President Donald Trump has signed an executive order indicating his intention to reverse the Biden administration’s electric vehicle policy, which he has mistakenly called a “mandate.” Trump also signed an executive order to weaken exhaust emission standards, a major blow to the environment.
These orders were among a flurry of executive actions taken by Trump immediately after his inauguration on Monday, when he set to work to roll back some of the gains made by the Biden administration. He also declared a “national energy emergency” to weaken environmental standards and allow corporations to pollute more freely.
During last year’s presidential race, Trump regularly railed against an alleged “EV mandate,” promising to reverse policies aimed at making electric vehicles cheaper for consumers. No such mandate exists, but he has targeted regulations that have spurred EV sales while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Among the measures in Trump’s crosshairs are federal tax credits for the purchase of new or used electric vehicles. Biden has also allocated more than $7 billion from the Anti-Inflation Act to expand EV charging station infrastructure, as well as billions in production loans for companies building EV and battery plants.
By easing exhaust emission restrictions, Trump is essentially giving the green light to automakers to produce more polluting vehicles. And it won’t be the first time. During his first term, Trump instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken the emissions standards put in place by the Obama administration.
But the automotive industry has already spent billions of dollars developing electric vehicles, and is likely to continue to do so. Sales of electric vehicles have slowed down over the past few years, but they remain popular with buyers. According to Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive, U.S. consumers purchased 1.3 million electric vehicles in 2024, up 7.3 percent from the previous year. These figures do not include hybrids. Electric vehicles accounted for 8.1% of US car and light truck sales, up 0.3%.
While Trump is beginning the process of rolling back Biden’s EV policy, he is also gesturing toward increased efforts to extract minerals, especially “non-fuel minerals, including rare earth minerals.” These materials are used in modern weapons, electronics, energy, and transportation technologies, including electric vehicles – and this is probably why Trump has shown interest in Greenland with its abundance of rare earth minerals.
The burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel leads to the release of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the environment. These emissions have been shown to cause climate change, which exacerbates extreme weather events such as forest fires, hurricanes, and floods. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, transportation, including the use of private cars, accounts for about 28 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
