Trump Rolls Back CAFE Fuel Rules, Cutting 50 MPG Target

President Trump approved new fuel economy standards reversing Biden-era CAFE rules that would have required roughly 50 mpg fleets by 2031, with details due Monday.

President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday that he approved new fuel economy standards reversing rules adopted under Joe Biden, arguing the change will lower prices and draw manufacturers to build in the US. "These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car," Trump wrote. In a repost of the announcement, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the formal announcement would be "COMING MONDAY". Neither the White House nor the Transportation Department has yet detailed the final standards.

The Biden administration's 2024 CAFE rules would have raised required fleetwide fuel economy from 39.1 mpg to about 50.4 mpg by 2031, pushing automakers to build more electric vehicles to comply. The scale of the reversal was foreshadowed in December 2025, when Trump proposed setting the light-duty fleet average at roughly 34.5 mpg by 2031 — more than 30 percent lower than the Biden-era requirement. CNBC reports that weaker standards let automakers build more profitable pickup trucks and SUVs with worse gas mileage, and make EVs far less attractive to manufacturers.

Trump cast the move as ending what he called Biden's "EV mandate", but Al Jazeera notes there are no federal guidelines or laws requiring Americans to buy electric cars or barring petrol-vehicle sales; the term describes higher fuel-efficiency requirements. The CAFE system dates to 1975, when Congress required automakers to meet average fuel-economy targets across all cars and light trucks sold. The rollback also follows last year's congressional gutting of consumer EV tax incentives under Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, compounding pressure on electric-vehicle adoption in the US.

CNBC reports it is unclear what the final standards will be, though Duffy previously said they would be sharply lower than the Biden-era policies. Trump claimed that "Every Manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can!", presenting the change as a fulfillment of his campaign promise to rescind policies encouraging EVs. Some companies, like General Motors, have said they will still make electric vehicles. Al Jazeera has reached out to the White House for comment, and the widening gap between US policy and global EV trends sets up the Monday announcement as the detail to watch.