The Patriot Post® · Trump Puts Biden's EV Mandate Out to Pasture
One of President Donald Trump’s most notable accomplishments during his first term was his administration’s impressive rollback of the regulatory state. He campaigned on eliminating two regulations for every new one added, and upon entering office in January 2017, he formalized this plan by issuing Executive Order 13771, creating the “2-for-1” rule.
The aim was not only to cut through the mountain of bureaucratic red tape Washington has created over the years, but also to save Americans billions of dollars from the hidden tax of regulations.
The Trump administration not only met the 2-for-1 goal but also exceeded it, eliminating nearly five regulations for every new one added. Thus, when he entered office for his second term in January 2025, he upped the ante and signed an executive order directing the Office of Management and Budget to require federal agencies to eliminate 10 regulations for every new one added.
This action was a decided and intentional reversal from the Biden administration, which greatly expanded the regulatory state.
One of the later and more costly regulations the Biden administration implemented was raising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards significantly to 50.4 miles per gallon by 2031. The CAFE standards target for automakers had previously been set at 34.5 MPG.
It was part of Joe Biden’s de facto electric vehicle mandate, which sought to pressure Americans into purchasing EVs by forcing automakers to meet new, onerous CAFE standards with more EVs on dealer lots. Of course, this free market meddling was all justified under the dubious claim of fighting climate change.
But the CAFE standards, which came into existence in the 1970s during the oil crisis, were intended to make America’s vehicles more fuel-efficient to counter the world’s presumed shrinking global oil reserves.
It wasn’t until the Obama administration conceived of tying CAFE standards to environmental concerns that the push to raise the CAFE standards began to reach untenable levels.
As Trump put it, the Biden administration “forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse. This is a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.”
Thankfully, Trump has ended this abuse of the American consumer and the auto industry.
Last week, Trump announced that his administration would be rolling back Biden’s CAFE standards to the prior level. In so doing, Trump estimated that it would save American consumers some $109 billion over the next five years, and drop the average cost of a new car by $1,000. It was only recently that the average price of a new car topped $50,000 for the first time.
Trump’s order is a good move, but it would be even better if he sought to scrap the CAFE standards entirely. There is no global oil energy crisis, as estimates of global and U.S. reserves have increased significantly.
In fact, the average price of gas has now dropped below $3 a gallon for the first time in over four years. This is thanks in considerable measure to Trump’s pro-fossil fuel energy agenda.
If the future of vehicles is indeed electric, the best way for that future to develop is through a free market unfettered by onerous, politically motivated, stifling regulations.