Trump praises tiny Japanese 'Kei' cars as administration rolls back U.S. mpg rules

Less than a year into the second Trump administration, the White House moved to weaken U.S. fuel-economy standards while President Trump, at the rollback announcement and surrounded by compliant U.S. automotive executives, said he admired tiny Japanese Kei cars and told Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to make them street-legal in the United States.

The changes follow a sequence of regulatory reversals: the Obama administration had set a corporate fleet average target of 50.4 mpg for light trucks and cars; the first Trump administration reduced that to 40.4 mpg by 2026. The Biden administration later reinstated more ambitious standards that would have required many more electric vehicles, but the second Trump administration has dismantled those rules, with Duffy rescinding the Biden standards and the EPA throwing out its versions in March.

A budget bill also stripped electric-vehicle incentives from the tax code, and the federal government said it would no longer fine automakers who exceed corporate average fuel economy targets. Under the current plan automakers would only be required to reach a fleet average of 34.5 mpg by model year 2031.

The Department of Transportation says that change would make cars cheaper by a little more than $900, but the source notes that does not account for the added cost of extra fuel from cars that consume about 30 percent more fuel than previously expected.

Key Topics

Politics, Donald Trump, Kei Cars, Sean Duffy, Epa, Fuel Economy Standards