by E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
As appearing in the Daily Signal
I’m old enough to remember when businesses fought overregulation because it was bad for their bottom lines. That has changed. Now, overregulation is a profit center.
There is no better example of this than the ongoing effort to stop the Trump administration from rolling back the ridiculous automobile fuel economy standards issued by the Obama administration in 2012.
The Obama standards require that carmakers achieve an average fleet fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025—up from about 27 miles per gallon in 2012 and about 35 miles per gallon now.
Carmakers had originally rolled over for the Obama administration on the stiff standards because, well, 2025 was a long way off and the government had just bailed them out as a result of the financial crisis of 10 years ago.
