This is Bloomberg Law with June Grassoe. President Trump has made cutting regulations part of his agenda since the very start of his administration. Today I will sign a presidential memorandum directing the e p A to cut even more red tape on our manufacturers. Much of that so called red tape were regulations protecting the environment, and this week marked the high point of Trump's regulatory rollback of US
climate change efforts. The Trump administration announced the final rule to aggressively roll back Obama era fuel efficiency standards of victory for oil and gas companies. Joining me is Pat Parento, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School. Pat
explain what this latest rollback does. The rollback is from the Obama Rule, which is a combination fuel economy and emission standards rule that would have required achieving a corporate fuel average of fifty four point five miles per gallon by model year, and that would have required a five percent increase in fuel efficiency every year going forward. The Trump rule rolls it all the way back to only one point five percent per year, up to US a
maximum of forty miles per gallon. When you pencil that out in terms of emissions. It's the difference between six billion tons of c O two and greenhouse gases between the Trump rule and the Obama rule. Are many other problems with the Trump rule, but the biggest one is the one you mentioned, which is this would have been the single biggest reduction in greenhouse gases of any federal policy if Trump hadn't rolled it back. So is this then the biggest step the Trump administration has taken to
reverse an existing environmental policy? Certainly in terms of a combination. If I would say public health, air pollution is clearly the most serious public health treat in terms of environmental law and in terms of climate policy. Yew. This This is I guess for the Trump administration. There their signature move yet to be seen whether it's successful, but this is the biggest one. There's almost a hundred of these different policy and rule rollbacks that Trump has been pushing,
but this is their biggest one. So, the auto industry is already going to increase fuel economy standards by about two point four percent a year. That's already more than what this rule requires. That's right. I've read the same statistic that you did, and so even without the rule we would be doing better. I suppose the idea of the rule is you have the flexibility not to even achieve with the market is suggesting you can do it, should do? We don't know. I suppose how all the
different automakers are going to respond. One thing that's interesting, of course, is that the automotive industry is split very badly on this question. Four of the major automakers agreed with California's more stringent standards, which were very similar, almost identical to the Obama rule, and others in the automotive industry have said, well, we wanted some relief from some of the rapid pace at which we were to achieve these fuel economies, but they don't necessarily agree with us
how far Trump has gone. So there's a real split in the automotive industry. Well, carmakers will be locked out of European markets if they don't keep up with the fuel efficiency standards. Right, that's right. We're now a laggered in terms of the global fuel economy improvements. At one point, we were the leaders when the Obama rules went into place, and now we're falling behind everybody else, and there will
be competitive disadvantages to that. We'll see how that that all plays out, but it it certainly doesn't put us in an advantaged position. Trump said that this will reduce the price of a new car by a thousand dollars. Is that true? Or will this increase the costs of driving a car? Well, it will increase the cost of driving it, no doubt, because you'll be paying more for gas. Right now, gas prices are low, but we know how volatile those prices are, and they're sure to go back up.
The market's been flooded, and of course the economy now is flat globally, so there's lots of reasons why these gas prices are currently low. But over the life of the vehicle, the Obama calculation was was hundreds of billions of dollars in savings, because of course we have lots of cars and light trucks in America, and so yeah, you'd have to take a look at the life cycle cost of not just the initial costs of the automobile, but the cost to fuel it over over time. And
Trump rule will definitely cost consumers money. I understand that. In a February report, the agency's own Science Advisory Board warned that the analysis being used was so flawed that it might have led the e p A to make incorrect conclude so its own science board. Yeah, the health effects of these emissions, particularly during this pandemic that we're dealing with, are really severe because they're all respiratory related.
