Team Trump is proposing radical changes to the U.S. policy toward electric vehicles and tailpipe emissions, including axing the EV incentives and the government mandate for federal EV fleets, and rolling back the Biden Administration’s rules on tailpipe emissions and fuel economy standards, Reuters reports, citing a draft document it has seen.
During the campaign, President-elect Trump has repeatedly slammed the “crazy” EV mandate of President Joe Biden, whose Administration has sought to support EV sales with incentives and mandates for federal agencies to use electric vehicles.
Under Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has also introduced new air pollution limits to encourage automakers to produce and seek to sell more EVs.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) sued the EPA over the vehicle emission standards, with Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers saying that “EPA has exceeded its congressional authority with this regulation that will eliminate most new gas cars and traditional hybrids from the U.S. market in less than a decade.”
Meanwhile, EV sales haven’t surged, as hoped, and automakers, including the biggest in the U.S., have slowed down the rollout of new EV models or bet on more hybrids.
Ford Motor Company, for example, said earlier this year it is delaying the planned rollout of some of its next-generation EVs as it is expanding hybrid vehicle offerings, in the latest sign that consumer uptake of EVs has slowed down.
The new Trump Administration is now proposing to not only axe the $7,500 EV tax incentive but also shift funds from what’s left of Biden’s $7.5 billion funding for EV charging stations to processing of battery minerals and the “national defense supply chain and critical infrastructure,” according to the document Reuters has seen.
Tariffs are on the agenda in this planned policy reversal, too. Trump’s transition team is recommending the President impose tariffs on all battery materials globally. This, the team argues, would increase U.S. production. Then, the U.S. would negotiate individual exemptions from tariffs with allies, per the document seen by Reuters.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com