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Last year, the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized new rules that look to accelerate the auto industry’s transition away from gas-powered vehicles and toward zero-emission electric cars and trucks.
The regulations set new standards for auto manufacturers, requiring them to slash the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants produced by their vehicles. At the time, the Biden administration said that the regulations would eliminate over seven billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions and generate nearly $100 billion in annual benefits, including $13 billion in health benefits due to decreased pollution.
Although the rules are intended to increase the proportion of electric vehicles being produced by automakers starting in 2027, it is not written as a ban on gas cars or a mandate to produce EV’s. Automakers can still make high-emission cars or trucks under the regulations, they would just need to produce enough low-to-zero emission vehicles to average out the emissions levels across their entire fleet.
However, these tailpipe emissions rules may never actually be implemented, as President Trump and his congressional allies look to roll back EPA regulations across the board. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., is one of those allies.
Last week, Britt announced that she would be joining her Republican colleagues in reintroducing the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales Act, which would repeal the Biden administration’s tailpipe emissions rule altogether.
Although the rule still allows auto manufacturers to offer gas-powered vehicles as an option for their consumers, Britt claimed in an official press release that the regulations would harm consumer choice.
“Common sense has finally returned under President Trump and EPA Administrator Zeldin. Even before this rule was finalized, it was clear the previous administration’s impractical and punitive proposal would have negatively impacted hardworking Americans,” Britt said. “I am proud to stand with my colleagues in ensuring consumers are able to choose the car that makes the most sense for their own individual circumstances, needs, and preferences.”
Britt’s release also noted that “The average price of an EV is still significantly higher than the average price of a gas-powered vehicle, even with massive government subsidies for EVs paid for by American taxpayers.”
Interestingly, one of the main beneficiaries of those “massive government subsidies for EVs” is actually Trump ally and DOGE czar Elon Musk, who also happens to be the CEO of major electric car manufacturer, Tesla. According to the Washington Post, Tesla has received $11.4 billion in regulatory credits from the U.S. government.
Britt refrained from mentioning Musk or Tesla, but did go on to claim that “EV mandates threaten to hurt everyday Americans and cost auto workers their jobs while simultaneously helping China, given that China continues to dominate the EV supply chain.”
Republicans’ reintroduction of the CARS Act comes as Trump’s EPA head Lee Zeldin works to erase other vital environmental regulations. In addition to rolling back vehicle emission standards, last week Zeldin announced the agency’s intentions to repeal restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, challenge a 2009 “endangerment finding” that determined greenhouse gasses to be a threat to public health, and terminate over 30 other regulations aimed at combatting climate change and pollution. Zeldin’s EPA has also shuttered its offices dedicated to environmental justice.
Michael Burger, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, called Zeldin’s actions “an all out assault on climate regulation and environmental and public health protections.”
Other experts have also called these deregulation efforts illegal due to their violation of the EPA’s stated mission to protect the environment. “It is not within the authority of an agency to take action or to push through decisions that are directly and diametrically opposed to its mandate and the reason it was created,” said Nikki Reisch, director of Climate and Energy at the Center for International Environmental Law.
“Merely making these pronouncements from up high does not change the law,” Reisch added. “It doesn’t change the statutes that exist to protect clean air and clean water, and to protect the health of people throughout this country.”
