Trump Will End California’s Authority to Set Stricter Auto Emissions Rules | Hacker News Reader

Trump Will End California’s Authority to Set Stricter Auto Emissions Rules

nytimes.com

113 pointsel_benhameen134 comments

> California’s special right to set its own tailpipe pollution rules dates to the 1970 Clean Air Act, the landmark federal legislation designed to fight air pollution nationwide. The law granted California a waiver to set stricter rules of its own because the state already had clean air legislation in place before the landmark 1970 federal legislation.

If the law granted California the waiver, why is the executive (rather than the legislature) allowed to revoke it?

The law allows the EPA to grant the waiver. It doesn't require them to do it.

Edit: pre-emptively nitpicking my own statement: the Act gives the EPA enumerated reasons to not grant the waivers.

Does this lead to a constitutional crisis over the EPA's ability to govern? It seems like the Feds have a difficult time using interstate commerce as a justification for the EPA's authority. In this case, California isn't attempting to regulate industry outside of the state (it just happens to be so powerful as to have that side-effect).

I feel like this is a move to destroy the EPA and make California pay the legal fees to do it.

> Does this lead to a constitutional crisis

I severely doubt it. Wickard v. Filburn is a solid bedrock of totally ignoring the intent of the commerce clause.

Supreme Court cases get deprecated without expressly being overruled, especially wartime cases. Stare decisis doesn’t require you to read a precedent for all its worth; only to follow it if it’s squarely on point. The ACA case found the individual mandate failed under the commerce clause notwithstanding Wickard.

> Does this lead to a constitutional crisis over the EPA's ability to govern?

No; it may add to the stack of legal disputes about the Trump Administration’s administrative actions allegedly exceeding statutory bounds and procedural requirements (including the requirement not to be arbitrary and capricious), but that's such a big stack already...

> I feel like this is a move to destroy the EPA and make California pay the legal fees to do it.

It's not about destroying the EPA, just its purpose of protecting the environment.

> The law allows the EPA to grant the waiver. It doesn't require them to do it.

The bigger nitpick is that it's not clear that the Clean Air Act allows for revoking previously granted waivers.

Emissions standards should be tougher, the gas tax should be higher, ZEV credits should be larger, and yet still, it's arguable that this has to be done through a Federal framework, and not at the State level.

The Constitution enumerates powers of the Federal government, the rest being reserved to the State, or to the People. For all the ways the enumerated powers have been stretched, Commerce between the States is one of the few powers of Congress actually enumerated.

If the Supreme Court can find that the Commerce clause allows Congress to prevent a State from allowing private production of marijuana for personal medical use [1], it's hard to see how a State can effectively set emissions standards for automobiles across the Country.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

> it's arguable that this has to be done through a Federal framework, and not at the State level.

That doesn't follow. I'm not a 10th amendment fanatic and I think the commerce clause has been hugely important, but even I have a problem with the inversion that anything that can be regulated by the federal government must be regulated only by the federal government :)

The Clean Air Act is statute, and by statute allowed for the California waivers. There's no constitutional argument that shouldn't be allowed.

Isn’t the Clean Air Act statute — itself an act of Congress — the Commerce Clause in action?

> Isn’t the Clean Air Act statute — itself an act of Congress — the Commerce Clause in action?

Yes, but the reason (from your OP) "a State can effectively set emissions standards" is because the Clean Air Act explicitly allows it to and allows other states to voluntarily follow suit.

I think we may be arguing in circles. The Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to grant the State the ability to set their own standards. It does not require the EPA allow States to set their own standards.

If the question is whether the States have the authority to set fuel standards absent Federal approval, I think the Commerce clause stipulates that they cannot, neither directly nor effectively. The Supremacy clause of the Constitution means that EPA standards will preempt the State standards if the EPA says they should.

My original point is that’s probably a good thing overall, because what’s true for vehicle efficiency standards would be true for innumerable other goods which we want to be able to sell anywhere in the country under a single standardized set of [safety, environment, labeling, packaging, warranty, liability, supply chain, and labor] regulations.

Gas taxes hurt the lower income brackets the worst.

California will just go with the nuclear option: Cost of registering a vehicle will be based on vehicle emissions.

Yes, California has all the tools it needs to enforce their will. For example, they can establish mandatory weekly inspections for cars not meeting their standards. They can tax carbon fuels at $1000/ton. They can set the vehicle registration fees (not the tax-deductible part) to arbitrary amounts.

