President Trump’s former transition team leaders urged him on Thursday to stay the course on reforming auto emissions rules in meetings with automaker CEOs on Friday.
The transition chiefs don’t want Trump to be swayed from moving ahead with a plan at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation to weaken fuel efficiency rules for cars.
“We understand that some in the automaker community have expressed concerns about your current plans to reform the program,” the transition heads said in a letter to the president.
They point out that it’s “worth noting that early in your presidency, these same automakers urged your administration to ‘reconsider imposing such a far-reaching mandate on an entire industry’ and were greatly concerned that the existing mandate, which you are attempting to reform, ‘could cause up to 1.1 million Americans to lose jobs due to lost vehicle sales.’”
They argue that Trump’s proposed plan to reform the Obama-era auto rules would better accommodate consumer choice, rather than proceed under a mandate to make cars that people do not want.
The letter was signed by both Tom Pyle and Myron Ebell, the two leaders of Trump’s transition team for the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively, and Shirley Ybarra for the Transportation Department.
The conservative transition leaders also don’t want Trump to back down in facing California in a court battle over fuel economy rules that they say has the auto-industry concerned.
“Their main concern is the expected legal battle with California,” the letter continued. “Led by [California] Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the state intends to sue your administration over the necessary changes to the existing mandate – a mandate they not only support, but also seek to extend even further through 2030.”
They warned that what “many liberal California politicians really want to do is ban gasoline-powered cars altogether,” which they noted is evidenced by a bill now before the California legislature to ban all models of gasoline and diesel cars by 2040.
Pyle, Ebell, and Ybarra want Trump to be unencumbered by these concerns and move forward with his administration’s proposed reform of the rules.
“We agree that in an ideal world, California would negotiate with you in good faith, but we all know that is not a reality in this current political climate,” they wrote.
“Your efforts to reform this mandate are about cost, consumer choice, and whether or not your administration or the State of California gets to set a national policy,” the letter added.
Under the Obama administration, California’s climate and vehicle policies were given tremendous weight in designing the next round of vehicle rules, the chiefs explained.
“Under the Obama Administration, California was given the ability to set the mandate for the entire nation,” the letter explained. “The automakers agreed to this because they wanted to avoid having to potentially comply with two different mandates and because they had just been given a hefty bailout by the Obama Administration.”
EPA granted California a waiver under the previous administration allowing it to move forward with its stricter vehicle standards and still meet the EPA requirements. States have a choice to either abide by the less-strict federal EPA-Transportation Department rules, or abide by the California standards.
“If there is to be one national standard, it makes more sense for that standard to be set by the federal government and not by one state government,” the letter said. “But that is what is likely to happen if you change direction now.”
