More good news from the front lines – in the war against the pushing of devices.
VW has just announced it won’t be bringing one of its newest devices – the ID 7 sedan – to the United States. On account of “changing market conditions,” by which is meant there’s not much of a market for devices – and because of the changes ushered in with the ushering out of the Biden regime.
The new Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has “directed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to reconsider rules covering the 2022 model year through the 2031 model year for cars and trucks. The agency in June said it would hike Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements to about 50.4 miles per gallon by 2031 from 39.1 mpg currently for light-duty vehicles,” according to a report published by Automotive News.
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The headline of the Automotive News article reads: “Newly confirmed U.S. Transportation chief moves to repeal Biden vehicle fuel economy standards.”
Elections apparently do matter.
The 2020 election – if you want to call it that – brought us Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the outgoing secretary of transportation. That brought us a near-doubling of federal CAFE “standards” – as these edicts are styled. They are not optional suggestions. Vehicle manufacturers are forced to comply with them. And the only way to comply with a 50.4 MPG CAFE requirement is to manufacture lots of devices – i.e., electric vehicles such as the ID 7.
This “works” to create an “incentive” to manufacturer devices. Not a mandate, per se. So President Trump hasn’t got it quite right when he talks about ending the “EV mandate” because at least at the federal level, there isn’t one. Per se. But the regulations – especially CAFE regs – effectively mandate EVs. It’s an extremely clever ploy by the car-hating Leftists that infest the DOT and EPA and the entire federal bureaucracy. More finely, who hate that people who aren’t them and most especially the working and middle class Deplorables who insist on driving V8-powered trucks and SUVs like the ones government apparatchiks get driven around in.
CAFE has been used for decades to dwindle down the size of vehicles and of engines available in mass-market vehicles that working and middle class people used to be able to afford and with the doubling of the “standards” under the Biden Thing the pincers were about to close completely, effectively forcing everyone into a device.
The 2024 election just prevented that.
“Artificially high fuel economy standards designed to meet non-statutory policy goals, such as those NHTSA has promulgated in recent years, impose large costs that render many vehicle models unaffordable for the average American family,” reads Duffy’s memo. “They also put coercive pressure on automakers to phase out production of various models of popular (internal combustion engine) vehicles.”
Italics added.
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“Non-statutory policy goals” refers to edicts that were never passed by the legislature – Congress, in this case. Here Duffy touches on something of critical importance in that CAFE “standards” are not constitutional because Congress didn’t pass a law requiring vehicle manufacturers to meet them. The federal apparat just decreed them. More finely, the federal apparat has arrogated unconstitutional power to – effectively – legislate “standards” on its own arbitrary say-so. That it allows “public comment” prior to imposing whatever “standards” it likes does not legitimize the arbitrary saying-so. It is patently contrary to foundational language of the federal Constitution, which endows Congress only with the lawful authority (as distinct from arrogated power) to legislate.
Federal regulations such as CAFE “standards” operate as de facto laws, being enforceable as if they were laws. Since neither the EPA nor the DOT are mentioned in the Constitution and since the Constitution grants legislative power to Congress alone, a strong prima facie argument cam be made that not only are federal regulations such as CAFE “standards” unconstitutional usurpations of the legislative authority, apparats such as EPA and DOT are themselves unlawful – all of the foregoing being unconstitutional.
If Congress wants to pass a law that says vehicle manufacturers must build vehicles that average 50.4 miles per gallon or – going farther – that they must build electric devices only – Congress has statutory authority to do that, at least in terms of process. Such laws may themselves also be unconstitutional but at least they are laws emitted by the legislative body with the sole statutory authority under the Constitution to make laws at the federal level.