Why not increase the gas tax and subsidize electric vehicles and charging stations?

This will help EV’s get to the point where they’re cheaper.

I favor using the carbon tax to fund mass transportation, but we agree on the general idea: tax carbon, use money for better things.

Why not do the same and build way better public transportation, so that you don't spend your life waiting in traffic.

We could do both.

However, we’re probably only 10-15 years away from EV’s becoming cheaper than ICE. At that point, we could stop the subsidy.

That’s about how long it takes to complete any mass transit project in the United States.

Yes, everyone sees EV's as the way our of our mess, but that's only part of the problem - EV's will help with emissions, but not congestion.

And then there's the people that see self-driving cars as the way out of the congestion. But self-driving cars will make congestion worse, by making single occupancy vehicle trips cheaper and easier, shifting more people from transit to cars. But then each self-driving car doubles the number of trips, since instead of someone driving to work and parking, a self-driving car will drop them off at work then drive off to look for another passenger or parking outside of downtown, so 2 trips for one passenger.

I came to this realization myself recently while reading Joshua Spodek's book "Initiative". He points out that making something more efficient will lead to more of that thing.

Cars ("vehicles") are part of our larger economic system, and that system does little to limit commutes. Only peoples own dislike of commuting keeps commute times down. Self-driving cars will make long commutes more tolerable, and thus raise the limiting factor on commutes.

I predict that if level-5 self-driving cars become a reality, we'll see a new type of dystopian hell, where it's common to spend 6+ hours a day commuting. It will be especially burdensome for those who are poor and have to drive their car manually.

Suddenly I'm less excited about self-driving cars.

I really don't know how accurate that is - right now the US is weird about Automobiles (they were highly inflated in importance and as a status symbol by marketing) but it looks like that weirdness is fading as the younger generation is moving closer into city centers and has a much higher preference for public transit... I think that cars, whether there are level 5 self-driving cars to replace them or not, are just on their way out.

City planning in the US is a mess though right now.

Even people who do not drive (take transit) try to limit their commute time, so I would not expect to see these even longer commute times.

I knew a guy in Toronto that would do 3 hours each way. Seemed absolutely bananas, but there he was, every day.

I don't understand the "2 trips for one passenger". The car will pick up the closest human that needs a ride and the operator will optimize the trips globally based on where cars are, where humans are and where humans what to go. It's about as optimal as it gets.

Yes, cheaper trips will lead to more trips and therefore more congestion.

But there are also advantages of having a massive car network.

There are actually plenty of roads for most of the time. It's only during rush hour that you have congestion (LA being an exception).

Rush hour traffic happens due to people commuting to work, usually one person in a car.

The density of rush hour traffic makes it easy to optimize.

Without changing cars, we can put 4 people in a car, which is 2-4x better than the common commute of 1 person in a car.

People don't want to share cars?

Implement rush hour pricing scheme that heavily penalizes single occupancy (say, $4 for shared ride, $16 if you want a car to yourself).

The next step would be to make mini-buses for rush hour traffic: at lest 12-16 person. Once you know the traffic patterns, you can optimize by building cars / busses with the capacity that fits the pattern.

What makes it even easier is that rush hour traffic is stable: people go to work and back roughly in the same numbers, which means you can do long-term predictions and investments.

Unless commute patterns change dramatically, in the morning most people will be going downtown to jobs, there will be a few that live in downtown and go to jobs elsewhere, but by and large, all of the cars will be bringing in commuters from outside of down and dropping them off in downtown centers -- there will be no other human looking for a ride from that car.

Without changing cars, we can put 4 people in a car, which is 2-4x better than the common commute of 1 person in a car.

We can do that today, but we don't. It's not clear why a self-driving car would change that. How often do people take uber-pool instead of having a car to themselves? (I don't know the answer to that question).

People don't want to share cars?

Maybe they won't want to, but as autonomous cars become more popular, only the affluent will make that choice - a car is expensive, especially when it sits in a garage at home and work (that you pay for) unused for 22 out of every 24 hours.

Seems like a reasonable solution would be to create vehicles that give the riders the illusion of privacy. Open cab vehicles, such as modern cars and buses, are terrible at at providing privacy for more than one person. If, instead, you have vehicles with modular, single-occupant “pods”, then it goes a little way toward solving the problem of sharing space with unknown others.

I think the solution to congestion is simply to have more medium-sized towns and cities that are desirable places to live and work. Congestion and high housing costs are symptoms of centralization.

