Under the Biden administration, gas-powered vehicles were on a government-impelled road to decline.
In March 2024, the EPA finalized Biden’s “crackdown on gas cars” by issuing absurdly stringent emission standards. The idea was to advance the administration’s “climate agenda” by sending gas-powered modes of transportation to the junkyard.
Leaders of the petroleum industry were among those who saw that the scheme would “make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans.” The policy would “feel and function like a ban.”
This was just one of many examples of Biden-oppression pushing American voters who value at least their own freedom into the Trump camp.
Electric vehicles have pluses and minuses. In past columns, I’ve expressed much enthusiasm for the technology, but recognized that it must develop naturally, in a free market, rather than unnaturally, out of ideological hope and fear-ridden “need,” forced by government regulation and subsidy.
As James Roth has noted over at StoptheCCP.org, we’ve had a century and a half to fine-tune gas-powered vehicles, a mature technology that is “beloved by the public.” Why not let electric and gas cars compete fair and square in the market? And why give an artificial boost to totalitarian China’s heavily subsidized and promoted EV industry by crippling the gas-car industry here at home?
President Trump has heard the cry of those who prefer to step on the gas.
Section 2(e) of his sweeping executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” states that it is the policy of the United States to “eliminate the electric vehicle mandate … by removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access” and other thumb-on-scale interventions in the market.
Is the future of gas cars going to be great again?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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