{"id":332412,"date":"2025-12-06T18:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/the-cafe-rollback-is-audaciously-aggressively-awful\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:22:09","slug":"the-cafe-rollback-is-audaciously-aggressively-awful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=332412","title":{"rendered":"The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful<\/h3>\n<h2 class=\"subtitle\">The proposal even rolls back standards that the first Trump Administration set.<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_29208\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29208\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-29208\" src=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/bike-to-work2-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/bike-to-work2-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/bike-to-work2-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/bike-to-work2-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/bike-to-work2.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-29208\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo credit: Daniel Melling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This morning I <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/2025\/12\/05\/some-early-thoughts-on-the-dismantling-of-cafe-standards\/\">blogged<\/a> about some wonky reactions to the Trump\/NHTSA rollback of the CAFE standards. \u00a0Now I want to step back and highlight just how truly bad the new set of standards is, based on incredibly aggressive legal interpretations.<\/p>\n<p>As my first post highlights, the standards are set for ten years despite statutory language directing NHTSA to issue standards for not more than five years. \u00a0And the standards are supposed to be adopted at least \u00a018 months prior to a new model year beginning, with an exception for amendments to standards that do not increase stringency. But even an amendment that doesn\u2019t increase stringengy- -according to NHTSA\u2019s own interpretations going back to the Reagan Administration \u2014 \u00a0is supposed to be adopted prior to the beginning of the model year, not long after the model year has passed. Yet NHTSA is attempting to retroactively amend standards back to Model Year 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, NHTSA is monkeying with how NHTSA has previously determined what is included in what is called the \u201cbaseline.\u201d The baseline is NHTSA\u2019s best estimate of the current and near future state of the automobile market and incudes all vehicles, gasoline powered, electric and otherwise. From that baseline, NHTSA then determines what automakers could achieve in future fuel economy standards, though does not use electric vehicles in making that determination as required by statute. \u00a0In other words, NHTSA sets standards that can be achieved with internal combustion engines. Trump\u2019s first NHTSA used this methodology and so did the Biden Administration. \u00a0But Trump II\u2019s new proposal refuses to follow the methodology because, by excluding electric vehicles from a real world projection of the market, it can make a mockery of the CAFE program by setting standards so low as to be essentially meaningless. Retroactively.<\/p>\n<p>The result of all of these interpretive shenanigans is a \u00a0rollback of standards that are much lower even than the standards Trump I adopted. \u00a0My\u00a0successor as NHTSA Chief Counsel during the Biden Administration, now Sidley and Austin partner Adam Raviv,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/environmentalhealthsafetybrief.sidley.com\/2025\/12\/05\/department-of-transportation-proposes-dramatic-rollback-of-corporate-average-fuel-economy-cafe-standards\/\">describes<\/a> the change as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[The] \u00a02020 final [Trump] rule (which was largely superseded by the subsequent Biden rulemakings) would have set CAFE requirements for model years 2021-26 that ended in a 40.4 mpg requirement for model year 2026.\u00a0 The new proposal, by contrast, would set a fleetwide CAFE requirement of 30.4 mpg for model year 2026, and even by model year 2031 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">would still be well below the previous Trump requirement for model year 2026<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Biden standards would, have been much stronger than Trump 1, of course, achieving 54.5 MPG by 2030. \u00a0But when Trump\u2019s second term NHTSA guts the standards set by the first Trump NHTSA, you know the proposal is crazy.<\/p>\n<p><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings above via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons above via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons below via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\"><i class=\"fa fa-tag\"\/> <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/cafe-standards\/\" rel=\"tag\">CAFE standards<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/fuel-economy-standards\/\" rel=\"tag\">fuel economy standards<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-planet.org\/tag\/nhtsa\/\" rel=\"tag\">NHTSA<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful The proposal even rolls back standards that the first Trump Administration set. Photo credit: Daniel Melling This morning I blogged about some wonky reactions to the Trump\/NHTSA rollback of the CAFE standards. \u00a0Now I want to step back and highlight just how truly bad the new set of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":332413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[158284,158283,63460,4039,158281,158282,132791,48587],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-332412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-aggressively","tag-audaciously","tag-awful","tag-cafe","tag-cafe-standards","tag-fuel-economy-standards","tag-nhtsa","tag-rollback"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=332412\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful The proposal even rolls back standards that the first Trump Administration set. 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