President Trump’s plan to significantly relax U.S. fuel-economy standards appears close to taking effect. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that an announcement on lower figures is coming soon, although the final standard has not yet been publicly disclosed.

The coming rules are expected to closely resemble a proposal released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in early December last year. That proposal called for a fleetwide average of 34.5 mpg by 2031, a 31.55 percent reduction from the 50.4 mpg target established under the Biden Administration.

Why the U.S. Fuel-Economy Standards Could Change

According to Reuters, Duffy described the proposed changes as the introduction of “a common-sense fuel economy standard.” Speaking in Michigan, he said, “We want Detroit to build cars that Americans want to buy, not cars that Democrats want Washington to build.”

The NHTSA proposal would revise the 2022 fuel-economy standards downward before gradually increasing them by between a quarter of a percent and half a percent each year.

That approach would represent a sharp departure from the Biden Administration’s targets. Those standards called for gas-mileage efficiency to increase by 8 percent annually in 2024 and 2025, 10 percent in 2026, and 2 percent annually in each following year through 2031.

Under the NHTSA proposal, new cars would become an estimated $930 cheaper each. However, the agency also estimates that fuel consumption would increase by roughly 100 billion gallons through 2050. By that same milestone, fuel spending is expected to increase by $185 billion, while carbon dioxide emissions would rise by 5 percent.

What Lower Standards Could Mean for Automakers

The proposed changes would give automakers less demanding efficiency targets. A retroactive revision of the 2022 fuel-economy standards would also provide additional compliance credits to automakers that exceeded the required efficiency levels in earlier model years.

That means automakers could face a slower pace of required improvements in combustion efficiency while also carrying additional compliance credits into future model years. The result, according to the article, would reduce the need for a steep efficiency curve in the years ahead.

The article also notes that automakers continue to innovate in Europe, where tighter Euro 7 emissions rules will take effect this November. As a result, meeting the revised U.S. targets may require less additional effort from manufacturers.

Autoblog’s Take on the Fuel-Economy Changes

Lowering vehicle prices is presented as a potential benefit, provided the changes do not negatively affect public safety. The article argues that loosening requirements for combustion-powered vehicles could have significant consequences for both vehicle costs and environmental outcomes.

It also points to continued progress in electrified powertrains, particularly in cost, weight and efficiency. According to the article, engineering improvements are increasingly filtering into other areas of vehicle development.

The article further argues that reversing achievements made by the previous administration in clean energy could make hundreds of millions of dollars already invested by taxpayers in those efforts less effective than intended. The NHTSA itself acknowledges that the proposed changes would have a measurable effect on emissions.

The Debate Over the Direction of U.S. Auto Policy

The article argues that the best approach for the public would fall somewhere between the two extremes represented by the Biden Administration’s efficiency targets and the proposed rollback.

In the writer’s view, pushing electric vehicles aggressively, particularly before more environmentally friendly mineral solutions were as prevalent and when most Americans could not afford many of the EVs available, may have overlooked economic realities. At the same time, the article credits those policies with improving infrastructure and motivating other countries to take similar measures.

The article takes a similarly mixed view of the proposed rollback. With U.S. debt in the trillions, making vehicles less efficient could benefit the economy, but the change could also produce harmful environmental effects over time.

Ultimately, the article argues that pushing too aggressively in either direction is imprudent, with political compromises potentially affecting both Americans’ economic buying power and environmental health.