(Fixing this is easier said than done, though.)

What if the property of being a big city itself is what makes it a desirable place to live and work?

I think that's true. At least, big cities are desirable because of the network effects that come from bigness. Reproducing those same network effects in a small city would be difficult.

> They can set the vehicle registration fees ... to arbitrary amounts.

I'm not sure that they could get away with _arbitrary_ amounts, but they can certainly provide justification for high costs for heavily polluting vehicles.

Unlike the current system, such a method would be retroactive and it would also apply to vehicles originally sold outside of California. I'm no expert, but I doubt that any automaker _wants_ this sort of thing to happen.

> They can set the vehicle registration fees (not the tax-deductible part) to arbitrary amounts.

High vehicle registration fees was one of the major factors in the recall of Governor Davis back in 2003. It may have been just as big a factor as the electricity crisis. Voters really don't like seeing their car registration fees go up.

The fees are back up to where they used to be and the gas tax was also increased. An effort by various cavemen to repeal the act was soundly defeated last year.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_6,_Voter_Appr...

It might be more palatable to levy these fees in a targeted manner, i.e., Raise fees on people buying new twin-turbocharged, crew cab pickups and the like, while using the revenue to subsidize Model 3s, Priuses and Civics.

Just rumors of this happening are probably enough to impact sales in the USA's largest market.

Excise taxes on new cars instead of gasoline taxes is what I keep harping on. You can then use the money to pay for buybacks of older cars. And fund things like California's down payment assistance programs for low income drivers. Where the air quality board buys back an older gasoline powered car and provides the owner with money for a down payment on a new or used electric or hybrid vehicle.

You could do the same with natural gas furnaces. Put an excise tax on new ones and a program to help people to replace their old one with a heat pump.

This is better because the impression people would get is the state trying to help them do the right thing vs the beat poor people with a stick like carbon taxes do. (See France's Yellow Vests)

So taxing the people who need work trucks is the punishment? That will just make the rest of us of pay for it in construction, farming, our own taxes through government purchase of work vehicles for infrastructure purposes, electricity work trucks, cargo trucks.

Everything gets more expensive and has the potential to effect even those who are in poverty who work those jobs as the employer can't afford extra employees due to the extra cost in trucks. Leaving a group of potential workers without employment.

You also negatively affect those who want to start a business (landscaping, catering, delivery). They now have to raise even more money to begin.

Regulations have downsides that may not be immediately apparent. California is already so stupidly expensive because of regulations it doesn't need to force it though. There is nothing stopping the manufacturers to continue being clean?

Then use emissions testing to establish a credit against state income taxes, which would then be raised modestly.

Hmm, yes voters hate hiking fees, but a lot of Californians also hate Trump with a passion - I have a feeling that many will support a hike on vehicles they will themselves never drive, if it's sold as "protecting the environment against Trump."

What "vehicles they will themselves never drive" are you thinking of?

I'm in Silicon Valley and I see large SUVs and pickup trucks and gas-guzzling performance cars everywhere I look. In the rest of California there are even more SUVs and trucks.

> What "vehicles they will themselves never drive" are you thinking of?

...Vehicles that are currently illegal in California due to stricter emission control? (Unless I'm missing something...)

There aren’t any. Nobody makes “49-state” vehicles any more because New York and several other rich, populous states adopted the CARB standard. Only motorcycles are still made without California emissions.

I look forward to this - as a bonus could they enforce steep costs and fees on inspecting high fuel usage vehicles entering through port of LA/SD/wherever? Or would that violate various anti-interstate commerce regulation statutes?

Great, more policies that unfairly target the impoverished. But who cares about the people who can only afford a ~$5000 used car that doesn't have great emissions standards?

"States are the laboratories of Democracy" was the line we've been sold to defend three week abortion bans, voter ID laws and other local BS. As soon as it's a left leaning law that justification apparently goes out the window.

I urge you to look more closely at the specifics of the best arguments being made on either side and see if you hold that same view then.

State rights continue to be trampled upon...

Indeed. While France and Germany flex their local muscle against Facebook’s Libra currency, this is a step in the opposite direction for the US and its states.

> Indeed. While France and Germany flex their local muscle against Facebook’s Libra currency, this is a step in the opposite direction for the US and its states.

Meanwhile Guy Verhofstadt goes to Britain to brag, unambiguously, about an intent to turn the EU into a unitary empire. The justification? "Everyone else is doing it!".

