Good morning! It's Thursday, December 4, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift: Your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, all in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.
In this edition, Trump makes a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing about fuel efficiency and the affordability crisis, automakers won't see a penny returned of the billions they've invested in EVs, dealerships are sounding the alarm on terrible sales, and trucking schools are under a magnifying glass. I could never get the hang of Thursdays, and all this news isn't helping.
Hey you there! Yes you! Would you like to buy a car that pollutes more and costs you more each month to fill up at the gas station? Of course you would, who could say no to such a proposition! President Donald Trump sure thinks it's a winning deal. He had the CEOs of the Big Three in his office Wednesday to announce an end to President Biden's goal of a fleet-wide MPG average of 50 miles per gallon by 2031. Now the mandate calls for 34.5 mpg average across an automaker's line up.
I know you'll be shocked to learn this entire affair was pointless grandstanding to make people think the White House is doing something about rising prices, as Trumps One Big Beautiful Bill Act removed any enforcement of fuel efficiency standards months ago. Trump added Wednesday that his Environmental Protection Agency could remove tailpipe requirements from the Clean Air Act altogether, and also said his administration would reclassify CUVs and SUVs as passenger vehicles. Trump thinks he's removing a "market distortion that existed for decades." Yeah, it is a distortion, as automakers only focused on such vehicles due to a loophole in previous safety and tailpipe requirements.
And what kind of savings do we get with all this environmental and public health destruction? About $1,000 per car, along with, somehow, $109 billion over six years. From the Detroit Free Press:
"They were anti-economy (standards)," Trump said on Wednesday, Dec. 3, of the earlier rules put in place by the Biden administration, which had the effect of promoting electric vehicle sales and which Trump campaigned against. "They were horrible, what they were doing to costs, and they actually made the cars much worse."
"People were brainwashed," Trump said of the effort to promote production of electric vehicles or EVs under Biden in a ceremony at the Oval Office, where he was surrounded by auto executives, auto dealers and members of Congress. "People were paying too much for a car that didn't work as well and now they're going to have a great car that is going to be environmentally friendly but it's going to cost you a lot less."
Reminder: the average price of cars in the U.S. has shot up form $38,000 in 2020 to $50,000 today. $12,000 in five years isn't from fuel economy standards, but go off king.
Naturally, automakers were thrilled with the roll back. Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley, who oversaw the death of the affordable small car at Ford, is tickled pink by the chance to sell Americans vehicles that are more expensive to fuel and more destructive to the environment and their customer's communities:
"Today is a victory of common sense and affordability," Farley said. "Eighty percent of the vehicles we sell here, we make in our country, and we never left, unlike many of our competitors. This CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standard, that is aligned with customer demand, is the right move. We believe that people should be able to make a choice as you said Mr. President."
Farley went on to say, "We will invest more in affordable vehicles. This allows us to invest in affordable vehicles made in the US, which we will take the lead on and it will allow us to make vehicles more affordable."
Stellantis, which makes Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Fiat brands, was represented at the White House by its CEO Antonio Filosa, who also praised the proposal. "It's a great day for us at Stellantis because it's the day when we see CAFE standards reconciled with real customer demands."
Trump then told the folks gathered that none of the Big Three would even still be in existence without tariffs, which I'm sure is news to Mary Barra, who oversaw the company's strongest sales growth since 2019 last year. Ford also saw a net income of $5.9 billion last year, and a 5% climb in revenue.
After the inane announcement, everyone just milled around while Trump said horrible things about the Somali community in Minnesota. Just another day in Trump's America.
The federal government's shifting priorities is going to cost automakers more than any fuel economy standard. Trump also said when questioned Wednesday if automakers will be able to recoup the costs they sank into EV development, they got a resounding "nope." From the Detroit Free Press again:
But when the Free Press asked Trump — with officials from General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis flanking the president in an Oval Office ceremony — if the government should somehow repay the automakers for billions spent on developing new EV models for market under those Biden era rules with the understanding that there would be taxpayer subsidies to buy them (which Republicans and Trump have nixed), Trump said, "No, I'm not doing it."
"Nope, no," he continued. "I'm not letting them recoup, they're going to do just fine. You know how they recoup? From this point forward they'll do very well."
With friends like these, eh?
Cox Automotive is finding "near-record" levels of unhappiness among the boots-on-the-ground sales folks at automotive dealerships. The rush of buyers hitting showrooms to beat tariffs and the end of the EV tax credit is over, and now all that is left is the stoney silence and the smell of burned coffee, from Automotive News:
"This year seems way worse than last year," a Ford dealer in the Midwest told Cox, describing a "lack of sales in these slower months."
Dealers blamed the economy and a lack of consumer confidence for slowing business, but they're really just coming off the high of the year's front-loaded sales, according to Cox.
"I think that we can take that with a grain of salt," Erin Keating, Cox senior director of economic and industry insights, said of dealers' grim impressions of their fourth-quarter markets. She noted that consumer sentiment polling such as that from analytics provider Morning Consult shows "consumers are feeling like it's not that bad of a time to go buy a car."
Why aren't people buying cars? It's the economy, stupid. The government shut down didn't help consumers feel anymore confident in the market and, once lost, it is a hard metric to regain. Dealers are also pessimistic about their upcoming profits as well since, you know, they're people too and can see the hi-jinx aren't going to stop any time soon.
America is suffering from a lack of qualified heavy truck drivers–you know, the people who keep the economy humming. So it seems like the perfect place to go in for some political attacks. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is targeting driver schools in blue states specifically because, horror, they might be training migrants to do the jobs that Americans aren't willing to do. From the Associated Press:
Duffy has threatened to pull federal funding from California and Pennsylvania over the issue, and he proposed significant new restrictions on which immigrants can get a commercial driver's license but a court put those new rules on hold. On Monday, he threatened to withhold $30.4 million from Minnesota if that state doesn't address shortcomings in its commercial driver's license program and revoke any licenses that never should have been issued either because they were valid beyond a driver's work permit or because the state never verified a driver's immigration status.
So far, every state Duffy has threatened has been a Democratic state, but he has said the department is auditing a number of other states, including Texas and South Dakota.
While there are definitely some trucking schools that operate as little more than CDL mills, fleecing people out of their money with promises of shorter training times, it really seems it is immigrant drivers who are in the crosshairs more than anything. Duffy has pointed to two deadly crashes caused by drivers from the Sikh community as the reason for the crack down. The only problem? Sikhs make up 40% of west coast drivers. Of course one or two are going to be involved in deadly crashes. Some 44% of driving schools were found to be lacking by federal standards and could lose their licenses.
Today, 110 years ago, Henry Ford and a bunch of pacifists sailed to Europe to see if their Peace Ship could end World War I with its groovy vibes. It didn't work, but nice attempt Hank!
Let's keep the cringe white rappers theme rolling! I actually paid money to see Scoochie Boochie perform and you know what? No regrets. The guy is hilarious.