Trump ups mileage proposal slightly over Obama standard

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is making a concession on its proposed minimum fuel economy requirement for new vehicles, but environmental groups and a key Democratic senator complain it does not go far enough, and still falls well below the requirements set under the Obama administration.

Fuel economy standards would increase 1.5% per year from 2021 through 2026 under the new proposal. That's a reversal from the Trump administration's proposal in 2018, which sought to freeze the standards at 2020 levels.

Environmentalists and Delaware Sen. Tom Carper hardly cheered the move, which doesn't come close to the 5% annual increase that the Obama administration had mandated.

Carper, senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, released some details of the latest fuel-standards proposal in a letter Wednesday urging the administration to scrap its new mileage proposal as ineffective and costly.

“My office’s review of the draft final rule indicates that it utterly fails to provide any demonstrable safety, environmental or economic benefit to consumers or the country,” Carper wrote in a letter to the Office of Management and Budget.

The office reviews proposed regulations before they are finalized and printed in the Federal Register. The administration hasn’t released the numbers, but they are detailed in Carper’s letter to Paul Ray, a management and budget administrator.

The Trump administration has billed its mileage standards as safer and less costly to motorists, but there’s a growing chorus of critics disputing that, including the Trump EPA’s own scientific advisory board. The mileage rollback has become one of the most fiercely contested rollback efforts by the administration, prompting legal battles with California and other states and splitting loyalties of top...