What is the ‘endangerment finding’? And why Trump killing it will have huge effects on the U.S. auto industry

On February 10, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would ditch its “endangerment finding”—the mechanism that allows the government to regulate climate pollution. It’s “the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis,” Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a recent press briefing. Here’s a brief primer on what the rule is and what the repeal might mean.

What is the endangerment finding?

In 2009, the EPA issued a ruling saying that six greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide and methane—were a danger to public health and welfare, citing a mountain of scientific evidence. The EPA issues similar “endangerment findings” for every pollutant it regulates, from mercury to ozone. (In the case of greenhouse gases, it’s known as the endangerment finding because it was a landmark decision.) Once an endangerment finding is in place, the EPA is required to regulate the pollutant and propose emission standards.  

What led up to it?

When the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, it tasked the EPA with regulating pollutants that threaten health or welfare—including the climate. The agency didn’t initially regulate greenhouse gases, but in the late 1990s it acknowledged it had the authority to act. In 2003, the Bush EPA reversed course, declaring that CO2 and other greenhouse gases weren’t air pollutants. The Supreme Court overruled that four years later, calling greenhouse gases “unambiguously” pollutants and ordering the EPA to act on science and set vehicle standards.

What regulations did it help create?

In 2023, the EPA finalized a rule to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, at oil and gas plants. In 2024, the agency created rules to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which are responsible for around a quarter of the country’s climate pollution. The EPA also finalized “clean cars” standards to reduce pollution from passenger cars, light trucks, and vans, and new standards for heavy-duty trucks; transportation accounts for around 28% of U.S. emissions.

Now what?

The repeal is specifically tied to vehicle emission standards, so that’s what the administration will try to ditch next. Although the methane and power plant regulations also rely on the endangerment finding, those will take extra steps to undo. (It’s worth noting, however, that the EPA has already proposed getting rid of the power plant regulations and delayed implementing the methane rule.)

It’s likely that the changes could eventually fail in court; since 2009, the impacts from climate change have become even more obvious, from more extreme heat waves to more destructive wildfires, storms, and rising seas. The Trump administration is recycling the Bush administration’s arguments that CO2 and other greenhouse gases aren’t air pollutants, which the Supreme Court already rejected.

What do the changes mean for business?

Some automakers, including Ford, have argued for stability in greenhouse gas regulations and supported the EPA’s vehicle emission standards. Regulatory uncertainty makes it harder for companies to plan.

“Undermining the endangerment finding would create more chaos, risk, and uncertainty for businesses already grappling with rising costs, extreme weather, and market volatility,” says Sean Hackett, a senior manager for energy transition at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re thinking about it within the bigger context that this rollback is just the latest in the series of actions that threaten business stability, investment, and innovation.”

The American Petroleum Institute has said that although it supports the repeal of emission standards for vehicles, it believes that the EPA has the authority to regulate climate pollution from power plants and other stationary sources. (Legal experts from the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that there isn’t a distinction, and that both types of pollution can be regulated.) API supports methane regulations and says that the industry is working to reduce emissions.

For automakers that are already dealing with the loss of EV incentives, it’s one more factor that could push American companies further behind global competitors that are moving to electric cars.

“Repealing the finding doesn’t remove climate risk or investor expectations or global market demands—what it does do is it removes that stable federal reference point that companies use to plan,” Hackett says. “The regulatory whiplash from removing the endangerment finding would make it harder to sequence their investments in things like engines, batteries, supply chains, and workforce training. Then that uncertainty itself becomes a material financial risk.”