On 12 March 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US government agency focused on human health and the environment, confirmed that it will be reconsidering regulations on vehicle emissions that were announced under the Biden-Harris administration.
It will reassess the Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles, a rule which was made final in March 2024, when Joe Biden was US president. The rule set ‘new, more protective standards to further reduce harmful air pollutant emissions from light-duty and medium-duty vehicles starting with model year 2027’.
The EPA will also reconsider another rule: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles. Also announced in March last year, this rule was introduced to ‘revise existing standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty vehicles in model year 2027 and set new, more stringent standards for model years 2028 through 2032’.
Now, the EPA has said that imposing these rules would lead to ‘over US$700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs’. These rules, the EPA says, ‘provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate that takes away Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver’.
EPA administrator Lee Zedlin commented: “The American auto industry has been hamstrung by the crushing regulatory regime of the last administration. As we reconsider nearly one trillion dollars of regulatory costs, we will abide by the rule of law to protect consumer choice and the environment.”
In January 2025, president Trump ordered the elimination of the Biden-Harris administration’s so-called ‘electric vehicle mandate’ in order to “promote true consumer choice, which is essential for economic growth and innovation”.
He outlined plans to consider the elimination of subsidies, which he described as “unfair”, and other “ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favour EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses, and government entities alike by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable”.
The EPA is also reevaluating the other parts of the previous US government’s Clean Trucks Plan, including the 2022 Heavy-Duty Nitrous Oxide (NOx) rule, which set more stringent standards to reduce NOx pollution from heavy-duty vehicles and engines starting in model year 2027.
This is one of 31 actions announced by the EPA on 12 March in what Zedlin described as “the largest deregulatory announcement in US history”.
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