, costing consumers at the pump and at the doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s creating a perfect storm to crush competitiveness of domestic car companies, drive up consumer costs and kill the climate,\u201d said Becker. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing Trump won\u2019t sacrifice on the altar of fealty to Big Oil and auto polluters, whether it\u2019s our health or our wallets. Trump\u2019s rollbacks are speeding us toward a sicker, poorer America. Major carmakers asked Trump to give them<\/a> this Trojan SUV that could spell their doom since they won\u2019t have to compete against the best auto technology in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

CAFE standards are important because the United States is the world\u2019s biggest oil guzzler, consuming 20 million barrels (840 million gallons) per day \u2014 20% of the world\u2019s oil use. Transportation is the biggest consumer of that oil, making strong auto standards the most effective way to cut pollution and oil use.<\/p>\n

By resetting standards back to 2022, the administration will allow automakers to build up credits for meeting or surpassing the standards for the last four years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdding injury to insult, the administration is gutting standards for past as well as future years,\u201d said Becker. \u201cThis will hobble a future administration in setting strong standards since carmakers will be able to evade them with the \u2018get out of jail free\u2019 credits collected under Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u2014 President Trump\u2019s Department of Transportation today finalized a rule gutting Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-863621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}