There was a bit of a festive mood in the Oval Office yesterday, and it wasn’t only the spirit of Christmas, with all the holiday trappings. President Trump had invited the heads of all the major automakers, plant managers, and others associated with the industry for a ceremony.
He was signing the official rollback and reset of the Biden administration’s ruinous, restrictive, and reviled Green revision of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, part of the previous regime’s rabid effort to force the entire country into electric vehicles or onto public transportation.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had started the ball rolling when he took office back in January.
Under the Biden rules, the average U.S. fleet fuel economy would be forced to reach 58 miles per gallon by 2032.
That means automakers would have had to double car fuel efficiency in just seven years or face major penalties. Automakers said the rules would cost them billions.
— Thomas Catenacci (@ThomasCatenacci) January 29, 2025
They issued a rule clarification in June that the DoT would be resetting the standards.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today published a final rule, “Resetting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Program.” The rule explains that the Biden-Buttigieg Administration ignored statutory requirements in CAFE barring consideration of electric vehicles when setting fuel economy standards.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are making vehicles more affordable and easier to manufacture in the United States The previous administration illegally used CAFE standards as an electric vehicle mandate – raising new car prices and reducing safety. Resetting CAFE standards as Congress intended will lower vehicle costs and ensure the American people can purchase the cars they want,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy.
Yesterday’s gathering and the many happy faces surrounding the president bore witness to relief at the lifting of those onerous requirements.
John Urbanic, Executive Plant Director at GM Orion Assembly in Michigan: “We support your leadership for this issue that is so important to the auto industry…[our facility] is currently going through a retool so that we can build additional U.S.-manufactured pickup trucks and… https://t.co/OXQ3rHTwzr pic.twitter.com/y1bS87d0Df
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 3, 2025
As David wrote in his piece this morning, the WAAHs! from the climate cultists in the media were loud and mournful, belching hysterically about fumes and dooms.
…Yet here is how Trump’s reforms were framed:
President Trump on Wednesday threw the weight of the federal government behind vehicles that burn gasoline rather than electric cars, gutting one of the country’s most significant efforts to address climate change and thrusting the automobile industry into greater uncertainty…
But the mood in the room and among those of rational thought processes was much more upbeat and, frankly, relieved.
The president of Ford, which has suffered woefully under the mandated EV switch even with substantial reams of government largesse floating their way, had a nearly audible sigh of relief when he basically said, ‘We can go back to making cars people WANT.‘
.@Ford CEO @jimfarley98 says @POTUS terminating Biden’s CAFE standards “is a victory for affordability and common sense.”
“We’ll be able to launch new vehicles, built in America, that are more affordable because of this rule change.” pic.twitter.com/5lQrHUYNFs
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 4, 2025
And what the Biden administration was requiring of car manufacturers was basically impossible – that their vehicles nearly meet the mileage ratings of EVs. Since they couldn’t and the cost to do so would be prohibitively expensive, while the engineering to do so would render whatever the original purpose – like a pickup truck – of the vehicle moot, American consumers would be forced to turn to EVs.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday proposed big cuts to strict fuel economy standards for passenger cars enacted under the Biden administration.
“We are officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome, horrible actually, CAFE standards that imposed expensive… pic.twitter.com/DmzuNtYwNB
— ChetTheJet (@TheJetNamedChet) December 4, 2025
…The Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards date back to 1975 and have been tightened over the years to make vehicles more efficient.
Former President Joe Biden had required automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2031. These stricter standards were expected to stimulate the production and sale of electric vehicles in the U.S. Many of the officials in attendance, including U.S. dealers, said the new standards are more in line with the vehicles customers want to buy rather than the more costly ones automakers have been pushed to produce due to regulations.
Besides the obvious upside for manufacturers, there are any number of pluses for the American consumer, beginning with cost savings. No longer are you going to be paying to build an EV industry that was on perpetual life support, for one thing.
As this poster notes, the entire scheme was yet one more punishment, stripping freedom of both choice and movement by an anti-American, authoritarian regime.
This is great news. CAFE standards were never really about the environment. Like most managerial state pet issues, the motivation behind them was to punish young American men by making something cool & fun illegal. The loud V8 muscle car is a piece of American cultural heritage. https://t.co/a5QJnm7SNe pic.twitter.com/OPv62dCqFB
— Campus Martius (@OhioOGC) December 4, 2025
It was all part of the big squeeze of the Big Scam.
…Trump rolled back aggressive standards put forth by the Obama administration under his first term in office, with Biden subsequently resetting and tightening the CAFE standards under his administration.
The Biden administration, for example, boosted fuel efficiency requirements by 8% for 2024 and 2025 model years and 10% for 2026, which was far higher than Trump’s 1.5% that was finalized under his first term and applied to car model years 2021–2026. The Trump White House argued that the aggressive standards set under the Biden-era were not feasible to meet with available technologies for gas cars, and that the standards would have compelled consumers to shift to electric vehicles.
“Today, we’re taking one more step to kill the Green New scam as part of the greatest scam, probably,” Trump continued, adding that a few other scandals could also be considered the “greatest scam.”
“The greatest scam in American history, the Green New Scam. And it’s a quest to end the gasoline-powered car. This is what they wanted to do, even though we have more gasoline than any other country by far. And people want the gasoline car. They want everything. They want electric. They want to have lots of alternatives. But they do want the gasoline car. Right now, it’s leading away by a lot,” Trump said during the event.
There’s another bonus to this complete reset – no more stupid geegaws making your new vehicle irritating as…well, poop.
Do you hate this thing? We sure as hell do.
So does your starter. And your battery.
It’s a death trap. I’m surprised it hasn’t caused more law suits. It doesn’t know the difference between stop lights and stop at a busy intersection.. I’ve had at least 2 oh shit moments when trying to pull out /cross an intersection (forgetting to turn off prior) .
— Amy (@fiverrules) December 4, 2025
Cars will be cheaper to manufacture thanks to the elimination of the artificial CAFE-mandated benchmarks.
Besides bringing peace to the world, gearheads sound kind of rapturous about the possibility that Trump has single-handedly saved the legendary V-8 engine.
If there’s one thing Americans love, it’s V8 engines. Big, fast, loud, they’re the American definition of freedom wrapped into a gas-guzzling package. For a few years it looked like that gluttony for fuel could kill the V8, dooming Americans to immediate Stalinism and bread lines, but thankfully our beloved President Donald Trump has a solution: Ending penalties for failing to meet emissions regulations. Now, it’s open season to make the most fuel-inefficient vehicles imaginable, ensuring the V8 lives forever.
…Automotive News spoke with industry analysts about the rule change, who acknowledged that automakers may well just go back to producing less and less fuel-efficient cars. We’ve already seen Stellantis get a head start, giving the Ram 1500 its Hemi back (and a “symbol of protest” badge, because these trucks are largely bought out of spite), but it’s not the only company likely to benefit here. Even Toyota, known for its rigorous adherence to fuel-efficiency standards, has a V8 prototype in the works.
Of course, this rule change raises questions around beta cuck lib concerns like “the environment” or “breathable air” or a “habitable planet.” Y’know what those questions are? Communism. They’re anti-V8 in nature, and that kind of thinking is deserving of denaturalization. We don’t want your kind here — we’d much rather have our thirsty, earth-shaking eight-cylinder engines. No, no one’s compensating for anything. Shut up.
Damn straight.
Ding dong, CAFE IS DEAD.
We can hit the road again the way we want to.
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