I don't understand. Why is California not allowed to set whatever laws it wants?

Is it, like, the "California exception" is being dropped from the Clean Air Act, but CA is free to pass an altogether separate, state law? Or is the federal government somehow saying that California is not allowed to pass a law legislating something about the environment?

Or is it somehow like No Child Left Behind where technically the federal government can't control state schools, but in practice it can by setting requirements for how it hands out money?

I just feel like I'm missing something here.

The Commerce Clause gives the Federal Government the right deny states' the ability to set standards like this.

The US constitution says:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

That means that when the federal government has jurisdiction, laws passed at the federal level preempt state laws that contradict them.

I don't know where the EPA rules gain their constitutional authority, my guess is the commerce clause of the constitution. But fundamentally, what this means is that when the federal government passes a law, state laws that contradict it, are, according to the Supreme Court, "without effect".

I'd imagine that occurs in a positive sense and negative sense - when something like a car that gets 40 miles to a gallon or a THC-filled vape becomes legal at the federal level, states aren't allowed to decide otherwise, without delegation from the government.

NCLB is different because while the federal government can make laws, it can't force the states to implement those laws. While there could be a federal agency - like the classroom police - to enforce NCLB, it's easier to just bribe the states until they agree to comply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_preemption

Basically: if you think the Commerce Clause applies to firearms or practically anything else, it almost certainly applies to cars.

I really don’t understand the states rights arguments. Congress’s authority to regulate in an area includes the power to preempt inconsistent state regulation. If Congress has the authority to regulate vehicle emissions, it has the authority to preempt a particular state’s attempts to impose stronger regulations than the federal standard. If, by contrast, you think Congress can’t preempt California’s regulations, then it must follow that Congress cannot regulate vehicle emissions at all.

> If Congress has the authority to regulate vehicle emissions, it has the authority to preempt a particular state’s attempts to impose stronger regulations than the federal standard.

I don't see how one follows from the other. One is a regulation of emissions; the other is a regulation of a state's regulations. If California isn't permitting things that are prohibited by the national standard, then Congress should not be intervening.

The power to regulate an area is based on the subject matter, whether it qualifies as “interstate commerce,” not whether some conduct within that domain is permitted or not. It’s not a one-way ratchet where Congress sets a floor and states can ratchet it up if they want. Sometimes that’s what Congress wants to do, but other times it decides that some things should be unregulated beyond a certain threshold. That’s a function of the regulatory framework Congress chooses to enact, not what the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to do.

Note: Greenhouse emissions in USA, transportation is largest at 29%, followed by electricity 28% and industry 22%

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

DoT paints a more interesting picture:

https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/gas%20emi...

Passenger cars and motorcycles, combined, saw between 1990 and 2006 an increase of 3% in carbon dioxide emissions in absolute terms. Over the same period of time, medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses saw their carbon dioxide emissions increase by 76% (!). Also notably, CO2 emitted by Aircraft decreased 5%, and Boats/Ships, Rail, "and Pipelines" (I'm not really sure of the mechanism for CO2 emissions from pipelines), decreased by 13%.

I'd like to see more updated information, not sure why it's harder to come by, but it seems like there's more to it than passenger cars. The "Light-Duty Trucks" category is also hard to tease apart, because it inherently combines trucks used as passenger transport, and trucks used for utility.

> I'm not really sure of the mechanism for CO2 emissions from pipelines

They aren't talking CO2 emissions per-se but greenhouse gas emissions in "CO2 equivalent". This is an important distinction because there are other greenhouse gases, most notable methane. My guess is the emissions from pipelines refers to methane leaking out of natural gas pipelines.

It's unconstitutional on its face, but the Supreme Court will uphold it. Sad times. Kid voting turnout could swing the election, and it's a major success for forces of evil that they've convince so many people of the "pox on both their houses" idea. I feel bad for young people, I'm glad I'll probably die before things get really bad.

I don’t agree that it’s unconstititional. (But, I do contend that it’s a foolish, regressive action for the administration to take.)

The federal government clearly has constitutional power to establish preemptive law in this area. Whether that preemptive effect is conditionally or selectively waived, and whether the waiver involves executive discretion, doesn’t change the constitutional dimensions of the issue, in my opinion.

The argument that it is unconstitutional is not that the federal government lacks the power to make preemptive law, but that this specific action is not within the power delegated to the executive by Congress under Congress exercise of its power to legislate in this area.

