White House to propose significant rollback in fuel economy standards, sources say

www.reuters.com reuters.com

33 comments

It's like they have to make the worst possible decision for every single thing.
- It's the best possible decision if you are in the right business though.
  
  Is it though? Sure they’ll have a couple great quarters, but the US isn’t the world car market. If they can look beyond a couple quarters, they’re just becoming uncompetitive everywhere else and eventually the hammer will drop in the us as well

Hell yeah! Put the lead back in next! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hawwwwwwwwwwwawww!
- Put the lead back in next!
  I give it under a year.
  
  Did I hear "January 1st"?

Leaded gas and paint on the horizon again. Yippee!
- Just like the Good Old Days^tm

Thank goodness can’t wait to get 8 miles to the gallon. /s
- "But you see, those cars will have terrible mile per gallon, which means a savvy inventor can come and create a more fuel efficient car, then everybody will buy that!"

Trump will soon decide we are back to 1984 so he can rape kids and say the n word while on coke and people will go, "oh that's Donald, he's a great a guy".

How much worse could our fuel economy standards be than they already are? Does Hummer want to make something that gets 5 MPG instead of 7 lol? Not that it matters very much at all, manufacturers already don't meet existing standards and just pay the fine each year, which is a drop in the bucket to them. So "rolling back" these standards is basically just telling Chrysler "hey, you know how you have to bribe us with about 200m a year to do whatever you want with fuel economy? Yeah let's just forget that fee going forward." The fines for violating our standards is just a tiny cost of doing business for them, nothing more. As they say, if the penalty for breaking some rule is a fine, then it's only a rule for poor people.
- Not that it matters very much at all, manufacturers already don't meet existing standards and just pay the fine each year
  Fear not. They have already removed the fines.
  https://headlight.news/2025/07/17
  This change is just to make it harder to unfuck things if they fail at some of their goals and there's another election.
  
  oh awesome, and thanks for sharing the link...just once I'd like to be under-informed in a positive direction rather a negative direction 😪

Anything that’s worse for the consumer they will do.

But supposedly we’re getting kei cars, so at least there’s that.

This is fairly misleading - the change just allows for market forces to drive production more than regulafions. Its already heading toward EVs, this just means that artificial imposition of quotas dont need to make prices higher for consumers.
Im no fan of the Trump administration, but I actually agree with this move.
- Regulation guides market behavior.
  If the market was already behaving in the desired way, then removing the regulation does nothing.
  If removing the regulation allows “market forces to drive production”, then the market was not behaving in the desired way and that’s probably why the regulation existed in the first place.
  Fuel efficiency standards create a floor that would not be there otherwise.
- I have never once seen or heard of market deregulation resulting in an improvement in the health of that market.
  
  While I'm generally pro regulation, that's not true. You can absolutely over regulate an industry or put out regulations that are bad.
  For example NIMBY regulations that prevent multi-family units from being constructed or in NJ breweries can't sell food (due to weird alcohol laws/regulations).
  
  Then you haven't been looking very hard. The airline industry in the US is a good example. Your internet search terms could be "deregulation case study" and would also find negative cases
  EDIT: you can downvote, but can you type three words into a search engine and click on one link that doesn't align with your current opinions? IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE!!
- make prices higher for consumers
  Per the article:
  The agency last year said the rule for passenger cars and trucks would reduce gasoline consumption by 64 billion gallons and cut emissions by 659 million metric tons, reducing fuel costs with net benefits estimated at $35.2 billion for drivers.
- Market regulations prevent abuses. Without them, it's always a race to the bottom. The free market won't save you, it just mindlessly pursues profits (it literally can't do otherwise).
- Of course you do dude, you believe in the invisible handjob of the market.
- Can you really not think of anything not included in quarterly profit-taking? Long term thinking? Externalities? Tragedy of the Commons?
  This is government failing its duties yet again. Higher Short term profits for a few, at the expense of a livable climate, violence related to petrostates, higher costs for consumers, increased injuries and deaths, increased funding needs for military, infrastructure, etc ….. including long term viability of the industry
- But the market cares about profit, not people. That's why regulations exist!
- The only reason the market is heading toward EVs is because fuel efficiency regulations and incentives have pushed auto makers to start phasing out their ICE product lines in favor of EVs. The demand was clearly there, but nobody wanted to invest the R&D into providing a product. Market forces aren't enough to drive change when it's easier and more profitable for them to just keep the status quo.
- "I feel better, so I don't need the meds anymore"
- The market is not heading towards EVs in US.

33 comments