Trump Says New Auto Rules Aim to Cut Car Prices, Boost US Production

President Donald Trump announced Saturday he had approved new federal fuel economy standards, which would end a mandate that had pushed an increasing percentage of the American vehicle fleet to be electric.

In the Truth Social post, he also criticized President Joe Biden, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and the Democratic Party, which polls currently predict will do well in the midterm elections in November.

The Department of Transportation did not elaborate on the standards mentioned in the president’s post, though Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X that a “major victory for America’s auto workers is COMING MONDAY.”

EVs and Manufacturing

The Biden administration did not adopt an explicit EV mandate. Instead, it adopted new emissions standards that required a large portion of the American fleet to be electric.

American electric vehicle (EV) automaker Tesla was and remains quite profitable, with a current market cap north of $1.4 trillion.

However, Detroit’s three major automakers—Ford, GM, and Stellantis—expanded their EV lines to meet the Biden-era standard and incurred heavy losses. They have had write-downs of about $50 billion so far.

As for EV charging stations, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program was enacted by Congress in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The program made $7.5 billion available to build thousands of electric charging stations, aiming to install over 30,000 charging ports across the country.

A June 2026 Congressional Research Service report found results in the hundreds, not the thousands, with “183 NEVI-funded charging stations hav[ing] opened across 20 states.”

Trump also said that the new standards would strip regulatory waste from the cost of building cars in the United States. This would mean “LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car,” as well as increased domestic car manufacturing, Trump said.

“Every Manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can!” Trump wrote.

The president wrote that over $100 billion in new investments is currently being used to build out domestic auto manufacturing.

“The Plants are coming back, and Jobs are returning, to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, South Carolina, and all over our Country,” Trump wrote.

He thanked the current Secretaries of Transportation and Commerce, Duffy and Howard Lutnick, for their work.

Buttigieg Weighs In

On his own social media accounts, Buttigieg criticized the administration.

“U.S. manufacturing jobs are down under Trump, including in the auto industry. His strategy failed, and so will this,” Buttigieg wrote.

U.S. factories shed about 113,000 jobs in 2025, though they have been adding this year, with 58,000 more jobs through August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The former transportation secretary also claimed that “lowering standards will accelerate what [Trump] has already been doing: handing the clean tech future to China and forcing Americans to pay more at the pump.”

Buttigieg implied that removing the mandate would dampen the EV market’s appeal, even as new EV sales have already dropped.

Total American EV sales reached a high of 437,487 vehicles in the third quarter of 2025, the last quarter when federal subsidies for EV purchases were available, according to data from Cox Automotive.

The number of EV sales fell to 239,000 in the third quarter of 2026, nearly matching the average for the last four quarters.

A Complicated Market

In percentage terms, EVs have fallen from 10 percent of America’s new car market to 6 percent, despite significant technological improvements, according to Cox.

The average EV range is now about 300 miles per charge, up 20 percent from 2021. That improvement has come at the same time that global battery pack prices have fallen by 21 percent.

Gas prices are also up significantly, well above any increases in electricity prices.

“Historically, when you have seen sustained periods of high gas prices, that has encouraged switching,” Josiah Neely, a senior fellow in energy studies at the R Street Institute, told The Epoch Times.

The six-plus months since the United States and Israel initiated hostilities with Iran might count as a period of sustained high prices, and Neely predicted that this could continue for a while.

“I think a good rule of thumb is, the longer something goes on, the longer you can expect it to go on. So when the war was going on for a few weeks, maybe it would end soon. It’s now been going on with some breaks for about six months, so you would expect it to go longer,” he said.

So why have EV sales essentially plateaued?

One answer is that only new EV sales have been flat. The market for used EVs saw the same drop-off as new vehicles after the subsidies ended, but has climbed every quarter since, reaching a new high of 126,589 vehicles sold in the third quarter.

EVs are still a relatively small part of the used car market, at about 3 percent. But the reduced prices, coupled with ongoing improvements in EVs, give them upward growth potential.

The other answer is that “switching” cars involves more factors to consider.

Neely said that most drivers will not buy a new vehicle because of sometimes painful pump prices, but rather, when it does come time to buy, they are thinking: “Well, maybe I should switch over to an EV or a hybrid or some super fuel-efficient car, where I’m not going to have to do this as much.”

Cox reported that auto manufacturers are responding to current market demands with “More midsize [and] hybrid vehicles.”

Right now, it looks like hybrid vehicles, which offer better gas mileage and some EV-like features while still allowing motorists to keep their internal combustion engines, are the big winners in the current gas price crunch.

In the second quarter of this year, battery electric vehicles accounted for only 6 percent of new car purchases. At the same time, hybrid electric vehicles continued to gain market share, with 16 percent of new purchases.

That’s according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which also noted that hybrid vehicles “were not eligible for any of the federal tax credits that expired in September 2025.”