"The Trump administration relied on flawed logic to justify scrapping vehicle emissions standards this year, making errors in how it accounted for fuel savings, the price of technology and mileage, according to a new study by a group of economists.
Correcting those errors would negate the economic benefits that the administration said would come from eliminating greenhouse gas emission standards for cars and trucks, according to the paper published Thursday in the journal Science.
The Trump administration got rid of the emissions standards earlier this year when it revoked what’s known as the endangerment finding, which had long served as the legal underpinning for federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. The White House touted the move as a prudent deregulatory action that would produce massive savings for consumers, mostly from reduced costs for new vehicles. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis estimated that rescinding the greenhouse gas standards would save Americans $600 to $790 billion in the coming decades.
The administration is currently facing legal action over its repeal of the finding.
But the group of a dozen researchers who examined the EPA’s cost-benefit analysis said that correcting the administration’s errors would “overturn” its justification. The authors — who were from universities including Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — found that eliminating the standards will actually cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars."
Alexa St. John reports for the Associated Press August 27, 2026.
