This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As President Donald Trump sees it, environmental regulations that attempt to improve efficiency and address climate change only make products more expensive and perform worse. He has long blamed efficiency regulations for his frustrations with things like toilets and showerheads. He began his second term in office to “unleash prosperity through deregulation.”
But there’s at least one big way that American companies and households may end up paying more, not less, for the president’s anti-environment policy moves.
If you’re in the market for a vehicle, you’ve probably noticed: Cars are getting more expensive. Kelley Blue Book reported that the average sticker price for a new car topped $50,000 for the first time in September.
And they aren’t just getting more expensive to buy; cars are getting more expensive to own. For most Americans, gasoline is their single-largest energy expenditure, around $2,930 per household each year on average.
While a more efficient dishwasher, light bulb, or faucet may have a higher sticker price up front—especially as manufacturers adjust to new rules—cars, appliances, solar panels, and electronics can more than pay for themselves with lower operating costs over their lifetimes. And Trump’s agenda of suddenly rolling back efficiency rules has simultaneously made it harder for many industries to do business while raising costs for ordinary Americans.
No one knows this better than the US auto industry, which has whiplashed between competing environmental regulations for over a decade.
President Barack Obama tightened vehicle efficiency and pollution standards. In his first term, Trump loosened them. President Joe Biden reinstated and strengthened them. Now Trump is reversing course again—leaving the $1.6 trillion US auto industry unsure what turn to take next.
Regulation Whiplash
In July, the Environmental Protection Agency began undoing a foundational legal basis that lets the agency limit climate pollution from cars. Without it, the EPA has far less power to require automakers to manufacture cleaner vehicles, which hampers efforts to reduce one of the single biggest sources of carbon emissions.
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