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Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Saving Cash For Consumers

President Trump is purportedly going to announce today that he going to reopen the mileage and emissions standards put in place for cars by the Obama administration.  This is a great move for the average American.

Let's start by making clear that the current requirements of the mileage achieved by new cars today is not going to be relaxed.  The changes will come in relaxing the extraordinary requirements that Obama put in place for achievement six years from now.  Meeting these requirements would not materially reduce the emissions of supposed greenhouse gases in the future.  Nor would these requirement materially reduce the use of gasoline across the country.  That is because most of the possible reductions in emissions and improvements in mileage have already been wrung out of the new car fleet.  America has now reached the point where further improvements in these numbers require massive expenditures to get minimal results.  The regulations put in place by the Obamacrats would raise the cost of each car sold in American by many thousands of dollars, but the benefits from those regulations would be tiny.  Emissions from cars have already been reduced by massive amounts over the last forty years.  Mileage achieved by new cars have likewise been improved greatly during that same time.  Further costly reductions would have essentially no impact on either emissions or usage of gasoline.

President Trump has rightly decided that the actual benefits to the American people of lower cost cars outweighs the imaginary benefits that the environmentalists get from tiny, if any, improvements in emissions from those cars.  The environmentalists shout that these regulations will save cash for consumers by reducing gasoline usage.  A tiny reduction in fuel use, however, would never offset the massive increase in vehicle costs needed to get such reductions in place.

It's good to have a reality based government back in power in Washington.

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