President Donald Trump has canceled Joe Biden’s stricter auto fuel economy standards, calling them a costly electric vehicle mandate that will now give way to lower prices and freer factories.
Trump announced the reversal on Saturday, saying he had approved new fuel economy standards that terminate what he labeled Biden and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s “EV Mandate.” The move undoes Biden-era Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules that pushed automakers toward higher mileage targets and heavier electric vehicle pressure.
In a Truth Social post highlighted in Breitbart reporting, Trump cast the change as a direct win for workers and buyers.
"BIG DAY FOR AMERICAN AUTO WORKERS AND CAR BUYERS! I have just approved new Fuel Economy Standards that TERMINATE Sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Boot-EDGE-EDGE’s ridiculous EV Mandate. The Dumocrats cost our Great Auto Manufacturers $Billions, forced Americans into cars they never wanted, and wasted Billions on Chargers that were never built."
He added that the new standards would strip waste from American car building, deliver lower prices, and save families thousands on a new vehicle. Trump said manufacturers from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis had called him wanting to build in the United States and now could do so.
The action fulfills a 2024 campaign promise to rescind policies that encouraged or incentivized electric vehicles. It also continues a pattern of rolling back Biden-era industrial mandates, including earlier moves that ended the Biden EV push with fuel standards aimed at cutting car prices.
CAFE standards date to 1975 and set the average fuel economy vehicles must meet to be sold. They have been revised for decades. In his first term, Trump cut an Obama-era requirement of a five percent annual efficiency increase down to 1.5 percent.
Biden reversed those first-term reductions after taking office. His administration put in place stricter rules aimed at promoting electric vehicles. CNBC reporting cited in the coverage said automakers would have had to raise the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to roughly 50 miles per gallon by 2031.
Weaker standards, that same CNBC account noted, let automakers produce more pickup trucks and SUVs. Those models are far more profitable than smaller cars even though they get worse gas mileage. Final numeric details of Trump’s new standards remain pending, but the direction is clear: the forced march toward the prior target is over.
The New York Post reported that Trump proposed cutting the 2031 requirement to 34 miles per gallon, down from Biden’s 50 mpg mark. Ford and Stellantis chief executives joined the president and praised the decision to loosen limits on gas-powered vehicles.
Ford CEO Jim Farley put the industry case in plain terms.
"This is a win for customers and common sense."
Trump told reporters the prior rules had been ridiculously burdensome. The Post account also noted the change builds on earlier legislation that repealed penalties and blocked California’s gas-car ban, with automakers shifting investment back toward conventional vehicles.
The Washington Examiner reported that the Department of Transportation is canceling the Biden CAFE rules to reset the standards. The administration says the shift will save Americans about $1,000 on a new vehicle. Biden’s 2024 rules had required roughly 2 percent annual fuel-economy increases and pushed fleet averages toward that 50 mpg level by the 2031 model year.
Trump argued the old approach forced expensive technology into cars people did not want.
"Nobody wanted to do it, and it was ridiculous, very expensive... these policies forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse."
That cost argument lands with buyers who already face high vehicle prices. It also lands with plants and workers who watched investment chase mandates instead of demand. Trump wrote that more than $100 billion is being invested by manufacturers in U.S. automobile production, with plants and jobs returning to the Midwest and the South.
General Motors has signaled it still plans to offer electric models. Tesla keeps a loyal base. The difference is that the federal thumb is no longer pressing the entire industry toward one technology path on a political timetable. Shoppers regain room to choose trucks, SUVs, hybrids, or electrics without a Washington quota hanging over the lot.
That same preference for practical governance over ideological projects has shown up elsewhere, from border enforcement fights to cases where Trump DHS officials confronted Squad Democrats pushing to abolish ICE.
For years the standards became a political football. Obama raised the annual climb. Trump slowed it. Biden jacked the targets back up and folded in electric-vehicle pressure. Each swing left manufacturers rewriting product plans and spending capital on compliance rather than what customers actually ordered.
Trump’s Saturday announcement cuts that cycle short. He framed the prior approach as waste that produced cars he called “Environmental Monsters” and chargers that never got built. The new posture is simpler: build what sells, price it so families can buy it, and keep the factories here.
Democrats spent years treating climate policy as an emergency that justified higher costs and thinner choice. Biden repeatedly called climate change an existential threat and used the regulatory state to steer the auto market. The result was rules that treated pickup buyers and working families as obstacles. Voters rejected that bargain. The new standards reflect the rejection.
Congressional Democrats have kept looking for fresh fights even after clear public verdicts, including the recent episode in which the House killed Al Green’s Trump impeachment resolution while 147 Democrats tried to keep it alive. The fuel-economy fight follows the same pattern: a mandate imposed from above, then a correction when the costs hit home.
Automakers had little room to ignore the old targets. Missing CAFE averages meant penalties and product mix restrictions. Looser rules let them put capital into profitable lines and domestic capacity instead of chasing a political mpg number. That is why CEOs from Ford and Stellantis stood with the change and why Trump could say the manufacturers wanted to build here again.
The open questions are ordinary regulatory ones. Exact final mpg tables are still pending. The precise rule text and effective dates will matter to compliance teams. But the policy signal is already out: the federal government will no longer treat gas-powered trucks and SUVs as problems to be regulated out of the market.
The people who live with these rules are not Washington modelers. They are families comparing monthly payments, dealers trying to stock what moves, and line workers whose shifts depend on plants staying open. When standards force smaller, pricier, less practical vehicles, those people pay first.
Trump’s post tied the old rules to billions in manufacturer costs and billions more spent on chargers that never appeared. Whether every dollar figure holds up in later audits, the direction of the complaint matches what dealers and buyers already saw on the lot: fewer of the vehicles people wanted, more pressure toward models that needed subsidies and infrastructure that lagged.
Restoring choice does not ban electric cars. It stops the government from pretending every household wants one on the same schedule. Tesla’s base remains. GM can keep offering EVs. The rest of the industry can again match metal to demand. That is how markets are supposed to work.
Other Trump-era accountability fights have put the same pressure on Democrats who resist practical enforcement, including the push that left Senate Democrats facing calls to back an anti-fraud division after a bipartisan House vote. Energy and auto policy now join that list.
Lower sticker prices, more trucks and SUVs if buyers want them, and factories free to invest without a 50 mpg political ceiling are the near-term stakes. The longer stake is whether industrial policy answers to voters and customers or to activists who never had to make the payment.
Washington spent years trying to regulate Americans into cars they did not ask for. The new standards put the keys back where they belong, with the people who drive and the workers who build.
