{"id":97854,"date":"2026-09-27T07:07:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T11:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/?p=97854"},"modified":"2026-09-27T07:07:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T11:07:50","slug":"trump-fuel-rule-gas-prices-97854","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/trump-fuel-rule-gas-prices-97854\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump reveals Monday fuel rule that raises gas prices 76\u00a2"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the Trump administration will finalize a fuel economy rule that its own Energy Department says will add 76 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline and increase fuel use by 45 percent. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has promoted the rule as a rollback of an \u201cEV mandate.\u201d No such mandate exists. The standards under attack are ordinary, decades-old rules requiring automakers to make gasoline cars go farther on a gallon of fuel. Weakening them does not<\/a> make electric vehicles cheaper, easier to charge, or more available. It does something simpler and easier to measure: it makes the gasoline-powered fleet less efficient at exactly the moment the world is watching oil prices spike.<\/p>\n

What Monday\u2019s fuel rule actually changes<\/h2>\n

The existing federal fuel economy rule, written for the 2031 model year, required the average new car and light truck fleet to reach 50.4 miles per gallon. Duffy\u2019s rule collapses that target to 34.5 miles per gallon. That sounds like an inside-the-Beltway adjustment; in energy terms, it is a large step backward. A car that needed 20 gallons to cover 1,000 miles under the old standard would need roughly 29 gallons under the new one. That additional gasoline does not disappear. It is purchased at the pump, burned on the road, and paid for again when the next fill-up comes.<\/p>\n

Duffy, a former reality television contestant and Fox Business host now running the Department of Transportation, has described the change as giving consumers more choices. But the only real choice being created is for automakers to sell more gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. The \u201cEV mandate\u201d language is a fiction invented to give the rollback a false villain. There is no federal rule forcing anyone to buy an electric vehicle. There is only a fleetwide efficiency requirement, and the Trump administration is now removing it.<\/p>\n

How much will the fuel economy rollback raise gas prices?<\/h2>\n

According to the Energy Department\u2019s own analysis, gasoline will cost 76 cents more per gallon under the rule. That estimate comes from a technical report prepared for the rulemaking and signed off by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the former oil executive who now runs the department. The White House cannot dismiss the number as partisan, because it was produced by the administration\u2019s own appointees.<\/p>\n

The Energy Department\u2019s own chart contradicts the president\u2019s claim<\/h2>\n

Trump used his Saturday social media post to claim that the new rule would \u201clower prices.\u201d The Energy Department\u2019s own analysis says otherwise. So do the numbers: a car that achieves 50.4 mpg uses roughly 46 percent less gasoline than the same car would use at 34.5 mpg. Missing that 45 percent efficiency gain is not a rounding error; it is the entire point of the rollback. Higher per-gallon prices are already visible in a chart produced by Trump appointees during the rollback planning. The graph, made by the administration\u2019s own political staff, shows gasoline prices moving in the opposite direction from the president\u2019s talking points.<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies will point to volatile oil markets as an excuse. But those markets are being roiled by a war of choice the administration entered, and oil prices were already elevated before the conflict began. The fuel economy rollback is not a hedging strategy against instability. It is a structural commitment to using more oil per mile, which guarantees that any future price shock will hurt more.<\/p>\n

Duffy\u2019s first-day memo set the rollback in motion<\/h2>\n

None of this happened by accident. On his first day in office, Duffy signed a memo directing the department to increase US fuel costs by approximately $23 billion, according to the department\u2019s own estimate. The memo was the opening shot in a campaign to dismantle the 50.4 mpg target. Months later, the department turned that memo into a formal proposal. The rule was then opened for public comment, and the response was unmistakable.<\/p>\n

The Department of Transportation received 68,294 comments on the proposal. The overwhelming majority opposed the change, including comments from consumers, state attorneys general, environmental groups, and public-health organizations. The agency was not required to listen, and it did not<\/a>. On Monday, the rule will be finalized with the same substance that drew the opposition in the first place. The comment process was, for this administration, a procedural speed bump rather than a democratic exercise.<\/p>\n

