Trump administration wants to lower emissions standards for cars

Setting up a showdown with California, the Trump administration on Thursday announced a plan to revoke a signature Obama-era environmental regulation.
The administration wants to freeze a rule mandating that automakers work to make cars substantially more fuel efficient. It called its plan a “50-state fuel economy and tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions standard for passenger cars and light trucks.”
The administration also proposed a withdrawal of California’s Clean Air Act preemption waiver. California and about a dozen states that follow its rules account for about a third of all the passenger vehicles sold in the United States.
California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, called the proposal “reckless.”

“For Trump to now destroy a law first enacted at the request of Ronald Reagan five decades ago is a betrayal and an assault on the health of Americans everywhere,” said Brown, in a statement. “California will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible.”
Thirteen states, plus Washington, DC, have adopted California’s standards. Colorado announced plans to become the fourteenth.

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