Trump rolled back Biden's fuel economy standards. The old rules pushed electric vehicles. The new rules do not. This counts as policy.
Biden wanted stricter mileage requirements. The goal was forcing automakers toward EVs. Trump looked at that plan and said no thanks. Now we get looser standards. Gasoline engines win. Lithium miners lose. Someone check on the guy who bought Rivian at $172.
The announcement changes nothing about how retail traders will lose money on EV stocks. They bought at the top because a Reddit post said batteries are the future. They held through every earnings miss because they believe in the mission. They will ride their shares to zero because selling would mean admitting they were wrong. The fuel standards had nothing to do with it. Their portfolios were already f*cked.
Automakers now face less pressure to build cars nobody was buying at the mandated pace. Dealers get to keep selling F-150s without hitting impossible fleet average targets. The environment gets whatever outcome was going to happen anyway because individual purchasing decisions matter more than regulatory theater. Biden's team acts outraged. Trump's team acts victorious. The actual impact rounds to zero within eighteen months.
This is what passes for consequential governance. One administration writes rules. The next administration erases them. Lobbyists bill both sides. Journalists pretend it matters. Traders scramble to reprice their EV portfolios as if this changes the fact that Tesla's P/E ratio requires Elon to colonize Mars by Q3.
The real story is simpler. Trump wanted to undo a Biden thing. He found a Biden thing. He undid it. Now we all pretend cars will be different because a number in a federal register changed.
Photo by History in HD on Unsplash
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