The Trump Administration revoked the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions on Thursday, arguing the action was necessary to protect consumer choice and enable lower-cost vehicles, among other reasons.
Touted by President Trump and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” the action will nullify a 2009 “endangerment” finding requiring that the government regulate pollutants that could cause harm to public health. The move comes as the Trump Administration works to roll back climate-focused requirements for the automotive industry, including emissions and fuel-economy standards.
The EPA justified its action by saying the endangerment finding “enabled the Obama and Biden Administrations’ illegal push toward EV mandates,” exceeding the agency’s own authority.
“A policy decision of this magnitude, which carries sweeping economic and policy consequences, lies solely with Congress,” it declared.
However, in the hours that followed the Trump Administration’s announcement, it quickly became clear that while some in the automotive industry are cheering the move, not everyone in the industry is convinced it’s the best solution for consumers.
As some cheer deregulation, others prefer a national standard
The Trump Administration claims its action to revoke the EPA’s authority will deliver several benefits to the automotive industry, and while several automakers hailed the intent, others questioned whether a future navigating a patchwork of state regulations was truly better for the industry.
The administration highlighted cost-savings opportunities for the automotive industry, including $1.3 trillion in cost reductions, including average savings of $2,400 per vehicle plus a lower cost for freight transportation.
The action also nixes off-cycle credits for automakers, the administration highlighted, which incentivized automakers to install “the almost universally hated start-stop feature” that’s commonly used in gasoline vehicles to prevent extra emissions and fuel use while stopped.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade association which represents automakers’ regulatory interests, emphasized the benefits of the action in a statement emailed to WardsAuto.
“The auto industry in America remains focused on preserving vehicle choice for consumers, keeping the industry competitive and staying on a long-term path of emissions reduction and cleaner vehicles,” said John Bozzella, the trade group’s president and CEO. Bozzella reiterated that regulations finalized in the previous administration “are extremely challenging for automakers to achieve, given the current marketplace demand for EVs.”
While General Motors Co., Volkswagen Group and Toyota Motor Corp. deferred to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation’s statement, other automakers provided a more nuanced message.
Ford Motor Co. applauded the work of the administration to “address the imbalance between current emission standards and customer choice.” But it also offered the following in an email: “Ford has consistently advocated for a single, stable national standard that aligns with customer choice, the market, societal benefit, and American job growth. Stability and predictability are good for customers and good for America’s ability to compete globally.”
“Ford’s big picture sustainability goals remain unchanged: to achieve carbon neutrality across our vehicles, operations and supply chain no later than 2050,” it summed to WardsAuto. “We aim to do this by offering our customers a range of electrified solutions including plug-in hybrids, extended-range electric vehicles, and pure electric vehicles.”
Following this announcement, Volvo Cars underscored that it still seeks to be a fully electric car company, reaching net-zero GHG by 2040.
“Volvo Cars believes regulatory consistency and a clear federal framework are necessary to effectively and efficiently enable the auto industry to develop advanced technology vehicles,” it outlined in an email.
In an email to WardsAuto, American Honda Motor Co. said it stood by the company’s public comments on the endangerment issue, which were filed in September.
“We continue to develop a wide range of powertrains to meet the needs of our customers which includes gasoline, hybrid-electric and electrified products,” the company said in the email.
In its public comments, the company also emphasized a “balanced approach that supports both a healthy economy and a sustainable future,” and stated that it was “concerned that repealing these standards could create unnecessary market disruption and hinder industry effort to address environmental challenges, including clean air for all Americans.”
WardsAuto reached out on deadline Thursday to a range of interests including environmental organizations and retail groups, as well as automakers. The National Automobile Dealers Association declined comment, pending a review of the rule, and no dealer groups had responded at the time of publication.
Consumer and environmental advocates raise the alarm
Consumer advocates and environmental groups appeared to unite on a message that there’s a huge difference between easing CO2 targets and calling them irrelevant.
The revocation had been anticipated as a last enabling component to follow through with what the Trump administration proposed in December — effectively eliminating vehicle fuel economy standards through 2031, by resetting CAFE requirements to a level that was already met by the fleet in 2024.
“This puts us significantly out of step with the rest of the world, both in emissions and in the transition to electrification for both cheaper and more efficient vehicles that will be available elsewhere in the world,” said David Reichmuth, the senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Consumer Reports, for instance, had projected in 2024 that Biden-era emissions and fuel economy standards would save consumers $2 trillion through 2050 and reduce climate pollution by over 12 billion tons over that period.
Similarly, the clean-air industry organization Calstart pointed to modeling from non-partisan energy and climate policy think tank Energy Innovation, finding that between 2025 and 2030 the move will cause 17,000 pollution-related premature deaths. It calculated that Americans would be forced to pay $310 billion more largely due to higher gasoline prices, while cutting $710 billion from the U.S. GDP and cutting the labor force, which has been repositioning toward technology and vehicle electrification, by 110,000 jobs annually.
For the time being, automakers won’t be scot-free on GHG requirements. They’ll need to continue complying with them for vehicles sold in California as well as in all the states that have signed on with California’s auto emissions regulations, because they’re nested in the state’s ACC1 standards. According to the California Air Resources Board, that means about 40% of the U.S. light vehicle market.
Those relationships may be in flux once again. For instance, in the last Trump administration Ford, VW, BMW and Honda voluntarily pledged to meet California emissions even as the administration had weakened federal standards. Ford told WardsAuto Thursday that it “will continue to work closely with CARB and look forward to continued engagement.”
Another element that may be left up to the courts is that climate-change-oriented GHG regulations include more than carbon dioxide—nitrous oxide and methane, for instance—and some of those other elements are more direct threats to public health, according to Reichmuth.
“This is incredibly destructive,” summed Reichmuth, underscoring that transportation is the largest sector for global warming emissions in the U.S., and passenger vehicles are the largest source of transportation. “There’s no way to have large-scale reductions in global warming emissions and try to avoid climate damage without addressing emissions from vehicles.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from American Honda Motor Co.
