Trump EPA reportedly seeks to revoke landmark air pollution rule

The Trump administration’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, is looking to repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding” that found greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and welfare, possibly as early as this week, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The EPA finding had set the legal basis for federal regulation of six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, and it has been unsuccessfully challenged since it was first instituted.

The move is almost certain to attract a number of lawsuits, and it could be years before the matter is settled. The EPA’s move will only affect tailpipe emissions for cars and trucks, though it’s expected that the Trump administration will use it to unwind regulations in other sectors like power plants and industrial facilities.

Legacy automakers, which pushed Trump to weaken fuel efficiency rules, notably did not push for the EPA to repeal the endangerment finding. Tesla went further, asking the EPA to maintain the finding, saying it was “based on a robust factual and scientific record.” 

If the Trump administration is successful, the U.S. will be increasingly out of step with regulations in other advanced economies. Companies that do business across borders will need to develop different approaches for each market, increasing costs.

Automakers, in particular, are facing a future in which they’ll be forced to serve bifurcated markets, at least in the near term. Regulatory whiplash in the U.S. coupled with increasing competition from China has cost automakers tens of billions of dollars.

American automakers’ reliance on fossil fuel-powered trucks, in particular, has painted the domestic industry into a corner, providing addictive profits that distract from future-proofing their fleets in advance of seemingly inevitable competition from Chinese marques.

The Trump administration told the WSJ it expects the policy change to save more than $1 trillion, though it didn’t provide any evidence to support that figure.

Climate change is expected to cost far more. The Congressional Budget Office found that nearly $1 trillion worth of real estate is threatened by rising sea levels, and mortality rates in the U.S. could be 2% higher if global warming isn’t abated. Another study, published in 2024, found that climate change could trim global GDP by 17% by 2050, the equivalent of $38 trillion per year.