Compromise on CAFE
U. S. fuel standards should be middle of the road
The nation’s fuel economy standards have pitted President Donald Trump against major automakers, 23 governors, labor unions, environmentalists, and auto suppliers. Further discussions and a compromise are needed in this dispute to benefit the general public, the environment, and the auto industry.
The Trump administration seems committed to rolling back the standards enacted under President Barack Obama regardless of what the many players in the dispute are urging him to do. Mr. Trump was elected on a platform to reduce regulations that harm businesses, and he sees the boosting of those standards now in place as onerous.
His Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will issue proposed new standards in the coming weeks.
The current corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards require cars to get 36 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2025, up from about 30 mpg next year. ( Car sticker mileage, calculated differently, would be 54.5 mpg by 2025.) Mr. Trump already has said he plans to freeze the 2020 requirement, or perhaps even reduce it, and scrap stiffer standards for the following five years.
Some automakers balked at the Obama- era standards as too tough to meet and said those mileage requirements would significantly increase the cost of vehicles ( by as much as $ 2,340 per car or truck according to one estimate). Mr. Trump contends that raising vehicle prices would hurt sales and
result in people keeping their older, less fuel efficient cars on the road longer.
Now, many vehicle manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford Motor, and Toyota Motor, have backtracked and asked Mr. Trump to soften his approach and instead come up with a standard between the future Obama- era requirements and a freeze of them at next year’s level.
Last week, 23 governors, mostly Democrats, wrote the president and asked him not to roll back the standards. They cited concerns, expressed by some scientists, over the additional harmful emissions that would pollute the air in the future if vehicles don’t operate more efficiently.
Complicating matters is California, which has had the legal right to set its own fuel economy standards, but for the past few years has agreed with the federal standards. Mr. Trump insists he will revoke that independence, and California vows a court fight. Previous court decisions have upheld the state’s power to set its own standards.
So a failure of federal officials to reach an agreement on new standards with California officials likely would result in a lengthy and costly legal battle and could produce different mileage standards for that state and the rest of the nation.
Mr. Trump’s administration needs to resume talks that broke off months ago with California, and bring in auto industry leaders as well, to find a compromise.
A sensible solution is needed, which should prevent years of litigation and confusion on what the fuel standards are.