The Trump administration’s repeal of the Obama-era EPA “Endangerment Finding” marks a significant rollback of federal climate regulations, announced on February 12, 2026, as the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. This 2009 ruling, which classified carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases as threats to public health and welfare, had served as the legal foundation for emissions standards on vehicles, power plants, and other sources. President Trump described it as a “disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” predicting savings of over $1.3 trillion for taxpayers. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin echoed this, stating the finding exceeded the agency’s authority and imposed costly mandates like electric vehicle pushes that limited consumer choice and economic mobility. The move eliminates all federal greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles from model years 2012 onward, including off-cycle credits and features like start-stop technology, aiming to restore affordability in transportation and goods.

Critics of the original Endangerment Finding, including conservatives and industry leaders, argue it was part of a broader Obama strategy to hobble U.S. industry through regulatory overreach, effectively outsourcing jobs and emissions to high-polluting nations like China. The finding justified trillions in regulations that strangled sectors like automotive manufacturing and energy production, driving up costs for families and small businesses while pressuring companies to shift operations abroad where emissions standards are laxer. Trump administration officials have claimed these policies re-engineered the economy to benefit foreign competitors, with China and India building coal plants unchecked, dwarfing U.S. emission reductions and undermining American competitiveness. This “managed decline,” as some describe it, prioritized globalist agendas over domestic prosperity, allowing China to emerge as the dominant superpower by capitalizing on weakened U.S. industrial capacity.

Supporters of the repeal, including Trump himself, have long dismissed climate change as a fabricated threat designed to justify expansive government control and economic sabotage. Trump has repeatedly called it the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and a “hoax” invented for ulterior motives, such as enriching certain interests or advancing political ideologies. This view aligns with arguments that the Endangerment Finding lacked a genuine scientific basis for labeling greenhouse gases as harmful pollutants, instead serving as the “legal foundation of the green new scam” to impose burdensome rules without congressional approval. By repealing it, the administration contends it ends a pseudoscientific pretext that enabled Obama’s EPA to facilitate America’s decline, paving the way for energy independence, lower costs, and a resurgence against China’s global dominance.

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