Trump Slashes 2031 CAFE Target to 34.5 mpg

The tug-of-war over mileage rules echoes Ronald Reagan’s 1981 freeze of Carter-era energy standards after the 1973-74 oil shock had birthed CAFE in 1975. Each pendulum swing—Obama’s 2012 54.5 mpg goal, Trump-1’s 2020 rollback, Biden’s 2024 reinstatement, and now Trump-2’s reversal—signals that U.S. auto policy is being set by election cycles rather than long-term energy strategy. Global peers are moving the opposite direction (EU’s 2035 zero-emission mandate, China’s NEV quota), so America risks ceding technological leadership even as Detroit enjoys near-term profit on large trucks. Over a century horizon, the episode highlights a recurring pattern: short-term consumer-price politics outweighing resource and climate planning, much like the 1920s preference for cheap gasoline that later magnified the 1970s crisis. Whether this rollback endures will depend less on engineering feasibility than on how durable U.S. political institutions prove against four-year policy whiplash.