Trump sets 34.5 mpg standard, freeing car buyers

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday, September 26, 2026, that he had approved new fuel economy standards. “I have just approved new Fuel Economy Standards that TERMINATE Sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Boot-EDGE-EDGE’s ridiculous EV Mandate,” he wrote.

The new fleetwide target sits at about 34.5 miles per gallon by model year 2031, later cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at roughly 34.9 mpg. That reverses the Biden-era target of about 50.4 mpg by the same model year. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reposted the announcement with a short teaser: “COMING MONDAY.” He also said, “A major victory for America’s auto workers is coming Monday,” as the Transportation Department prepared to finalize the rule.

Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, known as CAFE, have set fleetwide mileage requirements for passenger cars and light trucks since 1975. Under the Biden rules, manufacturers faced steep annual efficiency gains—8 percent for model years 2024 and 2025, 10 percent for 2026, then 2 percent a year from 2027 through 2031. The earlier Trump administration proposal in December rolled the 2022 model year baseline back retroactively and phased in only 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent annual increases out to 2031. The new rule also eliminates inter-manufacturer credit trading starting in model year 2028.

Trump framed the change in concrete terms for buyers and plants. “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,” he wrote. “Every Manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can!”

NHTSA projects the rollback lowers the average cost of a new vehicle by about $930. For households that need a pickup, an SUV, or a larger family vehicle, that figure is not abstract. Higher CAFE targets have long pressed manufacturers toward smaller, lighter, more expensive platforms and toward electric vehicles that many buyers still do not choose at the volumes regulators assumed. The proposal excludes electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids from the compliance math that had been used to pull fleet averages upward. The practical effect is to restore room for the gasoline-powered trucks and SUVs that carry higher margins and match what large numbers of American drivers actually purchase.

Congress had already changed the enforcement landscape. Through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, lawmakers set the civil penalties for missing CAFE targets at zero dollars. With fines removed, the Biden-era numbers had become aspirational on paper even before the new rule. Taking those targets off the books ends the legal obligation itself, not merely the fine. That sequence matters for limited government and the rule of law: elected legislators stripped the penalty, and the executive then rewrote the standard to match the market rather than leave manufacturers under a mandate they could no longer be fined for missing yet still had to treat as binding.

The 34.5 mpg target is itself lower than the 2024 U.S. fleet average. That fact undercuts the claim that the prior path was a gentle continuation of existing progress. It was a sharp acceleration designed to force a technology mix. Breitbart headlined the decision as Trump killing Biden’s “ridiculous” auto mileage standards and promising a boon to buyers and manufacturers—the same buyers who face the full sticker price at the dealership long before they ever calculate lifetime fuel spend.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg publicly criticized the move. “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,” he said. NHTSA’s own projections give weight to the fuel-cost side of that argument: the agency estimates the rollback adds about 100 billion gallons of fuel consumption through 2050, about $185 billion in fuel costs over the same period, and raises carbon dioxide emissions by about 5 percent. Those numbers are real and should be stated plainly.

They do not settle the policy choice. Upfront vehicle price is paid once, in cash or credit, by the family that needs a truck for work or a larger vehicle for children and gear. Fuel costs are spread across years and can be managed by how much people drive, which vehicle they select within a freer lineup, and what energy markets do. A regulatory regime that inflates the purchase price to chase fleet averages transfers the burden onto buyers who may never want an electric vehicle and onto factories asked to tool for products whose sales have not kept pace with the mandate. When manufacturers from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis tell the White House they want to build here under the new terms, the free-enterprise case is that production follows rules that match demand rather than rules that attempt to manufacture demand.

The prior standards were also written on the assumption of rapid electric-vehicle penetration that would lift the fleet average without forcing every gasoline model to hit extreme efficiency on its own. Slowing EV sales left that math strained. Keeping a 50.4 mpg target in place after Congress zeroed the penalties would have left a paper requirement disconnected from both enforcement and the showroom. Rewriting the standard to roughly 34.5–34.9 mpg by 2031 aligns the regulation with the vehicles Americans continue to buy and with the plants that employ auto workers Duffy highlighted ahead of Monday’s release.

National sovereignty in this sector is not only about tailpipe averages. It is about whether U.S. policy locks domestic makers into a capital-intensive electric transition timed to political cycles rather than customer orders, while competitors abroad scale on their own terms. Critics cast lower standards as a gift to China on clean technology. The counter is that forcing an unprofitable mix onto American lines does not secure a domestic industrial base; it raises costs, invites whipsaw retooling when administrations change, and leaves workers exposed when the mandated product does not sell. Trump’s post cast the change as ending an EV mandate in practice even if the old rules never formally ordered any individual consumer to buy an electric car. The incentive structure did the work: fleet averages so high that compliance without heavy EV and hybrid volumes became the point.

Final technical details were not immediately released with the Saturday announcement. What the record does show is the target level, the cost projection of about $930 less on the average new vehicle, the elimination of credit trading after model year 2027, and the Monday finalization by NHTSA and the Transportation Department. For the ordinary buyer the coverage often treats as a secondary character, the stake is whether the next truck or family vehicle carries a regulatory premium baked into the invoice. For the taxpayer and the constitutional order, the stake is whether fuel economy policy remains a backdoor industrial plan or returns to a narrower safety-and-economy lane set by statute and adjusted by an administration willing to reverse course.

On Monday the department puts the numbers on paper.