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Why Trump Attacks California’s Anti-Pollution Powers

Why Trump Attacks California's Anti-Pollution Powers

(Bloomberg) -- When U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in 1970, he recognized a simple truth about his home state of California: Tens of millions of people driving around constantly in a desert generate lots of pollution. The law gave California special authority to write tailpipe emission limits that can be tougher than the federal government’s, when deemed necessary by state officials. Now another president, Donald Trump, is insisting that California fall in line like other states. Though he says he’s doing it for the benefit of automakers, the companies aren’t entirely sure they want this kind of help.

1. What’s Trump doing?

He’s challenging California’s powers on several fronts. He’s revoking the state’s authority to set tailpipe greenhouse-gas emissions standards that are more stringent than what the federal government requires, as well as its ability to force carmakers to sell a minimum number of electric vehicles in the state. The U.S. Transportation Department is joining the fight, saying California’s fuel economy standards are preempted by federal requirements. These steps are on top of Trump’s ongoing effort to upend fuel-economy rules negotiated with the auto industry by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

2. What are those rules?

They call for raising the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirement for cars and trucks to at least a 35-mile-per-gallon average by 2020, and to roughly 47 mpg by 2025. Under Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration initially proposed capping those requirements at a fleet average of 37 mpg starting in 2020. U.S. officials have since signaled that the final rule may require small annual improvements, but at levels far less than required under the current standards. Trump also wants to freeze rules that were adopted jointly by Washington and California requiring the auto industry to cut allowable carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 to a level similar to targets the European Union, Japan and China have already set for themselves.

3. Why is Trump so focused on fuel economy standards?

His administration has pushed a broad range of measures designed to help businesses by getting rid of excessive regulation, and the Obama fuel standards have been a favorite target. Officials say the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is prepared to back Trump up by asserting that easing fuel economy standards will actually reduce traffic fatalities, by reducing prices for new vehicles, thereby encouraging drivers to replace older, less-safe cars.

4. Why is he going after California?

Because if California is allowed to keep its own, tougher standards, that would undermine much of the impact of Trump’s move. Thirteen states now follow California’s lead on air pollution, accounting for more than a third of all U.S. auto sales.

5. Isn’t California’s power protected by the Clean Air Act?

Trump officials say California and other states are barred from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under a different law, one passed in 1975, that established the first federal fuel-efficiency requirements. District Courts in California and Vermont, however, have rejected that argument. The Trump administration also says California’s efforts to combat climate change go beyond the Clean Air Act authority, since that is a global -- not a state-specific -- problem.

6. What does California say?

It’s fighting back. State officials point out that the it has long been allowed to set tougher air-pollution rules than the EPA under U.S. clean-air law. The state already has gone to court to challenge EPA’s earlier determination that the fuel-efficiency rules are overly stringent and must be revised. And California officials have vowed to sue over the waiver revocation too -- a legal fight that automakers have warned could roil capital-intensive business plans that depend on predictability. California also has linked arms with four major automakers on a compromise plan that would relax the standards, stretched over a longer time period with incentives for advanced efficiency technologies.

7. How strong is California’s case?

Ann Carlson, a University of California at Los Angeles law professor, said the state’s best defense of its independent regulatory powers could lie in its requirement for battery-powered cars or gas-electric plug-ins. Such zero-emission vehicles need to make up as many as 40% of sales by 2030 if California is to meet its carbon dioxide reduction targets, according to estimates by the state’s Air Resources Board staff. ZEVs are also crucial for California’s plan to meet increasingly stringent federal ozone limits -- limits that so far not even Trump has challenged. The state’s independence in fighting pollutants such as ground-level ozone, a precursor to smog, is recognized explicitly in the Clean Air Act, Carlson said.

8. What does the auto industry say?

It had agreed to the Obama proposal, which started to take effect in 2011. But a key concession by Obama and California was to add a feasibility review to the final years of the standards, which extend through 2025. That was important because the most demanding requirements came in those final years, especially for big SUVs, pickups and electric cars. That means the manufacturers had to make only gradual improvements for the first decade but face steeply increasing requirements from 2021 to 2025. After Trump’s victory, the Obama administration concluded that review more than a year ahead of schedule, angering automakers that then began to attack Obama’s plan as too costly and to ask for relief.

9. Does that mean they’re backing Trump’s moves?

Not entirely. They don’t support Trump’s proposal to freeze the federal standards, as opposed to making them less stringent. That’s because they don’t want the U.S. to fall behind carmakers in other countries who are being pushed to develop new technologies. And they don’t want to be branded as heedless of climate change. But what they really worry about is the uncertainty that would be created by both a years-long court battle over the rollback and by a patchwork of standards if Washington and California stop linking their rules. Seventeen auto manufactures warned Trump that failure to reach a unified national standard could destabilize the industry and hamper investment.

The Reference Shelf

  • All about the Clean Air Act.
  • The EPA’s determination on rolling back federal tailpipe standards.
  • Trump’s legal strategy failed twice under President George W. Bush.
  • An EPA report on fuel economy and emissions trends, 1975-2017.

--With assistance from John Lippert.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net;Jennifer A. Dlouhy in Washington at jdlouhy1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Laurence Arnold, Elizabeth Wasserman

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.