Jake and Spike disagree over WA AG Nick Brown joining multistate lawsuit challenging Trump’s fuel economy rollback

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown joined a multistate lawsuit Friday challenging a new federal rule that sharply lowers fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks.

The rule, announced last Monday by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, sets a fleetwide target of 34.9 miles per gallon for model year 2031, down from the 50.4 projected under Biden-era rules.

“It’s hard not for the Trump administration to be painted as in the pocket of Big Oil,” KIRO host Spike O’Neill said. “This is being easily portrayed as a gift to the big oil donors of his political campaigns, his organizations, his movement, if you will, and automakers who are also big supporters of this administration.”

The coalition, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) broke federal law by failing to set the standards at the “maximum feasible” level. It said the agency changed its modeling to exclude electric vehicles from the baseline.

The Department of Transportation (DOT), which calls the rule its “Freedom Means Affordable Cars” initiative, said it will cut the average price of a new vehicle by $1,300. NHTSA’s own analysis estimates drivers will burn an additional 122 billion gallons of gasoline through 2050, a 4.6% increase over the baseline.

Auto Innovators, the trade group for major automakers, called the rule “an appropriate course correction.”

“It’s in the best interest of a car manufacturer, I believe, to want to produce a car that’s both a good value and is as fuel efficient to run for the customer without being mandated at some level that requires them to be so expensive that the customer can no longer afford that vehicle,” KIRO host Jake Skorheim said. “The 50.4 miles per gallon seems to me to be excessively high, and you got to do it very quickly.”

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards set the average mileage automakers must reach across the new vehicles they sell, under a law Congress passed in 1975. NHTSA noted that real-world fuel economy typically runs 20% to 30% below the compliance figure. The new rule also ends the program that lets automakers trade compliance credits starting in model year 2028.

Brown’s office said the rollback lets manufacturers ease up on fuel-saving improvements and leaves drivers paying more at the pump. The coalition also argues NHTSA’s analysis ignores nearly $220 billion in fuel savings drivers would have gotten under the previous standards.

“There’s a point where government oversight is in the best interest of the population with regard to pollution,” Spike said. “You look back at the ’70s and what cars did to the environment then, with lead, gasoline, and all the low mileage standards. There’s a point where the free market shouldn’t be allowed to decide. Profit shouldn’t be the only motivating factor or the only driving factor of an industry with regard to the public good.”

The standards at issue are set by the federal government, and Washington’s role in the case is as a plaintiff.

“I think it’s unfair for the state of Washington to arbitrarily set numbers that they can’t even back up or prove are even happening, or that they can change in any meaningful way, while expecting you to pay more for the car that you purchase and the gas that you purchase,” Jake said. “That seems unfair to me.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3