President Trump has cancelled Joe Biden’s strict fuel economy rules that pushed electric vehicles, promising lower prices for families and a freer hand for American automakers.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he approved new fuel economy standards that end the Biden administration’s aggressive mileage targets and what he labeled an electric-vehicle mandate. The announcement lands as a core campaign promise kept: roll back rules that steered buyers toward EVs whether they wanted them or not.
Breitbart reported that the final standards are still pending, even as Trump cast the decision as immediate relief for manufacturers and car buyers.
Trump posted the news on Truth Social in blunt terms.
"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. The Dumocrats cost our Great Auto Manufacturers $Billions, forced Americans into cars they never wanted, and wasted Billions on Chargers that were never built. 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, 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!"
Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, the federal CAFE rules that set average miles-per-gallon targets for passenger cars and light trucks, date to 1975 and get revised in waves. They decide what kinds of vehicles makers can sell at scale.
Under Biden, those targets got much tougher. CNBC figures cited in the reporting show automakers would have had to lift the fuel efficiency of passenger cars and light trucks to roughly 50 miles per gallon by 2031. That path favored smaller vehicles and heavy EV adoption.
Trump’s first term had already slowed an earlier climb. Obama-era rules called for a five percent annual efficiency increase. Trump cut that annual increase to 1.5 percent. Biden then negated those first-term reductions and installed the stricter framework Trump has now moved to terminate.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was named in Trump’s post as tied to the EV mandate Trump says is finished.
Weaker mileage rules change what Detroit can build without penalty. CNBC put the market reality this way: weaker fuel economy standards mean automakers can produce more pickup trucks and SUVs, which are much more profitable than smaller cars but have worse gas mileage.
That is the consumer-choice point conservatives have pressed for years. Families who need a truck for work, a large SUV for kids, or a gas vehicle for long rural drives were told the future was a battery car and a charger, including chargers Trump says burned billions and never got built.
Trump argues the old course forced unwanted cars onto buyers and loaded costs onto General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. He says those same companies have told him they want to build in America under the new approach. He also wrote that more than $100 billion is being invested by manufacturers in U.S. auto production, with plants and jobs returning to the Midwest and the South.
Those investment and phone-call claims come from Trump. The reporting notes final regulatory numbers are not yet locked.
Electric vehicles are not banned. Tesla still leads that segment and keeps a loyal customer base. General Motors has signaled it will still offer EV models. The shift is about ending a federal timeline that treated higher CAFE numbers as a backdoor order to electrify the fleet.
In 2024, Trump campaigned on rescinding policies that encouraged or incentivized electric vehicles. Saturday’s announcement is the policy follow-through on fuel economy. Biden officials had framed climate policy as an urgent national priority; Trump is answering with price, product mix, and manufacturing capacity as the first tests.
For drivers, the practical stakes are simple. Mileage rules shape sticker prices, model availability, and whether the profitable trucks and SUVs Americans actually buy remain easy to build here. Trump says the new standards strip waste out of production and will save families thousands on a new car. Regulators still have to publish the final figures that make that concrete.
American car buyers were never supposed to need a permission slip from Washington to pick the vehicle that fits their life. This rollback puts that choice back on the lot, where it belongs.
