Trump EPA Moves To Rescind Biden-Era Vehicle Emissions Rule, Identifies Slightly Cleaner Air As Anti-American Regulatory Overreach

WASHINGTON. The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it had begun the formal process of rescinding the Biden administration's 2024 light- and medium-duty vehicle emissions standards, an action the agency described as restoring the freedom of American manufacturers to continue building roughly the cars they had been building before being asked to consider whether the planet might keep getting hotter.

The rule, finalized last March, set per-mile pollution limits projected to cut greenhouse gas emissions from new passenger vehicles by approximately half by 2032 and was widely understood to encourage greater electric vehicle production. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, addressing reporters at agency headquarters, characterized the standard as "an unworkable mandate from the previous administration," conceding only briefly that the rule did not technically mandate anything in particular and instead set emissions targets that automakers could meet however they liked.

"Today we begin restoring choice to the American consumer," said Administrator Zeldin, who declined to specify which choices had been previously restricted and which would soon be re-restored. The administrator added that Americans should not be told what kind of vehicles to buy, then walked away from a podium emblazoned with the seal of an agency created to prevent industries from selling Americans things that quietly poisoned them.

Industry analysts noted that the repeal preserves projected refining demand of roughly 380,000 barrels per day in 2032 that would otherwise have been displaced by EV adoption. Major oil and gas trade associations praised the action. Several major automakers, having already invested tens of billions of dollars in EV manufacturing in anticipation of the rule, issued carefully worded statements thanking the agency without specifying under which of the conflicting regulatory regimes they currently planned to build cars.

The rescission is one component of a broader EPA effort to dismantle the legal architecture of federal climate policy, undertaken alongside the agency's separate reconsideration of whether greenhouse gases endanger public health, a question the administrator has said the agency intends to study further despite four decades of accumulated scientific literature having already addressed it.

At press time, Administrator Zeldin had moved on to explaining why the agency would also be reconsidering whether mercury was bad for people.