Blogocentric Formulations

This Just In - August 5

Trump fires first shot in California car wars  
Written as part of "This Just In..."   for "Blog Harbor from The Talent Pond" 

It's amazing to me how the Trump Administration seems to be on the wrong side of history in just about every action they take. Pulling out of the Paris climate accords, supporting tax breaks for billionaires and voter suppression, doubling down on old criminal justice policies that have been proven ineffective, removing protections for nature preserves and refusing to enforce consumer protections and banking statutes designed to make sure the market recession from ten years ago doesn't repeat itself, starting trade war which will end up costing us all more in the long run... I know I'm pretty liberal in my views and there are obviously people who support some (or even all) of this agenda, but I truly believe he's setting us back years or even decades in so many ways.

This article is about the Trump Administration trying to roll back fuel standards. The current goal is to reach an average of 54.5 miles per gallon (MPG) fleet-wide by 2025. This number is in large part set by California, which encourages very ambitious fuel standards that the car companies usually try to comply with because California is such a large car market. Other states have other standards, but that leaves car companies with the choice of making different vehicles for different state markets, or trying to comply with the highest standards and selling to all the states.

When Trump won the election, the car companies went to him expecting a sympathetic ear. They told him that 54.5 MPG was just too much and that maybe there was some way to give them a little bit of a break? In true Trump fashion, he's not just trying to adjust the numbers, he'd rather throw out the entire Obama plan (because his whole M.O. seems little more than "do the opposite of what Obama did no matter how little sense it makes") and basically make it so that the car companies don't have to make any efforts to create cleaner running, more fuel efficient vehicles.

What really galls me about this are three things. First, Republicans are supposed to be the party of pro business, pro capitalism, etc. So in theory they should want competitive car companies who are always striving to create newer, better, and more desirable vehicles (and make no mistake, fuel efficiency is a major area of concern for car buyers)... but they support a policy that encourages these companies to be as noncompetitive as possible? Second, it's clearly the wrong thing for the environment. We all know cars and our reliance the larger issue of our reliance on fossil fuels is not good for the planet... but they support a policy that encourages these companies to not make more environmentally-friendly cars? And third, Republicans are supposed to be all for states' rights over the federal government stepping in and telling the states how to conduct their business. Apparently except when it's a law they don't like. They're all for states' rights when it comes to restrictive abortion laws or unrestricted gun laws... but when a state wants to set its own fuel standards? Time for the government to step in and tell the states they can't make their own rules.

To paraphrase this article, it said that the car companies initially asked the Trump Administration to revisit the standards to "get more flexibility in meeting these aggressive goals," but that the White House instead opted to go so far in that direction that they're actually at risk of hurting the companies more than helping them. A Ford spokesperson explicitly said, "We're not asking for a complete rollback" but that's exactly what the Trump Administration is doing, which could potentially create different fuel standards for different states and would create a regulatory nightmare. In the words of Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign at the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, "What they didn't know is, when they asked Trump to help them start rolling these standards down the hill, that he would totally disconnect the brakes."

Which, I suppose, is ultimately the lesson of making a deal with the devil... the devil in this case being an inexperienced administration with its only guiding principle being to completely tear down any and every bit of progress made in the last eight years. Whether we're talking about international relations like the Iran nuclear deal and trade, or national policies like immigration and reshaping the judiciary, when we elect a "change" candidate (especially one who doesn't feel the least bit constrained by tradition, civility, or bipartisanship), sometimes that's exactly what we get, and it's way more than we bargained for.