By Gutting CAFE, Trump Can Make Autos Beautiful Again

President Donald Trump took another welcome step this week to free the auto industry from the grip of federal regulators who are largely to blame for the boring, homogenized fleet of cars that fill up the roads these days.

On Wednesday, Trump released a plan to roll back federal corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard to levels that won’t force Americans into electric cars.

In what he’s calling a reset, the plan is to chuck the Biden administration’s fuel mandate – a mandate specifically designed to force car buyers into EVs.

As the White House correctly put it, “The Biden standards would have compelled widespread shifts to EVs that American consumers did not ask for, accompanied by significant cost-of-living increases. Since EVs are so expensive to build, automakers must sell them at a loss and make up the difference by significantly raising the sticker price of gas cars.”

As a refresher, the CAFE standards came into being during the 1970s energy crisis – a crisis itself caused by inept government regulations. The standards require the fleet of cars sold by a manufacturer to meet government-dictated average fuel-economy targets, or face hefty annual fines.

As we noted in this space in July:

From the beginning, these standards were a disaster, forcing automakers to radically downsize their fleet, which research showed cost thousands of lives because, all things being equal, smaller, lighter cars are less safe than larger ones.

They also resulted in cars being stripped of anything that added weight – including spare tires –dreary designs that only a socialist could love, and stuffed with hated features such as the “start-stop” system.

But the administration’s move, while welcome, isn’t as big a deal as it might seem. After all, the best solution would be to jettison CAFE standards entirely, not ratchet them up more slowly. The justification for these standards – an energy crisis – is long gone, and the government simply has no business dictating what kind of cars, or how many of each kind, automakers must sell.

What’s more, Congress rendered the debate over CAFE standards largely moot this summer, when – in a genius move completely overlooked by the press – lawmakers zeroed out the fines for missing whatever the CAFE targets are. (See, “Car Lovers Rejoice! After 50 Miserable Years, CAFE Standards Are Dead.“)

Now, if a car company sells cars that, on average, exceed whatever the fuel-economy limit is technically in force in a given year, they pay … nothing. The mandate is still in place, but the penalty is now $0.00. (Republicans pulled off the same trick with the dreaded Obamacare insurance mandate — zeroing out the penalty rather than trying to get the mandate repealed.)

But the combination of Congress’ and Trump’s actions will make it all the harder for the next administration to try to dictate car-buying choices for Americans.

It also promises to result in a rebirth of glorious American automobile designs that had been sacrificed decades ago on the environmentalist altar.

–Written by the I&I Editorial Board