How do you reconcile it with the 10th amendment. Due to local effects of emissions it should be within state purview. The case (because this will reach the scotus) will be based the commerce clause, and that is nonsense because it is a critical health issue in smog prone areas.

You can argue abstract about trends in commerce clause based decisions in the 20th century between wickburn and lopez, but my point is you can throw that out the window: there is a plausible argument that allows a conservative decision. Therefore, regardless of precedent, the decision will be made along partisan lines. If a Democratic president is elected in 2020, precedent will be summarily reversed. The conservative movement is completely comfortable with power and exercising it maximally.

> In recent months, the administration’s broader weakening of nationwide auto-emissions standards has become plagued with delays as staff members struggled to prepare adequate legal, technical or scientific justifications for the move.

As a practical matter, I'd encourage them to work in the other direction: from justifications to policy. Do they need justifications for any legal reason or only for public relations?

How can the federal government limit the states ability to add stricter regulations? Is there a law explicitly saying that cars can pollute at a certain level?

My understanding was that states can add stricter restrictions to any federal laws as long as there was no other law limiting how strict they can get

More accurately: Trump will start a long legal battle with the goal of trying to end "California’s Authority to Set Stricter Auto Emissions Rules."

My own feelings about Trump set aside, I can't imagine he'll prevail.

Even so, think about the damage he will do along the way.

In this case, not much. The automakers don't want the rules to change and are extremely unlikely to start retooling factories since this is a temporary situation.

On this exact matter, he probably would. Lawsuits telling the executive that they must use their discretion in a certain manner, thus essentially stripping them of that explicitly-written discretion, probably don't have a leg to stand on and only judicial activism can save them. It's a silly idea, considered philosophically rather than in the heated political moment. What you'll get is something like what OrangeMango said, where they use other methods to enforce their will other than a particular authority for the EPA to carve out exemptions to a particular law. They've got all sorts of other tools.

This. I feel like anything else (given 2020 around the corner) is just sensationalist

> while Mr. Trump is traveling in the state, where he is scheduled to attend fund-raisers in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

On an unrelated side note, I was driving today and this absolutely massive plane was right over my head, almost just hanging in the air. From the underside I couldn't tell what color the top was, but I saw it had four engines and seemed to be heading straight for the local Air Force base.

So apparently I saw Air Force One today. I think that's the first time I've seen it since Trump became President. The flight path is right outside my office window, so when Obama was President, it seemed to come on a much more regular basis.

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

It looks like any other 747 other than the colors.

The big military cargo planes are far bigger. Which air force base?

Yeah the big cargo planes are bigger, but since they are painted dark colors they hide their dimensions so they don't look as big. Also I'm not usually driving under the landing path. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffett_Federal_Airfield

I guess technically it's not a base but an airfield.

It's not a base because it'(wa)s a Station... NAS Sunnyvale (i guess the city lines between Mtn View and Sunnyvale were much different back then).

It's one of those 'We don't use the terms that the [Army|Navy] use, goddamn it' things.

* Edit: Apparently it was named Sunnyvale because 'Mountain View' had too much of a supposition that it might sound like something to crash into, lol.

The Airfield is not part of either city but borders both cities fairly equally. Either name would make sense and choosing Sunnyvale to avoid the mountain reference makes sense too.

Yeah but C130s fly into Moffett quite regularly. Past few tuesdays I've been able to see them down in Los Gatos at the high school track, either on approach or flying away.

Come to think of it, today's another tuesday...

It's definitely pretty cool to see them fly over when you're going over the hump on 101.

The C5 that accompanies the President's 747 is almost the exact same size a a 747.

When you watch an A380 land at SFO it will seem to hang in the air, because its size will make its apparent motion slower than that of another plane. And the A380's enormous fuselage makes its slightly-larger-than-average engines seem to be the usual size.

On the other hand Moffet field has a runway that crosses 101 and the usual runways at SFO are parallel to 101.

This just feels so ... petty.

Do republicans really want to destroy the environment at any cost? Do they really want dirty air and rivers that are on fire due to chemical pollution? I don't get it. Where's the rational thinking? There's not even an obvious motivation of greed here - the automobile industry doesn't want the emission regulations to be turned back (cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/climate/automakers-califo...).

It’s the “any regulation is bad regulation” thoughts

No, that’s just the lie they sell it with.

That's how it's sold. It's really payback-politics. Obama admin did this? Don't care what it is, revoke it.

