WASHINGTON — President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled what they called the biggest red tape removal in US history Thursday, axing a sweeping Obama-era anti-greenhouse gas policy and predicting it could save $1.3 trillion, or about $3,823.50 per US resident.
“Today, the Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” Zeldin said alongside Trump in the White House Roosevelt Room.
“Referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach, the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated.”
The repeal ends a policy allowing the feds to regulate fossil fuels by declaring them dangerous to public health.
The so-called “endangerment finding” allowed the EPA to measure and constrain the output of six greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act — including emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide by vehicles amd power plants.
Trump called the finding “a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” predicting they would save “trillions of dollars” as a result of Thursday’s action.
The president added that his administration was “terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”
Zeldin said the changes could lower car costs by an average of about $2,400.
An economic impact analysis released Thursday night said the $1.3 trillion in savings included $1.1 trillion in reduced vehicle costs and $200 billion in avoided electric vehicle expenses, including chargers and other equipment. The savings are calculated over a 28-year period between 2027 and 2055.
A number of regulations premised on the endangerment finding are now subject to repeal, including the Biden administration’s stringent fuel emissions standards, formalized in March 2024 and designed to ensure that two-thirds of passenger cars and light trucks sold by 2032 are electric or hybrid models.
Another Biden-era regulation, also announced in March 2024, sought to require that work trucks and tractors reduce carbon dioxide emissions by between 25% and 60%, depending on weight category, by 2032.
A second wave of power plant deregulation actions are expected to follow from the EPA.
“The 2009 endangerment finding is the cornerstone of EPA’s regulation over greenhouse gases, so removing it will have a very significant impact on multiple industries — first and foremost the auto and vehicle manufacturers,” said Matthew Leopold, EPA general counsel during Trump’s first term.
Leopold, now with Holland & Knight LLP, added that the finding was “one of the most costly regulatory regimes we’ve ever had in this country” and “it directly impacted the cost of vehicles, both passenger automobiles and heavy-duty trucks.”
“There will be no more tailpipe emissions requirements for greenhouse gases,” said Leopold, who noted that pollutants like carbon monoxide will still be subject to emissions standards.
“They’re returning to a historic understanding of the Clean Air Act and the types of pollutants that in their view that the Act was intended to regulate … What’s being disputed is this novel use of the Clean Air Act to expand to greenhouse gases.”
Obama himself led criticism of the announcement.
“Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules,” the 44th president tweeted. “Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
Thursday’s action is likely to face legal challenges that stall implementation of the rollback.
The Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 that greenhouse gases such qualify as pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The George W. Bush administration, however, chose not to regulate them. Obama then did so upon taking office in 2009, setting the stage for the current struggle.
It’s conceivable that environmental groups or state governments will attempt to challenge the repeal — citing scientific consensus about climate change and its potential economic and health impacts.
Many regulations already were in the process of getting axed by the Trump administration — such as the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, established in 2009 to require power plants, refineries, chemical manufacturers, waste facilities and other industries to track and report their carbon dioxide emissions to the EPA.
Other policies pushed by former President Joe Biden — including the so-called Clean Power Plan 2.0, meant to lower emissions from existing US power plants, particularly coal-powered facilities — are expected to be scrapped as a direct result of the endangerment repeal.
Zeldin and Trump singled out one practical impact of Thursday’s announcement: The looming absence of the car feature that switches engines off while drivers are idling at stop lights.
“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 also said that “manufacturers will no longer be burdened by measuring, compiling or reporting greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles and engines.”
The Sierra Club, a prominent environmental group, claimed Trump and Zeldin were trying to “turn back the clock to the 19th century” and pledged “we will do everything in our power to block this misguided effort.”
The National Wildlife Federation said the rollback “undermines our country’s ability to protect people and wildlife from harmful air pollution and the impacts of a changing climate.”
Trump said, however, that the EPA is taking aim at “ environmental nonsense” — though the tariff-loving president suggested at one point that he would be open to leaving burdensome regulations in place for foreign imports.
“It will probably make it so that any of that equipment built in the United States will not have to go through this,” Trump said. “If it’s built outside, I think we’ll probably leave the standard the same. If people are going to send us equipment, let them have that standard, for whatever it’s worth, which is not much.”
