With latest rollback, US essentially has no clean-car rules

The momentous end to the federal government’s legal authority to fight climate change makes it official.

The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be.

That’s the practical result of the Trump administration’s yearlong parade of regulatory rollbacks, capped Thursday by its killing of the “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases because of the threat to human health.

“The US no longer has emission standards of any meaning,” said Margo Oge, who served as the EPA’s top vehicle emissions regulator under three presidents and has since advised both automakers and environmental groups.

“Nothing. Zero,” she added. “Not many countries have zero.”

Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gases in the United States.

Car buyers could still vote with their wallets, demanding more fuel-efficient cars. California has vowed to sue to maintain stricter standards. The Department of Transportation still regulates fuel economy under rules meant to conserve oil, and the EPA still regulates other tailpipe emissions, like nitrogen oxides, that harm human health.

But last year, the Trump administration proposed weakening the fuel economy standards to largely irrelevant levels. The Republican-controlled Congress also set civil penalties for violations at $0, essentially making them voluntary for automakers. In addition, Congress last year blocked California’s clean-car rules.

The bottom line is that the United States is set to stand apart from a majority of the world’s industrialized nations, which have mandatory fuel economy or greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions rules.

The Biden administration had sought to tighten limits on emissions to encourage automakers to sell more nonpolluting electric vehicles.

The Trump administration’s elimination of the endangerment finding is expected to face fierce legal challenges from environmental groups and others. The endangerment finding was a 2009 scientific conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to Americans’ health and welfare. It provided the foundation to justify federal regulations that limit carbon dioxide, methane and other pollution, including from cars.

If the EPA’s decision holds, it could increase the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10% over the next 30 years, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.

Greenhouse emissions are the main driver of global climate change, which in turn is intensifying heat waves, drought, hurricanes and floods while also melting glaciers, causing sea levels to rise.

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, called the end of the finding “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” He accused Democrats of having launched an “ideological crusade” on climate change that had “strangled entire sectors of the United States economy,” particularly the auto industry, which has struggled to sell electric vehicles.

Climate concerns aside, it’s unclear whether the US auto industry will ultimately benefit from the elimination of emissions and fuel efficiency regulations. The move could leave American automakers even more dominated by gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, experts said, as China and other nations continue to shift toward cleaner electric cars.

That could leave them at a competitive disadvantage in coming years. “Our automakers are not going to survive,” Oge predicted.

John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents automakers in the United States, has declined to say whether he supports the end of the endangerment finding. But he said in a statement that the move would “correct some of the unachievable emissions regulations enacted under the previous administration.”

President Donald Trump has swung back and forth on his opinion of electric vehicles. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he said electric cars would “kill” America’s auto industry. But he appeared to at least temporarily soften his stance at the urging of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and his one-time close adviser. In March, Trump said he would buy a Tesla.

“Globally, the push is in exactly the opposite direction, in the direction of electrifying vehicles,” said Ann Carlson, a professor at UCLA School of Law who served under President Joe Biden as acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Transportation Department agency that sets fuel efficiency standards.

But now, “they’re saying no standards whatsoever,” she said.

For 17 years, the EPA worked in tandem with the Department of Transportation, with the EPA regulating carbon dioxide emissions (to protect health) and the Transportation Department governing how much fuel a car can burn (to conserve fuel).

The endangerment finding had allowed the EPA in recent years to push standards more aggressively than possible using fuel-economy rules alone, setting targets so low they would eventually have become virtually impossible for gasoline engines to meet. The EPA also had the authority, for example, to issue stop-sale orders if an automaker failed to meet standards, preventing them from selling certain cars until the issue was resolved.>