Even if they believe the economic benefits of loosening regulations to be a worthwhile tradeoff, I'm shocked that they don't seem to have any consideration for their political future and the damage they are doing to their brand among young people who overwhelmingly support increased environmental protections.

Until young people actually start voting who gives a shit what they support? Not politicians.

I don't say this because I like the current status quo, just because I recognize the reality of the situation.

I wish young people (in the US, the country of my citizenship) would actually vote in significant numbers, but all the data says they just don't (yet).

Young people do grow up.

Younger liberals and conservatives are fairly solid on this category of issues. This isn't a case where people are going to grow up and lean Republican. People are going to remember who wasn't there for them when climate whiplash destroys their home.

Why should any current politician care if they remember? They will likely be out of office when the shit really hits the fan, especially if President.

For better or for worse (for worse, IMO) there was a big shift sometime around the late 80s early 90s where politicians in the US by and large stopped caring about "legacy". As long as they get elected in the next cycle, its all good (for them).

Can we please attack this problem in some manner that doesn't involve letting the world burn to a crisp just so we can say "I told you so"?

I agree, if climate change goes unchecked there will be ample opportunity for "I told you so"s but I'd rather check climate change - and it's important enough to do that I'm willing to give up gloating rights and say "Hey look, we all came together and solved this issue."

Young people voting probably didn't enter Trumps mind. To me this feels like signaling pro-fossil, anti-regulation in one swoop. It probably will have a minuscule effect in actuality, its just Trump loving manly oil and powerful industry. Keep in mind this man is likely mentally unfit, looking for rationality is a fools errand.

Sadly, you bring up a very good point. I'm 50 myself, but I work in the software industry where I interact with a lot of young programmers, and more than once I've heard "nah, I don't vote. No reason". The argument of "hey, if you don't vote, other people will make decisions that will affect your life anyways" doesn't seem to resonate, and I really don't know how to get through.

Young people did start voting. In 2018 there was a 16 point jump from 2014. Much higher than the 11 point overall increase.

I believe we have to start using the term “crimes against humanity” when we talk about these things. They need to understand that they will be held personally responsible for their actions in a near future.

Not just destroy the environment. The US car industry will have a hard time developing and manufactoring cars which can be exported. Practically every other market will have stricter norms. China is betting big on electric cars, setting domestic restrictions forcing the Chinese car industry to innovate.

Then, the US will argue that the trade deficit is "unfair", while the real reason that markets will not buy US goods is that the products are anachronistic, sub-standard junk.

fwiw, cars made for the US market are generally only sold in the US market and it has been this way for quite some time

This is already kind of the case. The biggest selling vehicles in the US -- pickup trucks -- cannot be exported outside of North America. Due to both regulatory and practicality reasons. Even if you could buy an F150 in Asia, it's impossible to actually drive and fuel one unless you're wealthy.

Ford and Chevy (and Honda, Toyota, VW, etc) already divide their product lines between USDM and global markets. There is some overlap, but the USDM does receive a lot of unique vehicles.

It's not for any real practical real-world purpose. It's a combination of personal spite from the president, and sending a message to voters. (the latter, to be fair, is quite common in politics, though it has progressed to the point of absurdity).

It's not that they want to destroy the environment, it's that it "pwns the libs".

Any effects on the environment aren't even part of the calculus.

To me, it seems like they just want to undo anything the last president did. If the last president touched it then its toxic, get rid of it - seems to be the mentality.

The California exemption doesn't even have anything to do with Obama, it's been in place since the EPA was created in 1970.

CA is the only thing blocking the full repeal of Obama era EPA regulations. So far CA has been able to side-step the repeal at the EPA level and CA has automotive industry support. CA is the last brick in the wall.

There is no reasonable justification and I find it nearly impossible not to view this decision as either a petty jab at California and Obama, or some red meat for the base, or both.

The Republican party has become petty, they have no philosophy and stand for nothing. All they want to do is roll back Obama-era regulations and stand for backwards thinking ideas - even when market economics and fiscal policy indicates otherwise.

The justification I've heard is that if you want to sell vehicles in the US, then you need to defacto comply with the California emissions standards, which basically makes the Federal emissions standards pointless.

If Federal emissions standards are to matter, California needs to lose its special status.

The definition of winning according to the republicans is for you to lose. Everything democrats stand for will be destroyed.

Pettiness is the point.

Can anyone chime in a what legal basis that the Supreme Court would rule for the Trump administration? It appears that the laws are not in conflict and automakers could easily comply with both sets of laws.

