The Trump administration is taking away California’s backstop Trump-proofing tactic.
The Federal Trade Commission announced an agreement with four heavy-duty truck manufacturers and their trade association on Tuesday, declaring California’s agreement with them to continue meeting the state’s zero-emission sales targets “unenforceable.”
With that, the Trump administration has kicked out one of the last remaining legs in California’s strategy to protect its nation-leading climate regulations — its voluntary deals with industry.
“The Commission’s swift action will put the Clean Truck Partnership squarely in the rearview mirror and prevent repeats of CARB’s troubling regulatory gambit,” Taylor Hoogendoorn, the deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement.
To recap: The California Air Resources Board signed a deal in 2023 with nine truck manufacturers to abide by California’s rules “regardless of whether any other entity challenges California’s authority to set more stringent emissions standards under the federal Clean Air Act” — i.e., in case President Donald Trump returned to power and tried to dismantle the state’s special authority to set stricter-than-federal vehicle rules, as he did during his first term (and as he did again in June).
On Monday, prior to the FTC’s announcement, the companies (“original equipment manufacturers,” or “OEMs” in industry parlance) filed a lawsuit in federal court in Sacramento, arguing that they didn’t foresee this particular regulatory twist.
“The OEMs are in an impossible position,” Daimler, Volvo, International Motors and PACCAR argued in Monday’s suit. “The OEMs are subject to two sovereigns whose regulatory requirements are irreconcilable and who are openly hostile to one another. Each wields a hammer to enforce its will on industry, leaving OEMs — who simply seek to sell heavy-duty trucks in compliance with the law — unable to plan with the necessary certainty and clarity where their products need to be certified for sale and by which regulatory authority.”
Environmentalists say that argument, which came just days after the U.S. Justice Department sent a cease-and-desist letter to CARB, doesn’t pass the smell test.
“The Clean Truck Partnership was designed exactly for a moment like this,” said Adam Zuckerman, senior clean vehicles campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program.
CARB declined to comment on the litigation or the FTC’s move. But a former CARB official who helped negotiate the 2023 deal said it represents a significant softening of California’s regulatory hammer, especially after the loss of its EV sales mandate for light-duty vehicles.
“It’s bad,” former CARB deputy executive officer Craig Segall said about the potential impacts to the state’s pollution-reduction efforts. “They’re still going to sell some electric trucks, but it’s somewhere between bupkis and inadequate.”
It’s unclear how the other companies that signed on to the deal — including Cummins, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — will react after not joining the lawsuit or being named in the FTC announcement. A spokesperson for Hino Motors declined to comment, while the other companies didn’t respond immediately to requests for comment. The Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, which joined the FTC agreement but not the lawsuit, also didn’t respond.
California still has one of the companies on its side, at least in the light-duty sector. Stellantis, which inked a deal last year to follow the state’s EV sales rules even if they went away, reaffirmed its commitment in June after Trump signed a resolution revoking the EPA waiver California needs to enforce it.
Segall argued that the four truck makers’ retreat from their ZEV commitments won’t stop a long-term global trend towards zero-emission models that will benefit California. He said the state still has tools at its disposal, like offering incentives for companies and fleets that buy electric trucks, and excluding those who don’t.
“It’s not like there’s any statute making California buy from these [companies], or any statute requiring it to provide particular incentives to them,” Segall said.
California could put that plan into action soon. State agencies are supposed to deliver recommendations for bolstering the EV market to Newsom’s office this week, after the governor signed a June executive order that directed CARB to start developing new regulations and suggested the state offer preferential treatment to companies that continue to work towards electrification goals.
Alex Guillén contributed to this story.
Like this content? Consider signing up for POLITICO’s California Climate newsletter.
