Rollback of EPA regulations squeaks through during coronavirus crisis

The new rule was written by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), headed by Andrew Wheeler, and the Department of Transportation, and would allow vehicles in the US to emit close to a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the vehicle’s lifetime than they would have under the Obama administration. The US will surpass Europe and Asia in emitting hundreds of millions of tons of the poison into the atmosphere.

The rule will roll back a 2012 rule that required automakers’ fleets to average about 54 miles per gallon by 2025, and instead require fleets to average about 40 miles per gallon. And in order to meet this new number, fuel economy standards would be forced to rise by about 1.5 percent a year, compared to the 5 percent annual increase under the Obama rule. Without any regulation, the auto industry has achieved an average annual increase in fuel economy of about 2.4 percent.

“Trump administration officials raced to complete the auto rule by this spring, even as the White House was consumed with responding to the coronavirus crisis,” according to The New York Times. “President Trump is expected to extol the rule, which will stand as one of the most consequential regulatory rollbacks of his administration, as a needed salve for an economy crippled by the pandemic.” While this effort has been one of the long-time wishes of Trump’s presidency, COVID-19 has made the need to get it passed that much more urgent, as the administration claims that this will be a boon in an economy that is in freefall.

Trump’s critics pointed out that the new rule is a deliberate affront to science and that it could actually hurt the economy in the long run. A draft of the rule that was sent to the White House in January calculated that the new fuel economy target would definitively lower the prices of news cars and light trucks by approximately $1,000, but would increase the amount consumers would pay for gasoline by about $1,400. That was before the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that tanked global oil prices.

This early draft of the rule runs counter to what Trump tweeted out yesterday:

A February report drawn up by a panel of government-appointed scientists, many of whom were appointed by the Trump administrations, concluded that “there are significant weaknesses in the scientific analysis” of the rule.

“This is not just an inopportune moment to finalize a major rule-making,” said Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee. “In this case, it’s a completely irresponsible one.”

Many large automakers, who had asked Trump to not roll back the Obama-era rule so aggressively, fear that the drastic measure is certain to get bogged down in court for years, leaving the industry in regulatory limbo. This is sure to create even more uncertainty in the auto industry. With the legal status of the new Trump rule still largely unclear, around 20 states are expected to sue the administration in an effort to undo it in a case predicted to be resolved by the Supreme Court in the coming years.

“The auto industry has consistently called for year-over-year increases in fuel efficiency,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group that represents the world’s largest auto companies. “We need a policy environment that drives improvements in fuel economy, and the infrastructure that supports a transformation to net-zero emissions.”

The rule will also solidify a three-year effort to rollback his predecessor’s climate change policy in weakening or completely undoing about 100 rules and regulations that had put limits on industrial pollution of smog, toxic chemicals, water contaminants, and greenhouse gases. The administration’s draft analysis concluded that, despite the promises made by the president, the rule could cost the American economy somewhere between $13 billion and $22 billion with virtually no upside.

US businesses had said the nearly 100 rules had cut their growth and made them less competitive in a global economy, where environmentalists said they were essential to the health and future of the planet and its inhabitants.

Trump’s defenders have made it a point to say that his actions are not directed at the auto industry but at consumers who generally prefer larger vehicles, like pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.

The time of this rule, however, has made some suspicious of whether this is a way for Trump to slide in one of his unpopular policies in an opportunistic manner, considering the global fight against a pandemic.