Are dry counties illegal since there is a federal law allowing the sale of alcohol?

Car companies know the writing is on the wall with regards to pollution and EV.

> The administration’s plans have been further complicated because major automakers have told the White House that they do not want such an aggressive rollback. In July, four automakers formalized their opposition to Mr. Trump’s plans by signing a deal with California to comply with tighter emissions standards if the broader rollback goes through

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/climate/automakers-califo...

> The Justice Department has opened an antitrust inquiry into the four major automakers that struck a deal with California this year to reduce automobile emissions

> Now, the Justice Department is investigating whether the four automakers violated federal antitrust laws by reaching a deal with California, on the grounds that the agreement could potentially limit consumer choice, those people said.

That makes no sense at all. “We will comply with stricter emissions control without government intervention, so we signed a deal with California to formalize it.” Where would better emissions control harm consumer choice?

It kills the used market (as older vehicles are generally non-compliant) forcing consumers to buy at least relatively new vehicles.

That's not how these regulations work. There are no controls on the resale market in California. There is an emissions inspection regime but it's for SO2, not CO2.

No it doesn’t. An agreement to make new cars with better emissions does not affect the used car market. Now, a regulation about enforcing those emission standards... that would affect the market.

Surely the "consumer choice" argument doesn't apply to the used market? Besides, since LA is the city that practically invented smog why don't they have the right to regulate their air quality as they see fit? An emissions standard that works well in the great plains may not work so well in the great cities.

It would harm consumer choice to buy a cheaper car that has lower emissions standards.

It’s the market solving the problem without government intervention. Isn’t that the whole premise of the Republican Party? “Let the free market solve itself”?

> “Let the free market solve itself”?

This specific situation violates anti trust law.

It is illegal for a bunch of companies to come together and say "we all agree to not sell below this price", or "we all agree to not sell this cheap thing".

Anti trust law is something that both parties support. It is not controversial to say that price fixing should be illegal. And this applies to both Republicans and democrats.

It has to do with anti collusion laws. Companies are not allowed to all agree to raise prices together, for example. And tougher pollution standards is more expensive to manufacture. So if any one company decided on their own to raise their own standards, they would be at a competitive disadvantage if everyone else was selling cheaper cars. So the only way to do this is to get everyone else to agree to the same thing. But that type of agreement is illegal, which is why companies will often lobby for tougher legal standards because everyone else would have to comply also.

yeah, I think they realize that as soon as someone reasonable is in office again that the rules are going to immediately revert. If they have made design changes to their production lines that aren't immediately compatible with CA's regulations when that happens they are going to have to spend a lot of money to fix those inconsistencies. I imagine that the accountants are saying "just make the cars cleaner anyway".

One little nuance you have to keep in mind there is that many automakers now generally like emission regulations. The reason is because it creates a cycle of obsolescence. Make a car that will be noncompliant with expected regulations in 'x' years and you now have a guaranteed revenue cycle. I'm not saying this is good or bad - it could well be that even if they have bad intentions it results in a good outcome, so who cares? But these little nuances are, I think, important in considering the big picture as you're doing with your statement.

Another example along these lines is asthma inhalers. The reason asthma inhalers cost so much in the US, even though it's for a dirt cheap drug that's long since out of patent protection, is because pharmaceutical companies lobbied to get rid of the CFC based delivery mechanism for "environmental reasons." They lobbied on this hard, for years. And finally succeeded. And once the new rules passed they immediately threw a hoard of patents at the new mandated HFC delivery system and jacked the prices up skyhigh. [1] So you'd think rolling back drug regulations would have the pharmaceutical industry jumping for joy, but in this case they specifically utilized regulations and environmentalism to create a massive profit that would not have otherwise existed.

Ultimately a lot of these issues are a lot more opaque than they might seem at a glance.

[1] - https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/heres-why-you...

Your understanding of the second-hand car market is incorrect. Promulgation of standards for initial sale of new vehicles has no impact whatsoever on the resale of cars.

> Make a car that will be noncompliant with expected regulations in 'x' years and you now have a guaranteed revenue cycle.

But that's not actually how it works? You can continue driving a car legal for sale under 2019 emissions regs, effectively forever. Yes, every so often they 'have to' redesign the cars to meet newer regs, but nobody's forced to buy them. They buy them because they have cool new features that people want, or a new body style, or whatever.

