Trump eases pollution rules for cars, setting up showdown with California
The Trump administration announced its long-anticipated plan to lower fuel efficiency and carbon emissions standards for automobiles Tuesday, setting up a bruising showdown with California over pollution and climate change.
The announcement relaxes standards set by California and the Obama administration in 2012, but represents a strengthening of the original proposal released by President Donald Trump’s administration two years ago.
California officials said they were prepared to fight the plan in court, and blasted the Trump administration for releasing the final rules at a time when state officials are scrambling to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Trump administration doesn’t recognize the chaos it creates,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, on a conference call with reporters. “We’re going to do what we need to do.
“This timing is more than tone deaf,” said Becerra, who has sued the Trump administration more than 60 times on immigration, the environment and other issues. “It could be very harmful at a time when all of our state governments and local governments, and I would have to include the federal government, are trying to address COVID-19.”
The attorney general added that the Trump rollout will worsen air pollution when “the last thing you want to do is create an environment where you’re making people more and more susceptible to viruses and pandemics, like we’re witnessing today with coronavirus.”
California vowed to go its own way on emissions standards. Last summer the state cut a deal with Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen that commits the four automakers to follow a slightly relaxed version of the Obama-era rules on greenhouse gas emissions. Not only have those automakers signaled they will stand by that agreement, Volvo has agreed to join California’s coalition, Chairwoman Mary Nichols of the California Air Resources Board announced.
“They add a lot of weight to our position,” Nichols said. “We have had conversations with some other companies” and it’s likely other automakers will sign on, she said.
Most other automakers, however, have sided with the Trump administration.
Trump’s decision requires automakers to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 percent a year through 2026. The Obama-era rules were much stricter, forcing carbon emissions to be cut by 5 percent a year. The Obama standards also would require fuel efficiency to increase from an average of 35 miles per gallon to 54 mpg by 2026, the new rules finalized by the Trump administration would increase fuel efficiency to about 40 mpg.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the new rule would overturn former President Barack Obama’s “unachievable” standards and provide consumers with cheaper, safer cars at a time when Americans are driving older vehicles than ever before.
“The newer vehicles will be better for the environment than the vehicles they replace,” Wheeler said. “The lack of fleet turnover creates a host of problems, the most important of which is passenger safety.”
Auto industry tentatively supports
The Trump administration says its rules will save Americans money because building to higher fuel-efficiency standards tends to increase the sticker price of a new vehicle. But California officials, and many environmental groups, say those savings are more than offset by the fact that motorists will be spending more on gasoline to keep their gas-guzzlers running.
The auto industry gave the Trump rules its tentative blessing, saying the Obama guidelines no longer made sense as Americans continued to gravitate toward bigger vehicles. But the industry also said it wants to build more fuel-efficient, cleaner cars.
“We need policies that support a customer-friendly shift toward these electrified and other highly efficient technologies. We are carefully reviewing the full breadth of this final rule to determine the extent to which it supports these priorities,” said the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most major carmakers.
Part of the relaxation of the rules by the Trump administration includes an attack on California’s unique authority, under federal law, to set stricter-than-the-nation air pollution standards. Although the Obama-era rules on carbon emissions represented a compromise between California and the White House, Trump’s administration has argued that California’s authority can lead to a patchwork quilt of different rules in different states.
California officials have already sued the Trump administration to defend the attack on the state’s authority to set its own standards.
Congress has mandated the regulation of corporate average fuel economy, known as CAFE standards, since the 1970s, directing auto manufacturers to follow government rules on how many miles their cars can drive per gallon of fuel.
‘Right balance for the American people’
The Obama administration saw this regulatory power as a key tool in its fight against climate change, and proposed roughly 5 percent annual increases. But Trump vowed in 2017 to roll that back, saying it had raised the price of cars for consumers and added billions of dollars in regulatory hurdles.
“We hope that everybody will sit down and review our analysis, and understand this is the right balance to strike for the American people,” James Owens, acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said on the call with reporters. “We are prepared to defend the rule.”
The Trump administration’s new tailpipe standards are meant to be “a floor” for manufacturers, who are able to go above and beyond the lowered efficiency threshold, administration officials said. Automakers have consistently advocated for a slow increase in standards, arguing that Obama attempted to move too quickly and that Trump’s initial proposal – a complete freeze – was too dramatic a reversal.
But environmental groups warn the new rule could result in over a billion tons in additional carbon dioxide emissions entering the atmosphere. Automobile emissions are one of the primary sources of greenhouse gases, fueling climate change.
Trump’s dispute with automakers over tailpipe standards first boiled over last June, when 17 automakers wrote him a letter requesting that he compromise with California over his administration’s plans to raise the fuel economy standards issued by his predecessor.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is working closely with Trump to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic, has been one of the president’s chief critics on environmental policy, and blasted Tuesday’s decision.
“This rollback threatens the health of our communities and endangers American jobs in our auto industry. The rule discourages innovation and jeopardizes our global leadership in manufacturing cleaner vehicles and cleaner technology. Now more than ever, we need to protect our citizens and look towards the industries and opportunities of the future.”
