suwandi-tan
US President Donald Trump has announced new fuel economy standards that reverse requirements adopted under his predecessor, saying the rollback will bring down the price of new cars and encourage manufacturers to expand production at home. The announcement, made in a social media post on Saturday, sets the stage for a significant reversal in one of Washington's most consequential environmental regulations — and for a widening break between US policy and the global shift toward electric vehicles.
In the post, Trump said the new standards would "TERMINATE" what he called former President Joe Biden's "EV (electric vehicle) mandate", accusing the previous Democratic administration of saddling carmakers with expensive requirements and pushing consumers toward electric cars. "These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car," he wrote.
The move forms part of a wider Trump administration effort to undo Biden-era policies that supported lower-emission vehicles. Taken together, the rollback and the already-repealed consumer tax credits leave American transportation policy pointing in a markedly different direction from that of most other major economies, where electrification continues to be the stated industry trajectory.
The "EV mandate" label used by Trump and his fellow Republicans is, however, contested. There are no federal guidelines or laws requiring Americans to buy electric cars, nor do any rules prohibit the sale of petrol-powered vehicles. What exists is a fuel economy regime with an averaging mechanism — a distinction that shapes how stringent, and how costly, any rollback would actually be.
At the centre of the dispute are the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, a system established by the US Congress in 1975. Under CAFE, automakers must meet average fuel economy targets across all the cars and light trucks they sell. Because compliance is calculated across a manufacturer's fleet, a brand that sells a gas-guzzling model can offset it by selling a more efficient vehicle, rather than meeting the target model by model.
Under rules finalised by the Biden administration in 2024, the required fleetwide fuel economy was scheduled to climb from 39.1 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 50.4mpg by 2031. The administration argued at the time that the tighter targets would cut fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, helping combat climate change while also saving motorists money at the pump.
Those targets had a tangible effect on industry behaviour. Auto manufacturers accelerated the ramp-up of electric vehicle production, retooling factories and adjusting product plans in order to meet the requirements. The reversal now threatens to strand some of that investment, leaving companies with plants, supply chains and models built for a market that Washington no longer appears to intend to encourage.
The policy groundwork for a rollback was laid earlier. A Republican-controlled Congress gutted consumer tax incentives for electric vehicles last year as part of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, removing one of the main levers for driving EV purchases. Earlier reporting by Al Jazeera also documented a US Department of Transportation finding that the Biden-era fuel economy rules had exceeded the agency's legal authority.
Trump did not set out the specifics of the new standards in his announcement. He did, however, reveal the likely destination: in December 2025, he announced a proposal that would set the industry-wide fleet average for light-duty vehicles at about 34.5mpg by 2031 — more than 30 percent below the Biden-era requirement, and about four and a half miles per gallon below even the pre-2024 target of 39.1mpg.
That gap matters. Rather than adjusting the pace of the phase-in, the December proposal would push the fleet average in the opposite direction from the one set in 2024, returning the United States to a level of fuel efficiency it last treated as the endpoint roughly half a century ago. Automakers would have to recalculate compliance strategies, and any EV capacity already built would face a weaker market signal.
The formal unveiling appears to be imminent. In a repost of Trump's announcement, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a formal announcement would be "COMING MONDAY". Al Jazeera has reached out to the White House for comment.
For automakers, the immediate questions are practical: what the final numbers will be, how quickly they will phase in, and what penalties apply to manufacturers that miss them. Because the standards are averaged rather than model-specific, the burden of a lower target falls differently on different companies — those with a strong EV line-up would have the most to lose, while makers weighted toward larger, less efficient trucks and SUVs would gain the most relief.
For consumers, Trump's central claim is price. A lower fleet average means less money spent on batteries, lightweight materials and emissions equipment, and the administration argues those savings will show up in sticker prices. That claim will be tested against a market backdrop in which motorists have been absorbing high fuel costs — illustrated by the picture of a Wisconsin driver checking the pump price as he fills his tank — and one in which supply chains, tariffs and raw material prices also drive what vehicles cost.
The environmental implications are harder to quantify but no less real. Rolling back an efficiency programme that was designed to cut consumption and emissions runs against the direction of travel in Europe and Asia, where tighter standards continue to tighten. For an administration that has frequently cast environmental rules as a burden on industry, the change represents a policy, not merely a regulatory, retreat — and one that will be watched for evidence on whether cheaper vehicles follow.
Comments (0)