Trump To Ease Mileage Rules In Bid To Curb Rising Car Prices

Watch Trump To Ease Mileage Rules In Bid To Curb Rising Car Prices - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Walk us through the logic here. So this theoretically would help when it comes to

00:04affording cars. Yeah, that's the idea. You know, the average cost of a new car rose above $50,000

00:12for the first time in September. And the Republicans have been getting a lot of heat

00:16over cost of living issues. So they're really trying to show that they're attacking affordability

00:21in the auto market. And they feel like if they can roll back fuel economy standards that will

00:26reduce a lot of the high price technology on cars, and it could lead to lower prices.

00:33Well, what are people in the industry saying as to how far that would actually go, whether or not

00:37that would help when it comes to prices? Well, the industry has been very excited

00:42that President Trump has essentially zeroed out fuel economy penalties. They no longer have to

00:48buy credits from electric vehicle companies like Tesla in order to meet stringent fuel economy

00:54standards. So they've enjoyed that. But on the other side of the ledger are the tariffs and

00:59tariffs have added billions in costs to automakers. So it's kind of a, you know, a give and take for

01:05the auto industry. So does this benefit more the auto industry itself or consumers? I'm not quite

01:12clear on who exactly would benefit the most. The Republicans are trying to benefit consumers

01:18who showed in the most recent elections that went the way of the Democrats that that there is unrest

01:24over the cost of living and that they need to attack that issue. They're also trying to, you know,

01:29sort of protect the jobs of auto workers who've also been very supportive of President Trump.

01:34And they feel like if they can get car prices down, that'll sell more cars and keep people working

01:39in the factories. Absolutely. So wrap this into President Donald Trump broader push in terms of what it

01:46when it comes to EVs. You know, he's derided a lot of the Biden era policies as part of an EV

01:52mandate. How does this specific news item sort of fit into that? Yeah, this is another step in that

01:59direction. You recall he eliminated the $7,500 tax credit consumers got for purchasing an electric

02:05vehicle. And now he's rolling back fuel economy standards, which means you have to sell fewer electric

02:12vehicles to meet those mileage standards. So it really is a way to back off from electric vehicles,

02:17which are higher priced than regular internal combustion engine vehicles. So it is a way to

02:23reduce the average price of cars. And Keith, we only have about 30 seconds left. But before I let you go,

02:28bring us up to speed on the current state of tariffs with the auto industry, because we know there's been

02:33a ton of back and forth there. Yeah, they haven't hit as hard as initially thought. They've automakers have

02:39scaled back their projections on on how big a hit it will be. But it's still significant. It's still

02:44in the billions. And they're just working to not put it all on the consumer. So the companies are

02:50eating some of it themselves.