Auto manufacturers have been working Trump to ease the standards….
It appears they are may in fact get their wish….
EPA chief Scott Pruitt has previously suggested that he thinks the targets are too onerous for manufacturers and inhibit them from selling the vehicles most popular with Americans. A climate skeptic, Pruitt has questioned mainstream science on the warming caused by greenhouse gases such as auto emissions.
Whether Pruitt can weaken the rules for the entire country is an open question. California, with its history of smog problems and heightened vulnerability to climate change, has unique authority under the Clean Air Act to impose its own standard. The act also permits other states to adopt the California rules, and a dozen have.
Over the last decade, the federal government has worked with California to keep mileage targets uniform nationwide, folding the state’s aggressive smog and anti-pollution goals into the national program. A single standard is crucial to automakers who don’t want to contend with multiple production lines to comply with conflicting rules in states, particularly one as important to car sales as California.
After President Trump was elected, automakers immediately began lobbying him to rewrite the rules — and to pressure California to dial back its efforts. Pruitt’s action would give the companies limited or no relief if it is not enforced nationwide since California’s rules apply to more than a third of cars sold across the country, and automakers are loath to create multiple production lines to comply with conflicting rules…