The same people who claim to defend autoworkers are sending EV jobs abroad<\/h2>\n

Trump has tried to take credit for investment in American auto plants, including factories that build electric vehicles and batteries. But those investments were largely set in motion under the previous administration\u2019s manufacturing policies, which offered automakers a reason to build the vehicles of the future in America. The current administration has spent its time trying to cancel those programs, dismantle EV incentives, and push manufacturing work out of the country. House Republicans have voted repeatedly to eliminate tax credits for electric vehicles while protecting subsidies for oil and gas production. The result would be a $4 trillion giveaway to elite interests, paid for by higher prices at the pump, higher financing costs, and higher prices on everything that moves on a truck.<\/p>\n

There is a dark irony in claiming to defend American autoworkers while handing the electric-vehicle market to China. The fuel economy rollback is not a jobs program; it is a protection racket for the oil industry. Every gallon of gasoline saved by an efficient car is a gallon the oil industry does not get to sell. That is why the rollback has become an article of faith for the politicians and lobbyists who took donations from oil executives. The policy is not about consumer choice. It is about preserving a fixed share of the transportation market for sellers of gasoline.<\/p>\n

The legal future of the rule<\/h2>\n

Courts have become a graveyard for this administration\u2019s worst rulemakings. Judges have repeatedly rejected executive actions that are arbitrary, contradictory, or missing required analysis. Monday\u2019s fuel rule is likely to face the same scrutiny. The government is required to consider the social cost of carbon and other environmental damages, but the rollback largely ignores those costs. The Department of Transportation has not explained how raising gasoline prices and increasing pollution benefits the American public, because it cannot. That is the kind of unreasoned decision-making that federal courts have historically struck down.<\/p>\n

There is also a hidden affordability problem in the rollback. The same families who were told fuel prices would fall are the families who will now pay 76 cents more per gallon. A two-car household filling up once a week would spend hundreds of dollars more a year for exactly the same miles driven. Fuel is not discretionary; people drive to work<\/a>, school, and medical appointments. A rule that makes the basic act of driving more expensive is not a deregulatory measure. It is a transfer of wealth from middle-class households to the fossil-fuel industry.<\/p>\n

What is really going on<\/h2>\n

Behind the fuzzy math and the reality-television theatrics is a simple truth: the fuel economy rollback is a favor to an industry that has spent decades fighting efficiency standards. The oil industry does not need an \u201cEV mandate\u201d to explain why it is losing market share; it needs a government that is willing to stand still while the world changes. That is exactly what this rule delivers. It freezes the efficiency of the American car in the year 2026, guarantees that every new model carries a gas-guzzling premium, and locks Americans into the highest possible fuel costs for the next two decades.<\/p>\n

There is another path. Fuel economy standards were never a barrier to making money; they were a kick in the pants to innovate. Automakers already know how to make gasoline cars that go 60, 70, or 80 miles per gallon. The technology exists. What was missing was the political will to require it. Monday\u2019s rule removes that requirement and replaces it with nothing\u2014except higher prices, dirtier air, and more money flowing to the oil patch.<\/p>\n

The rule is a policy choice, not a law of nature. It can be reversed, challenged in court, or undone by Congress. Voter registration is already open at vote.gov<\/a>, and the next several election cycles will determine whether Americans accept higher fuel bills or demand that their government build an efficient, modern transportation system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, the Trump administration will finalize a fuel economy rule that its own Energy Department says will add 76 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline and increase fuel use by 45 percent. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has promoted the rule as a rollback of an \u201cEV mandate.\u201d No such mandate exists. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":97860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cards.overcentral.com\/cards\/en\/97854.png","fifu_image_alt":"Trump reveals Monday fuel rule that raises gas prices 76\u00a2","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cards.overcentral.com\/cards\/en\/97854.png","fifu_image_alt":"Trump reveals Monday fuel rule that raises gas prices 76\u00a2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97854"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97859,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97854\/revisions\/97859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}