Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign fired back at President Joe Biden’s finalized plan unveiled on Wednesday that is considered to be the most extreme push in history to destroy the gas-powered car industry and force consumers to drive what will be, in effect, government-mandated electric vehicles.
“Joe Biden’s extreme electric vehicle mandate will force Americans to buy ultra-expensive cars they do not want and cannot afford while destroying the U.S. auto industry in the process,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “This radical policy is anti-jobs, anti-consumer, and anti-American. It will destroy the livelihoods of countless U.S. autoworkers while sending the U.S. auto industry to China.”
“President Trump will reverse Joe Biden’s extreme electric vehicle mandate on Day One,” the statement continued. “He will protect the freedom of Americans to drive whichever vehicle they choose, enhance President Trump’s tough tariffs on Chinese-imported cars, and save the U.S. auto industry for generations to come.”
The finalized rule was a concession to far-Left environmentalists who demanded the most aggressive effort ever to eliminate combustion engine vehicles.
The Washington Post, which called the effort “controversial,” noted that the rule will force automakers to rapidly “ramp up sales of electric vehicles while slashing carbon emissions from gasoline-powered models.”
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed that its national pollution standard, which could end up getting killed in the courts, would prevent more than 7 billion tons of carbon emissions, which it claimed would provide $100 billion in annual benefits to the U.S.
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A statement from the EPA claims that the rule will prevent “up to 2,500 premature deaths in 2055” and will reduce “heart attacks, respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, aggravated asthma, and decreased lung function.”
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said in a joint statement that Congress needed to stop the extreme agenda.
“At a time when millions of Americans are struggling with high costs and inflation, the Biden administration has finalized a regulation that will unequivocally eliminate most new gas cars and traditional hybrids from the U.S. market in less than a decade,” the statement said. “As much as the President and EPA claim to have ‘eased’ their approach, nothing could be further from the truth.”
“This regulation will make new gas-powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans,” the statement continued. “For them, this wildly unpopular policy is going to feel and function like a ban.”