The Trump administration is proposing to freeze federal fuel-efficiency standards for passenger vehicles on the theory that weaker regulation will help domestic carmakers. But, as David Hart writes for the Detroit Free Press, the reality is just the opposite. If the administration’s proposal is implemented, the U.S. auto industry will be placed at a competitive disadvantage just as it enters the most disruptive period of technological change in a century. The Trump plan would keep efficiency standards from rising until at least 2026, at which point American consumers would be stuck with expensive, obsolete vehicles, produced by plants less able to export to the rest of the world than they are today. It would instead lock the United States into a dirtier, increasingly out-of-touch status quo.
