President Donald Trump says newly approved fuel economy standards will ease federal pressure on automakers to increase electric vehicle production and lower new-car prices, with the Transportation Department expected to finalize the revised requirements Monday.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he has approved substantially lower federal fuel economy standards through 2031, advancing another rollback of Biden-era automobile regulations that his administration says increased manufacturing costs and pushed automakers toward electric vehicles.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is expected to finalize the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, requirements Monday. The changes would replace standards adopted during former President Joe Biden’s administration with substantially less stringent efficiency increases, according to current federal records and reporting.
Trump announced his approval of the standards on Truth Social, portraying the change as a benefit for auto workers, manufacturers and consumers.
“BIG DAY FOR AMERICAN AUTO WORKERS AND CAR BUYERS! I have just approved new Fuel Economy Standards that TERMINATE Sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Boot-EDGE-EDGE’s ridiculous EV Mandate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Dumocrats cost our Great Auto Manufacturers $Billions, forced Americans into cars they never wanted, and wasted Billions on Chargers that were never built.”
The administration has repeatedly described Biden-era vehicle regulations as an “EV mandate.” The CAFE rules themselves regulate the average fuel economy of manufacturers’ vehicle fleets rather than directly requiring consumers to purchase electric vehicles.
Under the Trump administration’s proposal, the fleetwide average for light-duty vehicles would reach roughly 34.5 miles per gallon by model year 2031. Biden-era standards finalized in 2024 were projected to produce an average of approximately 50.4 mpg by that model year.
The Trump proposal calls for fuel economy requirements to rise between 0.25% and 0.5% annually through 2031, compared with significantly larger increases under the previous administration. Biden-era requirements raised passenger-car fuel efficiency by 8% annually for model years 2024 and 2025, 10% for 2026 and 2% annually from 2027 through 2031.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the new requirements would be formally unveiled Monday.
“A major victory for America’s auto workers is coming Monday,” Duffy said.
Trump said reducing the regulatory requirements would lower the expense of manufacturing vehicles and allow automakers greater flexibility over the vehicles they produce.
“These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car,” Trump wrote. “Far better than the Environmental Monsters that we were building heretofore. Every Manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can!”
A report on Trump’s announcement said the president framed the new standards as both a consumer affordability measure and a reversal of federal policies intended to accelerate electric vehicle adoption.
The Transportation Department’s own analysis of the earlier proposal estimated the revised standards would reduce the average price of a new vehicle by about $930. The same analysis projected that lowering fuel economy requirements would increase gasoline consumption by approximately 100 billion gallons through 2050, raise fuel spending by about $185 billion and increase carbon dioxide emissions by roughly 5%.
Those figures mean the administration’s projected savings at the dealership would be accompanied by higher aggregate fuel use over the vehicles’ operating lives.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized the rollback, arguing that weaker efficiency requirements would ultimately leave drivers spending more on gasoline.
“Lowering standards will accelerate what (Trump) has already been doing: handing the clean tech future to China and forcing Americans to pay more at the pump,” Buttigieg said.
Automakers had previously urged the federal government to reconsider the Biden-era requirements.
When the Trump administration proposed its revised CAFE framework in December 2025, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents major manufacturers, said the previous standards were “extremely challenging for automakers to achieve given the current marketplace for EVs.” The group called for regulations that were “balanced, reasonable, achievable” while preserving consumer choice.
NHTSA’s proposal also changes how electric vehicles factor into the agency’s calculations. The agency said it did not consider the imputed fuel-economy performance of battery-electric vehicles or the electric operation of plug-in hybrids in setting the proposed gasoline- and diesel-vehicle standards. It also proposed eliminating inter-manufacturer credit trading and changing how certain vehicles are classified beginning with model year 2028.
The regulatory history involves separate rules issued by NHTSA and the Environmental Protection Agency.
NHTSA establishes CAFE standards governing fleet fuel economy, while the EPA adopted separate greenhouse gas and pollution requirements for light- and medium-duty vehicles.
The Biden EPA’s final 2024 rule covered model years 2027 through 2032 and was designed to sharply reduce fleetwide greenhouse gas emissions. EPA described those standards as technology-neutral and performance-based, allowing manufacturers to determine what combination of gasoline vehicles, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel-cell vehicles and battery-electric vehicles they would use for compliance.
A frequently cited estimate that electric vehicles could represent 67% of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2032 came from EPA’s earlier 2023 proposed rule. The final 2024 regulation did not establish a federal requirement that 67% of new vehicles sold be electric; instead, it established emissions limits that EPA expected would increase the use of lower-emission vehicle technologies.
The Trump administration began moving against those policies shortly after returning to office. In March 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would reconsider the Biden administration’s model-year 2027-and-later light- and medium-duty vehicle regulations, describing them as part of an electric vehicle mandate.
NHTSA followed in June 2025 with an interpretive rule reconsidering how electric vehicles and related compliance mechanisms had been incorporated into the CAFE program. The agency said at the time that it intended to reset the program before establishing replacement fuel economy requirements.
The new standards scheduled for finalization Monday would carry that process forward by formally lowering the fuel economy trajectory through model year 2031.
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