Long Road Back

The Rise, Fall, and Possible Rebirth of the American Auto Industry

By Philip Voodoo

“Any customer can have any color he wants so long as it is black.”

These iconic words written by early 20th century industrialist Henry Ford are more than just a catchy marketing slogan. The man who wrote them was one of the second generation of American founding fathers—men who shook America from a sleepy rural backwater and dragged it into the industrial era. Men who laid the pathway for American global supremacy. They were innovators and builders, and modern day pioneers. But above all, they were businessmen. They valued the dollar.

Ford’s insistence on a single color was not about aesthetics or any particular brand image. It was about cost. Fewer variables mean lower costs. It means simplicity and speed in logistics and manufacture, and it means lower prices to consumers. Lower prices means the product is more available, and access to revolutionary products and technology means a civilization grows.

Ford would not recognize the state of the automotive industry today, where decades of government overreach and environmental wishcasting have strained the industry that moves and feeds America nearly to the point of rupture. While some government interventions have been necessary and consumer and public oriented, others have wasted untold millions of dollars, driven up costs, and perverted natural innovation cycles. They have cost Americans jobs, and put at risk our position of primacy on the world stage.

But, after nearly two decades of free fall, a light has appeared at the end of the tunnel. The Trump administration’s willingness to not only roll back federal policy, but go to war against the chief architects of the campaign against America’s industrial might has given the people of the United States one last chance. It will be a long and complex road—and the complex chains of one of the most interwoven and shaky industries in the world will be difficult to unknot—but the Trump Administration can, and must, bring the tyranny of the green menace to an end.

Both the commercial and personal auto industries are beset by a common refrain. Vehicles are too expensive, they are packed with too much technology, they can not be maintained by the owner, they don’t last long, and popular models are no longer available. The explosion in price with no apparent explanation of every vehicle from a minivan to a massive dump truck has followed the trend of another critically important societal commodity: housing. Neither was caused by a single factor, rather a myriad of reasons from governmental interference to corporate legalese. These factors have colluded, often unintentionally, to create the problems of today.

Each of these factors, whether a primary influencing factor or a reactive one, was born with the best of intentions. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were created in the 1970s, when crippling gas shortages gripped the United States. It was an effort to make Americans less dependent on foreign oil which in turn would allow us more flexibility and power in international statecraft. It succeeded. The range of motor vehicles today is more than double their 1970s counterparts.

The same is true with NOx regulations and carbon dioxide emissions limits. A vehicle built in 2025 puts 98% fewer particulates of all sorts into the air than its 1970s counterpart. This has been vitally important in cities, where the narrow confines of high rise buildings, combined with higher rates of vehicle traffic are less able to sustain high levels of pollutants than open plains and mountainous countryside.

The initiatives taken to clean American air, reduce dependency on foreign oil, and to generally improve the lives of all Americans were a rousing success, a wave of innovation and engineering greatness rarely duplicated in the modern era.

That is, until they were carried too far.

Be it through malice, or the natural inertia of government, or our apparent inability to end government programs once they are started, or even a true belief in the mission, both CAFE and emissions regulations have passed the point of practical and achievable advancement and entered the realm of fantasy.

To meet ever increasing regulatory standards, automotive manufacturers have been required to not only develop innovative engineering solutions, but also administrative ones as well. The rise of the SUV in the 1990s was not just a revolt against the tyranny of the minivan, but a direct result of more stringent CAFE standards. By reclassifying every vehicle possible as a “truck”, to include station wagons and even cars like the PT Cruiser, manufacturers increased their fuel efficiency numbers.

When these steps weren’t enough, they were forced to turn to more extreme measures. First automatic engine shutoffs at sustained stops became common, followed quickly by the death of the much loved manual transmission. Manufacturers needed to squeeze every possible mile out of every available gallon, and limit every particulant expelled. With increased automated control over the vehicle, technological complexity skyrocketed. Gone are the days of a father and son popping the hood of the family car to replace gaskets.

But these annoyances didn’t arrive alone. Lurking behind them was skyrocketing research and development budgets and materials costs. In a world where entry level vehicles with a profit margin of $3,000 have the same production and development costs as luxury ones whose profit can be ten times greater, the business decision is simple. Manufacturers almost uniformly stopped making lower cost, lower complexity vehicles as a survival mechanism.

Every possible revenue source was added to every possible vehicle, and prices skyrocketed. The vast majority of these additions were technological, exponentially increasing the vehicles complexity and lowering its reliability, creating a feedback loop which would have driven Henry Ford himself out of the industry.

Even before the green cult began to hold sway, demanding every vehicle be a zero emissions EV, America and its auto industry was in serious trouble. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the green fanatics at the EPA continued to push, while automotive executives—fearful of missing out on disruptive innovation—told them anything in their imagination was possible. The total amount of money wasted on developing a zero emissions solution for every use case likely will never be known, but tens of billions in the United States and Europe would not be out of the ballpark.

While the executives at these companies bear their fair share of the blame for telling both the EPA and the public they could build a battery powered cement mixer capable of functioning perfectly on the north slope of Alaska, the fault is not theirs alone. Without the impending regulatory cliffs CARB and the EPA were pushing the industry too, they might not have had to.

CARB, backed by EPA waivers enabling them to effectively mandate regulations nationwide and industry products, eventually pushed too far. As more and more states were duped into following California’s lead, the nakedness of the green emperor became difficult to hide. When in late 2024 it became clear that the heavy truck industry was not ready to meet the CARB inspired regulations of a dozen states, and states like New York couldn’t procure dump trucks or snow plows, states started running towards the exits.

At first, these states implemented “delayed enforcement” of the impossible regulations. Once given overhead cover by President Trump eliminating nearly all of California’s EPA waivers, they barely protested as they slipped back towards sanity.

President Trump’s team has already broken CARB’s stranglehold on America, and has smashed the Obama era “Endangerment Finding” which kicked our current trajectory into overdrive, and is setting its sights on the upcoming EPA27 regulations and CAFE standards: but like the problem, the solution is also multi-faceted.

An industry as large as America’s automotive sector can not simply turn on a dime. With research, development, and integration timelines measured in years and decades, Henry Ford’s mantra seems more like a warning than a business strategy. Tens of thousands of parts, suppliers, and other engineering challenges need to be developed, tested, sourced, and procured, and integrated into complex manufacturing systems before a single newer offering can reach a customer. But all of that exists in a world where there is no need to try and recoup the previous decade of disaster.

To be compliant with CARB and the looming EPA27, Cummins, America’s largest engine manufacturer, had totally redesigned its entire product line, while canceling more popular, less compliant options. To ask them to undertake this arduous burden again, before even recouping a dollar from these compliant engines, would put the company, and many like it, into bankruptcy.

The administration is doing the right thing by dismantling the complex regulations of the green dictatorship, and should continue to do so. EPA27 regulations need to be cancelled in their entirety, CAFE standards need to be revised, and California’s grip on America needs to be put to a permanent end. But Americans need to brace themselves for a long siege.

The road back towards a lean and profitable automotive industry that produces passenger vehicles and trucks that transport American dreams and build an American future will be harder than most of us imagine. But, as history has taught us, when government gets out of the way, you can always bet on America.