Trump orders pulling the plug on California’s 2035 ban on gas-powered car sales

President Donald Trump terminated an EPA waiver allowing the Golden State – and nearly a dozen more – to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

President Donald Trump’s moves to reorient American energy use began in earnest on Day One back in the White House.

His top target? States like California that have sought to run far ahead of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in clamping down on gas-powered vehicles.

Driving the news: Trump signed an executive order on Monday rescinding a slew of Biden-era orders, including an elimination of a 2021 order from President Joe Biden seeking to ensure that half of all new cars sold by 2030 were electric vehicles.

  • But, arguably more important, was an order to terminate “state emissions waivers” like those granted to the Golden State “that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles; and by considering the elimination of unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses, and government entities alike by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable.”
  • Heading into the second Trump administration, California held a waiver allowing it to phase out new gas-powered car sales by 2035.
  • With the termination of waivers by Trump’s order on Monday, that shift is likely dead.

What he’s saying: Auto industry advocate John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation argued to the press that there’s a current “mismatch” between EV sales targets and requirements by California.

  • “There’s a saying in the auto business: you can’t get ahead of the customer,″ Bozzella said, adding that the United States should have “a single, national standard to reduce carbon in transportation.”
  • “We can’t have regulations that push the industry too far ahead of the customer,” he said. “More balance between the regulations and the preservation of customer choice is the goal.”
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