The CEO of Ford Motor Co. is revved up for the Trump administration’s plan to make automobiles affordable, as he expressed his praise for helping to bring car prices back down.
“What you should know is that this is a victory for affordability and common sense. As the president said, we will be able to offer more affordability on our popular models, and we’ll be able to launch new vehicles built in America that are more affordable because of this rule change,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said on “Fox & Friends” Thursday.
“Frankly, [the Corporate Average Fuel Economy] was totally out of touch with the market reality. We were forced to sell EVs and other vehicles. We’re not going back to gas-guzzlers,” he continued. “We have a lot of EVs and a lot of hybrids at Ford, but now customers get a chance to choose what they want, not by what we force on them.”
His remarks came less than a day after Farley joined President Donald Trump in the Oval Office for the announcement of resetting federal fuel-economy standards imposed under the previous administration — a move the White House said would save “$109 billion in total” for American families.
STICKER SHOCK PUSHES SHOPPERS OUT OF NEW-CAR MARKET AS AFFORDABILITY CRISIS DEEPENS
“People were brainwashed. This is a ‘green new scam.’ And people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well. And now they’re gonna have a great car that’s gonna be environmentally friendly, but it’s gonna cost you a lot less and it’s gonna work great. All of the nonsense is being taken out of the cars,” President Trump said during Wednesday’s announcement.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE standards, first enacted in 1975, are government regulations for the average fuel efficiency of a vehicle fleet that aim to lower emissions.
Trump rolled back aggressive standards put forth by the Obama administration under his first term in office, with former President Joe Biden subsequently resetting and tightening the CAFE standards under his administration.
Under the Biden administration, federal regulators increased fuel-economy requirements by about 8% for the 2024 and 2025 model years and by 10% for 2026 — a sharp change from the Trump-era rule, which had set increases at roughly 1.5% per year for model years 2021 through 2026. The Trump White House argued that the stricter standards would be difficult for gas-powered vehicles to meet with current technology and could push consumers toward electric vehicles.
The White House previously told Fox News Digital that the Biden-era regulations would have increased the average cost of a new car by nearly $1,000, compared with the cost under the reset standards — and that the rule change would save American families $109 billion.
“I think the combination of some of the adjustments to tariffs as well as these, basically, fuel economy standards being more reasonable with the market, you’re gonna start to see prices continue to fall,” Farley signaled.
“I think you’ll see going into the end of this year and early part of next year, prices for cars will come down,” he emphasized. “We can build, basically, what America wants, and what America wants is affordable vehicles. You know, our affordable range in November was up 25%. The market was down. So that’s what Americans want to buy.”
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FOX Business’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.