And then the number of lives that will be lost as a result of not lowering these emissions is significant. If you look at at our population that have respiratory ailments, Allowing automobile emissions is one of the major causes of asthma and all these other problems. And so you're making a decision to allow the death rate to go up in a situation where we have the technology to prevent it, and where the economics suggests you ought to be doing it anyway. So it's a very perverse policy, I have
to say. And of course we haven't even yet talked about the fact that Trump rule is also going to be in conflict with California's rule, and there's a whole legal issue all around that. Right. California is already in court on that the all back of its waiver right. And if California is successful, and I think they have a very good chance of succeeding, then you're going to
have a split market in the United States. You're gonna have thirteen states signing up with the California standards, which from what I've read, represents of the car market in America, and then you're going to have it another part of the country under this Trump rule, which is also going to be subject to litigation. So the automotive industry is going to have anything but certainty or predictability. Quite the contrary, it's going to be chaotic, and it's going to take
years to sort this out through litigation. No litigation can be done quickly in this country. It's gonna be years of litigation. And this is headed straight for the courts. He has to go to the Supreme Court. The revocation of the California waiver. That's the first time that's ever been attempted. No administration, Republican or Democrat, over time, has
ever revoked a California waiver. There's nothing in the Clean Air Act that authorizes a re location of a waiver, So that's a novel question that has to go to the United States Supreme Court. California and other states are already gearing up to fight this rule in court, so most likely will the judge grant an injunction to stop it from going into effect. I think there's a good
chance of that. I think the chaos that is going to be shown to the court from this move is going to convince the court to put a hold on it. And twenty states have vowed to sue to challenge the Trump Rule, So you know, the courts are going to be impressed by the fact that that number of states thinks this is not only a bad idea, but dangerous idea. That's a very strong argument for putting a hold on this.
Why rush this? It's gonna look rushed to the court the way this is coming out right on the end of March and in the middle of this pandemic crisis that we're dealing with. All of these factors are going to convince the court to put a hold on the Trump Rule. I'm pretty convinced of that. What part does this rollback play in the Trump administration's regulatory rollback? Yeah, I mean this was a campaign promise promises kept. That's
been his mantra. And it doesn't matter that the scientists, the experts within his agencies say it's a bad idea. It doesn't matter even when a large portion of the industry says it's a bad idea. It doesn't matter when the economic arguments fall apart after you really scrutinize them. Even the argument that this rule will produce less mortalities from traffic accidents, even that has been challenged. Documents within e p A suggested that the mortality rate could actually
go up as a result of this rule. So none of the reasons that have been given for the rule stand up to scrutiny. Why would this kind of rule affect mortality rate? Well, it's a question of you know, are you safer with lighter vehicles on the road or are bigger, heavier vehicles And that's the difference in terms
of fuel efficiency. And the National Academy of Science has actually did a study that said, well, over time, as you take these big, heavy SUVs off the road and hummers and things like that, your safety is going to improve. Um So you have to look at it over the longer term in terms of what kind of vehicles are going to be out there on the highway that you're running into. Literally, and the science suggests that fuel efficiency is going to make our highways safer, not less safe.
If these cases find their way to the Supreme Court, what kind of reception might they get. We know that the newest appointees to the Court, Justices Corsas and Kavanaugh, are very concerned about the impact of regulations on American businesses and property owners. They are conservative in that light. But I'm not one that is so cynical to believe that anything the Trump administration says they are going to
rubber stamp they have. Yeah, they've given the President a couple of victories, particularly on the border wall and some other things like that. But when it comes to public health, when the Court has shown data that suggests that people are going to die as a result of policies that are being adopted, policies that are not justified by technology or economics, but are more justified by ideology or some kind of anti regulatory meme, I don't think the Court
is going to go along with that. Right down the line, Pat, We've discussed time and time again the Trump administration attempting a rollback of environmental efforts by the Obama administration. What's left of President Obama's environmental legacy, the sort of package he put together during his time in office, Nothing I
would say nothing. If you look at epic category, whether it's pollution control, public lands management, offshore protect and of marine sanctuaries, protection of these beautiful monuments out west, in all categories, natural resources, public health, environmental controls, MIPA, the Nation Environmental Policy Act, every single aspect of Obama's legacy, and you know presidents even before Obama, going all the way back, even to Richard Nixon, if you want to,
all of that has been under attack. Almost a hundred rules and policies have been rolled back. Nothing has been missed by this administration. If it had anything to do with the environment or protecting public health, it was under attack. That's the legacy of this president's term. Thanks Pat, that's Pat Parento of the Vermont Law School. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg
dot com slash podcasts. I'm June Basso. This is Bloomberg intern Dako