Trump’s CAFE Proposal & Consumer Behavior
WASHINGTON, DC—Today, Resources for the Future (RFF) posted the fifth in a multi-part blog series about the Trump administration’s recent proposal to freeze federal fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards.
The new blog is Critiquing the Trump Administration’s Analysis of Consumer Behavior in the Proposed CAFE Standards. The authors are RFF Senior Fellow Alan Krupnick, Joshua Linn, and Virginia McConnell.
The new blog post states: “In their proposal to weaken US fuel economy and greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for passenger vehicles, one of the arguments made by the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is that weakening the standards has the benefit of accelerating the turnover of the on-road vehicle fleet from older and dirtier vehicles to newer and cleaner ones. This is the first time the agencies have analyzed the effects of standards on total new vehicle sales and scrappage of older vehicles, which represents a step in the right direction for modeling the effects of the regulation. But as we explain here, because the agencies do not make other necessary steps, the agencies overstate the benefits of weakening the standards.”
Read the full blog post: Critiquing the Trump Administration’s Analysis of Consumer Behavior in the Proposed CAFE Standards.
Resources for the Future (RFF) is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF is committed to being the most widely trusted source of research insights and policy solutions leading to a healthy environment and a thriving economy.
Unless otherwise stated, the views expressed here are those of the individual authors and may differ from those of other RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. RFF does not take positions on specific legislative proposals.
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