- The Trump administration’s EPA on Thursday repealed major greenhouse gas regulations on vehicles, ending Obama-era standards and the endangerment finding.
- The administration said the deregulation will save Americans $1.3 trillion and lower new vehicle costs by $3,000.
- EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin justified the move by citing congressional authority, the Clean Air Act, former Supreme Court rulings and promoting consumer choice over regulatory mandates.
The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency said that effective Thursday afternoon it had repealed a trove of regulations focused on greenhouse gas emissions targeting the American auto industry.
In what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called “the single largest act of deregulation” in American history, the U.S. will no longer observe former President Barack Obama’s ”endangerment finding” or any emissions standards imposed on vehicle models between 2012 and beyond.
President Donald Trump said the regulation cuts would save Americans $1.3 trillion and would lower the cost of a new vehicle by $3,000.
“I promised to cut 10 regulations for every new one, but we did more than 10, we did 129,” Trump said during a press conference in the White House on Thursday afternoon.
How did the greenhouse gas deregulation come about?
On Inauguration Day in 2025, Trump asked Zeldin to begin compiling recommendations of what to do about U.S. greenhouse gas regulations.
During this process, “We looked at the Clean Air Act,” Zeldin said. And in conjunction with Supreme Court rulings, the EPA “used a very simple metric: if Congress didn’t authorize it, the EPA shouldn’t be doing it.”
“Congress never voted for these climate mandates inside of Section 202 of the Clean Air Act,” Zeldin said.
President Donald Trump departs with Environmental Protection Agency director Lee Zeldin and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, right after announcing the EPA will no longer regulate greenhouse gases, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, in Washington. | Evan Vucci, Associated Press He continued, “Following the plain language of the law, we have now realigned EPA’s rule making to reflect the Clean Air Act exactly as it is written and as Congress intended, not as others might wish it to be.”
The Clean Air Act was signed into law in 1963 to control air pollution across the country.
Zeldin added that the new deregulations reaffirm Americans’ freedom to buy whatever car they’d like. “If you want an electric vehicle, buy one. If you want a diesel truck, then buy that. If you want a gas-powered vehicle or a hybrid, well, more power to you. That’s what freedom and choice look like,” he said.
When a reporter asked Trump what he would tell Americans concerned that the deregulation would come at a cost to public health, he responded, “Don’t worry about it. It has nothing to do with public health. This is all a scam. A giant scam. This was a ripoff of the country by Obama and Biden.”