Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
On December 3 “President Donald J. Trump is delivering major relief to American families by resetting the Biden Administration’s costly and unlawful Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.”
For those of you who are not familiar with this: the standards are the things that give rise to the “miles per gallon” that you hear about or see on the window stickers of new cars. The objective for getting more mpgs is to reduce the amount of fuel needed to power vehicles. Less fuel burned means reduced emissions. Which is a good thing for people who like to breathe.
While President Trump can’t just strike these standards, there are things like public comment that must be undertaken, let’s face it: No one is going to push back on this.
As is his wont, President Trump said a lot of things when the announcement was made.
And as is his wont, most of them were. . .exaggerations.
Here’s a look at some of the things he said:
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“We’re officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome horrible, actually, CAFE standards that imposed expensive restrictions and all sorts of problems. It gave all sorts of problems to automakers. And we’re not only talking about here, we’re talking about outside of our country because nobody could do it. Nobody wanted to do it and it was ridiculous, very expensive. It put tremendous upward pressure on car prices. Combined with the insane electric vehicle mandate, Biden’s burdensome regulations helped cause the price of cars to soar more than 25%. And in one case they went up 18% in one year.”
About the “nobody could do it.” The European Union has vehicle regulations that measure different things but that can be translated into miles per gallon, which presumably are behind the “expensive restrictions.”
The Biden “horrible” standard was a corporate average of 50.4 mpg in 2031.
Presently in Europe, if the CO2 regulations are translated into miles per gallon, cars must meet 56.5 mpg and light commercial vehicles 38 mpg.
Now, not in 2031.
China’s numbers are even better.
“Nobody could do it”? Seems that the Europeans that he has indicated are crumbling are doing a better job on this front.
The source of the “burdensome regulations” causing a 25% or even 18% price rise isn’t clear.
But there’s this from Kelley Blue Book as of December 10, 2025:
“The new-vehicle ATP [average transaction price—a.k.a., what people actually pay] in November was $49,814, up 1.3% year over year.”
That’s right: it costs more now than it did when President Biden was sleeping or using the autopen or doing something else that he can be accused of.
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“I signed an executive order to end the unfair, expensive electric vehicle mandate. As you know, we had to have an electric car within a very short period of time, even though there was no way of charging them and lots of other things. It would have cost $5 trillion to build the charging plants.”
“Very short period of time?” Trump’s former colleague Elon Musk launched the first Tesla on the market in 2008. The mainstream Model S in 2012.
And as for that $5 trillion. . .according to S&P Global Market Intelligence:
“The nation's electric, gas and water utilities are directing substantial investments into infrastructure enhancements aimed at modernizing mature generation, transmission and distribution networks, and meeting new demand. These initiatives include the construction of new natural gas, nuclear, solar and wind power generation facilities, alongside the integration of advanced technologies such as smart meters, smart grid systems, cybersecurity protocols, electric vehicles and battery storage solutions.”
How much will the capital expenditure be between 2025 and 2029 for all that (note the electric vehicles are just one element)? Just over $1 trillion. One, not five.
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“And as you know, in certain parts of the Midwest, they spent to build nine chargers, they spent $8 billion, so that wasn’t working out too well.”
The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program is providing $5 billion and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program is providing $2.5 billion to build 500,000 chargers by 2030. So (1) there is $7.5 billion, not $8 and (2) that’s for 499,991 more chargers in five years.
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“I’ve never had a group of people come to me more powerfully and really just devastated that they had to do it. It was killing them, than the automobile manufacturers, the Tailpipe Emissions Standards. And I can tell you your people at Ford were coming to me all the time and they were saying like, ‘Please, it doesn’t do anything and it’s killing us. And it’s driving the cost through the roof.’”
The “Tailpipe Emissions Standards” have been around for a long time, enacted in California in 1966, for the rest of the country for model year 1968. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, which created the EPA. Tailpipe standards were modified for model years 1994-1997, then in 2000, starting for model year 2004. Another tightening for model year 2017. Then the standards, that the Trump administration is lifting, for model years 2027 thorough 2032.
Evidently companies like Ford have been being killed for nearly six decades.
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“Under the Trump administration $70 billion are now being invested in the American auto industry.”
What better source for investment numbers than the official White House website?
Well, a bit of a problem. If all the investments by auto companies are summed, the number is $43 billion, not $70 billion.
Not that there’s anything wrong with $43 billion, but that figure is 39% lower than what’s claimed.
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“Auto production has surged by 10% so far this year.”
According to the Omidia Production Outlook, which is an industry recognized source of automotive data:
“Entire-2025 is tracking to production of 15.56 million units, 3.1% below 2024’s 16.06 million and lowest since 14.765 million in 2022. Excluding medium-/heavy-duty trucks, light-vehicle production is pegged at 15.11 million in 2025, 2.4% below the prior year’s 15.48 million.”
Sorry. No 10% surge. A decrease, instead.
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“You see it, closed factories all over the place. Now they’re all opening up. In most cases, they’re being knocked down and new ones are being built in their place.”
How many new auto factories — old ones that had been closed and now reopened or torn down and rebuilt — have there been in the US in 2025?
Zero.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, where he writes primarily for the right column.