On February 12, President Donald Trump and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the finalization of a rule rescinding the 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding and eliminating all related federal GHG emission standards for motor vehicles and engines. The administration described the action as the single largest deregulatory measure in American history, projecting savings of more than $1.3 trillion for taxpayers and consumers between 2027 and 2055.
The Endangerment Finding, issued by the Obama-era EPA in December 2009, determined that six greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide and methane — endanger public health and welfare under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. That finding served as the legal foundation for more than 16 years of federal GHG regulations on vehicles, engines, and other sources, including fuel-economy mandates, electric-vehicle incentives, and off-cycle credits that manufacturers used to meet compliance targets.
Removing Mandates
In the February 12 announcement at the White House, Administrator Zeldin stated: “The Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans. Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated.” The rule also removes all off-cycle credits, including those tied to the widely disliked automatic start-stop technology in vehicles.
The EPA’s economic analysis estimates $1.1 trillion in savings from lower new-vehicle costs — an average of more than $2,400 per vehicle — and an additional $200 billion from avoided expenses related to electric-vehicle chargers and infrastructure. By repealing the standards, manufacturers will no longer face federal mandates to integrate specific technologies or shift production toward electric vehicles, restoring consumer choice in light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles.
The rulemaking followed an extensive public process. After President Trump’s Day One executive order directing review of the finding, the EPA initiated formal reconsideration in March 2025 and proposed the rescission in July 2025. The agency received approximately 572,000 public comments and held four days of virtual hearings. The final rule cites recent Supreme Court decisions, including West Virginia v. EPA and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which clarified limits on agency authority and emphasized that major policy questions belong to Congress.
EPA Created to Further Globalism
This could mark the unwinding of globalism and the reversal of policies put into place in the 1970s to gut America’s manufacturing sector and build out Asia. Interestingly, the EPA was created in 1970. It was tasked with identifying what gases factories emitted and then stigmatizing them as a backdoor way to inhibit industrial production. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) was its first choice — later, carbon dioxide (CO2). This coincided with the Ford Foundation’s influential 1974 report A Time to Choose, overseen by McGeorge Bundy. That document framed energy conservation and reduced demand as national imperatives, implicitly endorsing the managed contraction of energy-intensive sectors such as steel, paper, and heavy manufacturing.
Openly declaring an intent to offshore jobs and hollow out the industrial heartland would have been politically impossible. Instead, successive layers of environmental rules on SO2, and later on CO2 through the Endangerment Finding, achieved the same result by raising compliance costs, discouraging new investment, and tilting the competitive landscape toward low-wage, lightly regulated producers in Asia. The effect was the same: American factories closed, supply chains stretched across the Pacific, and working-class communities were told the sacrifice was necessary for cleaner air and a “sustainable” planet.
Prioritizing America Again
With globalism now visibly fraying — exposed by pandemic supply shocks, strategic rivalry with China, and the recognition that ceding manufacturing capacity has weakened national security — the Trump administration is dismantling the regulatory architecture that facilitated that transfer of industry. By eliminating the Endangerment Finding and its downstream mandates, the White House is removing the backdoor economic penalties that made domestic production uncompetitive. The goal is straightforward: re-shore steel, autos, chemicals, and other core industries; restore high-wage manufacturing jobs; and rebuild the strategic industrial base the United States once took for granted. In place of the globalist model of managed decline, the new policy prioritizes American energy abundance, consumer choice, and economic sovereignty — precisely the objectives that the layered SO2-and-carbon regime was designed to suppress.
This article is part of The New American’s weekly online newsletter Insider Report, which is emailed to TNA subscribers each week. Click here to subscribe to The New American to receive the Insider Report and access exclusive content.
