Those companies’ aggressive lobbying to weaken and dismantle greenhouse gas regulations in the name of maintaining business as usual could soon come back to bite them. As U.S. automakers continue to specialize in large, pricey and mostly gas-powered trucks and SUVs, Chinese firms like BYD have exploded production and sales of affordable, high-tech EVs, hybrids and gas-powered vehicles both in that country and in foreign markets like South America, Europe, and East Asia. Once marginal players, Chinese automakers went from exporting 1 million cars in 2020 to nearly 6 million in 2024; its production capacity is currently expanding by about 4 million units per year. Goldman Sachs projected last December that the market for global EV sales could soar to 73 million units by 2040, from just 2 million in 2020 to half of the entire global market in 2035. China currently makes 76 percent of EVs sold worldwide. With the White House apparently hellbent on shrinking already modest domestic demand for those vehicles, Detroit automakers seem poised to double down on making cars that less and less of the world wants.
Some of the auto industry’s top brass are already waxing apocalyptic about their prospects. Ford CEO Jim Farley—whose company on Thursday announced that it’s taken out a $3 billion line of credit to cope with economic uncertainty—recently fretted that the “quality” of Chinese vehicles is “far superior to what I see in the West,” he told a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” he added. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future Ford.”
Boasting about his plans on Thursday, Zeldin said that the EPA is working “to end 16 years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers.” In reality, Zeldin and the rest of the Trump administration could be saddling U.S. automakers with the most uncertain conditions they’ve ever faced.
