President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday announced the repeal of a 2009 policy allowing the federal government to regulate the emissions of fossil fuels by declaring them dangerous to public health.
Trump called the repeal “the single largest deregulatory action in American history” and said it would “save American consumers trillions of dollars.”
“We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said in the White House Roosevelt Room.
“Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”
Trump said that the action could lower car costs by an average of nearly $3,000 and blasted auto innovations he said were tied to the policy.
“Under the endangerment finding, they forced the hated start-stop feature onto American consumers, which unnecessarily shuts off a car’s engine. When you stop at a red light, in other words the engine goes off. That’s great,” Trump said.
Zeldin said that the Republicans were scrapping the “holy grail of federal regulatory overreach.”