> One little nuance you have to keep in mind there is that many automakers now generally like emission regulations. The reason is because it creates a cycle of obsolescence. Make a car that will be noncompliant with expected regulations in 'x' years and you now have a guaranteed revenue cycle

Not sure about other countries, but in the US, emission regulations don't work like that. Cars only must meet the standard that was in place when they were originally sold.

Where are you getting this idea from? Most really old cars are exempt from emissions rules, and I've never actually heard of someone failing an SO2 test (smog, which _isn't_ CO2) unless something was egregiously broken with their engine, like a missing cat. They even have state-certified mechanics that can fix your car if it fails smog. It barely affects the used market at all.

Inhalers without CFCs are cheap in every other country in the world. Your problems with the cost of healthcare here have little to do with some rules around CFCs.

"States rights" was always phony idealogical veil.

Good, I just paid $4.75 a gallon. California should not have higher gas prices than Hawaii, period.

This will not affect gas prices.

The argument is that this would make car prices higher. But so does building SUVs instead of smaller passenger cars like in Europe, so I'm not that sympathetic to that argument given that emissions also kill people, cause asthma and other issues and contribute to global warming.

If anything, if Trump wins this fight, California might decide to use other means of achieving the same result, like taxing gas more.

"This will not affect gas prices." - Flat out nonsense

Ceteris paribus, more stringent fuel economy requirements will reduce demand for gasoline without reducing supply. So in the simplest case one would indeed expect a change in gas prices -- downward.

That’s completely asinine to think California alone can influence global gas prices. Typical progressive thinking looking at the world the way they you want it to be instead of the way it really is. BTW electric cars are still powered by a power plant which is massively inefficient because of transmission loss. There is no such thing, and there never will be, an emission-less car

Hawaii has higher prices than California[0], but I don't think there is any definitive reason that gasoline should be cheaper in Hawaii.

Hawaii is surrounded by ocean on all sides. Many metropolitan areas in California are valleys facing an onshore wind. Vehicle emissions kill people in Hawaii, and they kill even more people in California.

California produces more oil than Hawaii, but location or input prices in general are not the only determinant of energy prices. Take a look at some of the current gas prices around the world.[1]

  $/Gall - Country Average Price
  0.34 - Cuba  
  1.08 - Iran  
  2.08 - Egypt  
  2.20 - Saudi Arabia  
  2.91 - US  
  3.72 - Australia  
  3.86 - Canada  
  4.05 - Mexico  
  5.42 - Spain  
  5.60 - New Zealand  
  5.80 - Germany  
  6.36 - France  
  6.55 - Italy  
  7.09 - Norway

Compare Cuba, Iran, Italy and Norway.

How about miles of paved roads to maintain [2]

  180,800 - California  
  4,469 - Hawaii

or the wear by millions of miles traveled on those roads?[3]

  340,115 - California  
  10,635 - Hawaii

Even if supplying gasoline to Hawaii is more expensive, and it has 1/20th the population of California to shoulder the costs of maintenance, there has a much smaller road network per capita to support, different air quality challenges, and less driving overall to discourage.

[0] https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/

[1] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

[2] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2016/h...

[3] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2016/v...

Do you have any idea how gasoline tax for the roads is actually used in California? It does not go to the roads that I can assure you. It goes to a giant general fund that until very recently Jerry Brown was using to susidize the train to nowhere.

About 90% of the gasoline tax goes towards transportation infrastructure, its financing administration and law enforcement.[1]

About 50-60% of transportation infrastructure funding[2] comes from gasoline taxes.

Approximately zero gasoline tax dollars go toward healthcare costs and other economic costs related to auto emissions. "Meeting federal clean air standards would have prevented an estimated 29,808 hospital admissions and ER visits throughout California over 2005–2007."[3] This is not the full economic cost[4] of poor air quality, which would also count long term impacts on health, the loss in lifetime earnings due to cognitive deficits, and the effects of emissions above a baseline without auto emissions that is below the federal standards, but still causing illness and development impacts.

Transportation also has many benefits to the people and stuff being transported as well as everyone in general, but it is difficult to understand the perspective where shirking responsibility for negative externalities is virtuous or principled, and enforcing a more equitable accounting is somehow corrupt.

[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/01/gas-tax-where-does-th... [2] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3572 [3] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9501/index1.html [4] https://www.ewg.org/research/smoggy-schools/health-impacts-e...

According to AAA you got ripped off. The highest fuel price in California today is $4.17/gal for premium fuel in San Luis Obispo. This price is 15% below the all-time high set in 2012.

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