One of the most important provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill has gone completely unnoticed, but promises to make the auto industry great again.
For 50 years, the federal government has been forcing fuel economy standards on auto companies. If the average fuel economy of the cars sold in a year exceeded a federal standard, the companies had to cough up enormous penalties.
Passed in 1975 as a way to deal with an energy crisis (that was caused by government price controls), “corporate average fuel economy” (CAFE) standards – required the fleet of cars sold by an automaker to achieve an arbitrary miles-per-gallon goal. If they missed the goal, they paid hefty annual fines.
From the beginning, these standards were a disaster, forcing automakers to radically downsize their fleet, which research showed cost thousands of lives because, all things being equal, smaller, lighter cars are less safe than larger ones.
Now, if a car company sells cars that, on average, exceed whatever the fuel-economy limit is technically in force in a given year, they pay… nothing. The mandate is still in place, but the penalty is now $0.00. (Republicans pulled off the same trick with the dreaded Obamacare insurance mandate — zeroing out the penalty rather than trying to get the mandate repealed.)
Yet, despite this breakthrough, the death of CAFE got no coverage – as in zero – from the mainstream press, which was too busy trying to find birthday cards that Donald Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein.
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