WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, with significant fanfare, declared victory Thursday morning over "electric vehicle mandates" favored by his predecessor and regulators in California.

"Previous administration gave left-wing radicals dictatorial powers to control the entire car industry," he said in the White House East Room to a crowd including automotive and fossil fuel executives, plus Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

"Today we're saving California from a disaster and our entire country from a disaster," Trump said.

"We're doing a product that works, that's much more efficient, that's better," he said.

The president's comments came during a bill-signing ceremony for legislation blocking a federal waiver from the EPA that allowed California to set influential, nation-leading emissions policies for the auto industry. Its latest rules would have required a ramp-up to 100% electrified new vehicle sales by 2035 in participating states.

Though Michigan was not among those states, it would have experienced ripple effects from the new rules, which were set to cover about one-third of the U.S. car and truck market. The Detroit Three automakers and their suppliers would have needed to quickly ramp up EV production and sales well beyond current levels.

"This is what leadership looks like,” U.S. Rep. John James, who was among lawmakers at the signing ceremony, said in a statement. “Washington Elites said it couldn’t be done, but with President Trump’s signature we’ve made good on our promise to protect our jobs, lower prices, defend our supply chains, and keep Democrats' radical Green New Deal agenda out of the driver’s seat.”“... This is huge a win for the men and women who don’t get days off, who get behind the wheel before sunrise and keep this country running," James continued. "America’s workers don’t need coastal elites from California to Washington, D.C. telling them how to do their jobs — they need the freedom to compete, the infrastructure to deliver, and the respect they’ve earned. I’m proud that my legislation can deliver just that.”

James was among the lawmakers Trump praised for supporting the waiver overturn. He also noted that some Democrats joined overwhelming Republican support in Congress for the effort.

"One Democrat in the Senate," Trump said. "Who was the one?"

"Slotkin," someone in the audience called out, referring to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly.

"Well ... I shouldn't have asked," the president said.

Trump also denounced California regulations for heavy-duty vehicles that would have pushed a transition to EVs in the trucking industry. Less than 1% of Class 8 semi trucks registered in the United States last year were electric, according to data from the American Trucking Association. The industry would have had to reach 75% for new sales in that class by 2035 in participating states.

He is expected to sign legislation canceling California’s ability to set those standards too.

The auto industry and oil and gas groups lobbied fiercely to cancel the light-vehicle regulations, while environmental groups held out hope for their survival as perhaps the most ambitious Biden-era effort to curb emissions from the United States' top contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

"Ripping away California’s clean air protections is Trump’s latest betrayal of democracy,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign.

He added: “Signing this bill is a flagrant abuse of the law to reward Big Oil and Big Auto corporations at the expense of everyday people’s health and their wallets. Big Oil CEOs who ponied up on Trump’s billion-dollar campaign demand are now getting the big payoff with gutted environmental health protections."

Toyota Motor Corp., the second-largest automaker by sales in the United States last year, cheered Trump and lawmakers after its own vigorous lobbying efforts.

"We applaud President Trump, the House and Senate for rejecting (California's) unrealistic battery electric vehicle mandate," the company said in a statement. The Japanese automaker has been a purposeful laggard on EVs while the market develops, instead relying on its massive gas-powered hybrid portfolio to power profits.

The statement continued: "Toyota believes providing consumers with affordable vehicles and a variety of powertrain options is the best and quickest path forward for reducing emissions. A consumer-driven market with one national emissions standard will bring more stability and healthy competition to the auto industry, steady employment for workers and dealers, and more options for American families.”

John Bozzella, president and CEO Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most automakers in the United States, said: “Everyone agreed these EV sales mandates were never achievable and wildly unrealistic. Worse than unachievable – these EV mandates were going to be harmful. Harmful to auto affordability, to consumer choice, to industry competitiveness and to economic activity."

In his remarks, Trump pointed to investments by automakers in U.S. plants, citing them as evidence his tariffs are working to increase industrial production in the United States. Among them, he said, is Stellantis NV's plans to reopen its Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois.

California, thanks to longstanding provisions of the federal Clean Air Act, is able to set its own tailpipe emissions regulations, provided it first gets approval from the EPA. Its latest set of rules would have phased in beginning with the 2026 model year. Companies were facing a 35% electrified sales requirement, which included a partial allowance for gas-electric plug-in hybrid models.

Thirteen states and the District of Columbia had at one point pledged to adopt California's rules, but three later canceled or delayed their commitments. Two states — Maryland and Vermont — pulled back in recent months as the regulations' start date drew closer.

No state, including California, is yet at the 35% benchmark outlined in the rules. Most were not halfway there in 2024, according to sales data compiled by the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

Nationally, EV adoption grew significantly during President Joe Biden's administration, jumping from about 3% of new vehicle sales at the start of his term in January 2021 to a peak of 11% in December 2023. But growth plateaued over the past two years, with electrified models hovering around 9% to 10% of new vehicle sales.

Biden promoted EVs through a web of policies aimed at automakers, suppliers, consumers and charging providers across the country with the goals of reducing environmental impact and pushing the United States to compete with China's dominant EV industry.

Electric vehicles, notably, are significantly less polluting than internal combustion engine cars and trucks, according to an analysis from BloombergNEF. Though EVs do contribute to pollution through their production process and their use of largely fossil-fuel-derived electricity to charge, their lack of tailpipe emissions makes them far cleaner than ICE models.

Many of Biden's policies to boost EVs, however, are likely to be gutted by a massive Republican tax and spending bill that ends related tax credits, claws back money for chargers and repeals federal emissions standards. The bill also adds a new tax for EV owners.

Republicans have long railed against government support for EVs, with widespread expectation that they would unwind Biden's efforts at the federal level. That left many advocates clinging to the latest California rules as a last hope to preserve a regulatory push toward the technology.

But two important factors led to the rules' demise: Trump's electoral victory in November and Biden's inaction on the waiver until late in his term.

Trump's win enabled the appointment of Zeldin to transmit the waiver to Congress for review, teeing up controversial votes to cancel it under the Congressional Review Act. Democrats and environmental advocates decried the decision to hold votes in the first place after nonpartisan referees ruled that waivers, like the one California received, are not subject to the CRA.

Biden could have skirted the issue altogether by granting the waiver earlier in his presidency.

The CRA gives Congress the power to cancel rules set by outgoing presidents, so long as the rules were finalized within the last 60 legislative days of a given year. But the Democratic former president waited until Dec. 18 to grant the waiver.

Still, even some Democratic lawmakers joined Republicans in voting to nix California's emission waiver, calling the state's rules unrealistic. Eleven of Michigan's 15 members of Congress voted to repeal the waiver, and another three said they supported the policy move but objected for procedural reasons.

California and its state emissions regulator, the California Air Resources Board, have vowed to sue the Trump administration over its cancellation of the waiver.

Gavin Newsom, the state's Democratic governor, said in May that congressional votes on the matter were "illegal."

"Republicans went around their own parliamentarian to defy decades of precedent," Newsom said in a statement. "We won’t stand by as Trump Republicans make America smoggy again — undoing work that goes back to the days of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — all while ceding our economic future to China.

"We’re going to fight this unconstitutional attack on California in court."

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