Hey, Guess What the Experts Were Wrong About This Time!

Experts: “Trump said weaker gas mileage rules will mean cheaper cars. Experts say don’t bet on it.”

Carmakers: “Hold my kei.”

Kei trucks are ultra-compact, ultra-efficient pickup trucks designed specifically to fit Japan’s kei-jidosha (light vehicle) regulations, and they’re beloved around the world. But you could never buy one here, thanks to Washington’s ever-tightening Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, first imposed on new cars and trucks in 1975.

You know, the regulations President Donald Trump rolled back last week.

Trump said, “If you go to Japan, where I just left, and if you go to South Korea and Malaysia and other countries, they have a very small car—sort of like the Beetle used to be with the Volkswagen—they’re very small, they’re really cute, and I said, ‘How would that do in this country?'”

“And everyone seems to think good, but you’re not allowed to build them, and I’ve authorized the secretary to immediately approve the production of those cars… Honda, some of the Japanese companies do a beautiful job, but we’re not allowed to make them in this country and I think you’re gonna do very well with those cars, so we’re gonna approve those cars.”

But the Associated Press’s Alexa St. John is having none of that, apparently, in a piece explaining why Trump is wrong and CAFE is right and just get used to expensive cars forever.

Without doing a Full Frontal Fisking of St. John’s “THE FACTS” article, let me present the facts she missed or ignored.

Trump promised that new car prices might drop by $1,000 under his relaxed standards — really, just going back to the CAFE standards we used just a few years ago, when the planet still wasn’t dying. And that’s great, as far as it goes.

But consumers might be more interested in new, much less expensive, product categories that CAFE forced carmakers out of and American car-buyers away from.

“Average prices have also skewed higher as automakers have leaned into the costly big pickups and SUVs that many American consumers love,” St. John wrote — did I detect a note of disdain? — without mentioning that CAFE is the reason Americans moved away from affordable sedans and station wagons, and into trucks and SUVs.

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