POMPEO: Biden Has Weaponized the EPA – It Should Be Dissolved

Joe Biden has used the power of the presidency and the Executive branch to pursue political projects at the expense of American families.  His Administration has foisted a radical green agenda and divisive “DEI” programs on the American people, resulting in high inflation and government waste at every level.  Now, his Administration is taking an even more drastic step: Banning gas-powered vehicles.

Just as Barack Obama did, Biden has weaponized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to advance his political agenda at the expense of average American families.  The EPA’s new rules, issued just a few weeks ago, demand that car manufacturers severely cut the emissions produced by their vehicles.  The EPA claims these companies can meet the new benchmark if 44% of all new cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks are fully electric by 2030, with that percentage meant to increase through 2032.  This is effectively a ban on gas-powered vehicles: As high demand for fewer and fewer new gasoline vehicles drives up prices, the foundation of American transportation – especially for families outside major cities – will become unaffordable or unavailable within the next decade.  This is staggering, unconstitutional government overreach.

Consider the cost this rule will impose on working-class Americans, small businesses, and farmers. Despite subsidies and tax credits, electric vehicles only accounted for 7% of new car sales last year, and they were primarily bought by higher earners as an additional vehicle.  Indeed, nearly half of all EVs in the United States are registered in California, a place where such purchases are more viewed as a status symbol and virtual signaling than clear economics.

Farmers in particular rely on tractors, harvesters, and sprayers that require the high power and endurance of diesel engines, while the 2022 Ag Census recorded that 1.47 million farms across America owned 3.16 million semi-trucks or pickups.  Electric vehicles could potentially be of great benefit to farmers and small businesses someday, just as gas-powered vehicles are now – but today isn’t that day. That’s why our federal government should allow the natural power of the free market to produce electric vehicles that can genuinely compete with gas vehicles.  Flooding the market with subsidies that grant EVs an unfair advantage only disincentivizes innovation.

Biden’s rule is really just another attack on freedom.  Privately owned, gas-powered cars are central to the American way of life and will be for the foreseeable future. They provide reliable transportation that gets parents to work and kids to school at a price that is within the means of most Americans.  They give families the freedom to travel together on vacations when flights are unaffordable – which they increasingly are.  This does not mean electric vehicles will never be able to replace the combustion engine or be a genuine, affordable alternative to gas-powered cars.  It simply means that the American people should have the choice to decide when, where, and how they adopt new technologies.  As a free people, we – not the government – should get to decide.  Preserving the freedom of consumer choice and encouraging competition should be paramount.

Finally, we should remember who is profiting from the Biden Administration’s EV market manipulation: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  The CCP controls nearly every stage of the electric-vehicle supply chain. China produces over 70 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries – used in nearly all electric vehicles today – and holds a similar share in the refining, processing, and manufacturing stages.  The Biden Administration is aware of this issue, yet its solution has been characteristically ham-fisted: canceling tax credits for all cars with supply-chain connections to China – tax credits that were meant to help solve the affordability problem for American families.

The Biden Administration can’t have it both ways: It cannot punish car manufacturers and force them to produce electric cars while it passes rules that make the cars unaffordable for consumers.  This does not mean we should allow China to profit from its intentional dominance of the rare earth mineral and EV manufacturing supply chain; it means our Executive branch should not enact politically driven rules that crush American companies and enrich the CCP in the first place.

Free markets, entrepreneurship, and innovation are always better options than government manipulation.  If there is space in the market for cost-effective, reliable electric vehicles, then the brand capable of producing them will make a killing, and we should let this happen naturally.  It will come with far fewer economic costs and be better for America’s families, farmers, and small businesses.  However, the next Administration should go further than just reversing the EPA’s absurd rules.  This agency will always be weaponized by leftist extremists who are out to limit the freedoms of ordinary Americans, and we should act accordingly.  The EPA should be dissolved.